Remembering Ceylan

There are some days in your life so sad that the remembering of them will never stop hurting. 
For our family, March 28th 2010 is one of those days.
It is the day our friend Ceylan died.  
She wasn't ill or weak. 
She wasn't old, she hadn't lived enough.
She wasn't ready to die and we weren't ready to say goodbye. 
Our friendship was still young. We'd only just begun to create the memories we were meant to share.
I remember the day she walked into the Children's Centre.  Dark haired and dark eyed, she hesitated at the door, her baby son Luis in her arms, her blue-eyed daughter clutching her leg. She murmered something in German and I, always keen to practice my German, walked over and said hello. We stood there facing each other amidst the chaos of children and families and prams and right then I knew, and I think she did too, that we would be friends. 
She and her husband Torsten had just arrived in England, uprooting their family from Hamburg in search of adventure and fluent English. Perhaps it was that love of travel, the excitement of not knowing exactly what is round the corner, that drew us together. Perhaps it was Ceylan's warm smile. Perhaps it was an understanding of the shared restlessness of world wanderers.  
But I believe it was fate. 
As we got to know each other, Ceylan and I realised that there had been many times in many different cities and countries where our paths had almost crossed, when we had been in places a few days before or after each other.
But it took her walking into a small Children's Centre in a tiny city in England for us to actually meet. 
We fitted together, our two families. 
 Even though their children were much younger than ours, we enjoyed being with each other and spent evenings and holidays together.  Sharing food and campfires and dreams. 
Until the Saturday in March when they dropