Beach picnic

What a marvelous day.  When I heard that it would be 80 today, I decided not to go in and work any OT.  Low humidity and warm days are few and far between.  Instead, I went for a 2 mile run, washed laundry and got it on the line to dry, grocery shopped, and made food for an evening picnic at the beach.

I noticed after my run that my Mother's Day flowering quince burst open this weekend, right on cue.  I love taking pictures of the blossoms.  They are the most pretty salmon color.

After Selim got home from school, we packed his wet suit, towels, picnic fare, and this boogie board and set out for the beach.  There is only two more weeks before they start charging for parking, so we decided to take advantage of the free day and go.

I shouldn't be too surprised that my guy jumped right in the water.  If the lake was cold yesterday, this must have been much colder.  I went in up to my ankles, borrowing an expression from my sister.  My excuse for staying dry, I was taking pictures.  Nedim was braver, didn't have my excuse, and went in to his knees.

Before we packed up to leave, I insisted that we take some pictures.  For some reason, we had trouble getting just the right angle and shot.  We ended up in a heap in the sand, laughing.

It felt like a perfect cap to my extended Mother's Day weekend.

First "swim" of the year

This afternoon I picked up Selim at the lake house.  It was a gorgeous afternoon.  While Amy and I sat on the deck catching up, Jero took the boys out in the boat.  When they came back, each boy had wet hair and Selim had his shirt off.  They ran back to the house and put on wet suits.  And in the water they jumped.  The water can't get much over 50 degrees.  They didn't last too long.

Easing in

Moving sand around

Going in reverse order of my day here, this morning, I ate my oatmeal and watched the birds at the feeder.  I saw three types of woodpeckers, yellow and purple goldfinch, red breasted grosbeak, Baltimore oriole, and some type of sparrow.  Of course, I had trouble getting good pictures.  The woodpeckers were especially easy to scare off.

I tried going outside to take pictures of the feeder from the other direction, but didn't have much success.

Instead of taking bird pictures, I turned to the garden.

And speaking of the garden, we enjoyed a lunch of  just picked asparagus on toast and a huge salad.

Back to bird for a moment.  When I got out of work yesterday, there were these guys walking around.  Because I was headed straight to the Ashram, I happened to have my camera with the zoom in my car.

All in all, it was a great Mother's Day.  I got to spend part of the day with my mom, and then with Selim, the reason that I can fully enjoy the day in the first place.

Out of the blue

I was weepy today. And irritable.  And so sad.  I didn't know why I was so out of sorts.  Nedim asked me why I was yelling at him on the phone.  From deep in my core, unexpectedly, and without thinking about it, I blurted, "Because had Bebek lived and gone to full term, tomorrow we could be celebrating a 10. YEAR. BIRTHDAY!"

Silence.

"Oh." And in such a small, sorrowful voice, my husband replied, "I am so sorry, Tatlim."

"Me too.  I didn't mean to yell at you.  I'm going to hang up."  I dropped the phone on the kitchen counter, doubled over at my waist and sobbed, wounded animal, keening cries.

I don't often think about May 10.  Had Bebek been meant to be, who knows if I would have carried full term?  May be some years I remember that May 10 was the due date, but not every year.  It isn't the same as October, 14 on my scale of difficult anniversaries.  So today was unexpected in the ferocity of the feelings grief, anger, and sense of loss.

I really wanted a little girl, in addition to the wonderful child that I was able to bring into this world.  And then I feel guilty for even thinking about wanting more when I have the most remarkable not-so-little boy.  He has my heart and I wouldn't change anything about him.  But I see pictures of my friends with their girls and I am so happy for them and at the same time, I feel like my heart is nicked up from longing.  I want that, you know, the little girl that looks something like me.  May be should would have my eye color, but the beautiful shape of he Daddy's.  May be she would have my nose which is just like my Dad's.  Or maybe my smile which I think looks like my Mom's.  She would probably have thick, dark hair that could be my side or Nedim's.  But I would love her.  That much I know.

Had we known that the three or four years we tried to have a baby would be in vain, would we have looked into adoption earlier?  By the time I had my surgery, and creating a child no longer an option, I felt like I as too old and the window to bring a child into our family through a different avenue had shut.  I wish I knew why, after being peaceful about the decisions we made, I feel all jumbled and sad tonight.

May be I'm so emotional because Sunday is Mother's Day.  In some ways that is a sweet day.  I get to hug and kiss my Lovey Lamb who brings so much  joy into my life.  And yet, there is an aspect of sorrow about the day.  I think about the women who haven't been able to have a child and want to, desperately, or women who have lost babies, or had to give them up.  My heart goes out to them.  The day isn't as simple as the chocolate, flowers, and greeting card companies want it to be.  It is wonderful to celebrate the strength of the women who take on child rearing.  And it is also a day to be kind to a woman who wanted to be a mother with her whole heart and is on the outside looking in on other mother-child relationships.

There isn't anything I can change right now.  It is 1:06am and it has been a long day.  May be I will dream about a little blue-eyed, dancing girl, whose name would have been Layla.

Confection success

Inspired by Amy and our conversation out at the lake last month, I have tried to change up my diet.  With the rough winter behind me, it was time to come out of hibernation and stop eating all the fatty and sugary treats that kept me going during the cold and dark months.  In that effort, I have tried very hard to eliminate sugar and highly processed foods from my meals.  It has not been easy.

I start my day with either a hot whole-grain cereal with fruit and nuts, or toast of whole grain bread and a green drink.  Lunch is a big bowl of fruit and a Greek yogurt.  Snacks are celery and peanut butter or carrots and hummus.  Dinner is a big salad with a protein component or a skillet dish of veggies and protein.  I have coffee with a bit of sweetener in the afternoon.  During the week, keeping to the program is easy.  On the weekends I find it harder.  As I am trying to practice self-compassion, I do the best I can Saturday and Sunday and get back on the wagon on Monday.

But three weeks in, I still crave sweets.  Last week I packaged up the rest of the almond raspberry bars that I had made for my team and sent them home with Mom.  I threw out the few chocolate cake pieces a few days after our Easter BBQ.  However, chocolate calls my name at all hours, even in my dreams.  The notion that the desire for sugar decreases the longer you go without has not held true for me.  It is a big, fat, myth as far as I am concerned.

In an effort to help me not gorge on candy or other sugar loaded treats, I decided to create my own Larabar type of sweet. Yesterday I put dates, almond butter, dried cranberries, and unsweetened shredded coconut in the food processor and pushed the on button -- no measuring, just freeform.  I made the goop into little squares and wrapped them in Saran wrap.  Not bad for my first effort.  I gave one to Selim this morning and he couldn't believe that I hadn't added any sugar.

Today I got serious.  I measured my ingredients and wrote them down.  My first batch was based on ingredients in chai.  I soaked crystallized ginger to soften and remove the excess sugar for a few minutes.  I put the soft ginger, dates, raw cashews, shredded coconut, vanilla, cardamon, cinnamon, and a pinch of salt in the food processor and mixed for a minute or so.  Instead of forming the mixture into rectangle shapes, I used my trusty 2 tablespoon ice cream scoop and made balls.  Wow.  Really good.

Riding high on success, and craving chocolate I made a smaller batch with dried mandarin oranges (soaked and patted dry), dates, cocoa powder, pecans, shredded coconut, pinch of salt, a bit of vanilla and orange extract.  Oh my word.  The test is going to be eating only one at a time and not sitting down or shoveling all of them in my mouth in one sitting.

The Cloisters

Today's adventure -- the Cloisters.  We left right on schedule and arrived just a few minutes after it opened.  Parking wasn't a problem and we used our museum tickets yesterday to gain admittance.

I'm not sure how many archway pictures I took yesterday at the Bethesda Arcade, but I took even more today.  How is that possible, you might ask? I get in a trance and snap away.  I can't help myself.  I must have lived in southern France or Spain, Turkey, North Africa or Moghul India in one of my past lives.  I feel completely at home in that style of architecture. If I ever get to build my own house, it will have archways inside.

While I was taking pictures, my family had a snack...or waited by a heater vent until I finished.

Besides the structure of the building, I loved seeing the tapestries.  To see the Unicorn Tapestries in real life is special.  I think I saw other medieval tapestries in London a few summers ago.  But the unicorn is magical.  It is hard to get a good photo since you can't use a flash and the room is dark in order to preserve them.  What must it have been like to work on them, I wonder?

The stained glass was beautiful as well.

But one of the sweetest things about today was watching the nuns taking pictures of each other.  It was endearing.  I had enough sense to just observe them and keep my camera down.  One of Selim's favorite was a flamingo adorned chasuble, Italian, Venice late 15, early 16th Century.

Lastly, there were a few statues and sculptures that I liked.

The NYC family guidebook led me astray in that they said the gift shop had armor to purchase.  We didn't see any.  However, Selim got a sward and a T-shirt and seemed happy with that.

Before driving back, we walked around the outside and took even more pictures.

A view of the GW Bridge

It would be a different experience had I not been keeping an eye on my nine year old.  Don't touch...be careful...Selim!...were frequently spoken.  Had I been by myself, I could have had a more contemplative experience.  But today, it was OK that I had one eye on the art and one eye my guy.  His world view expanded with new images, art works, and architecture.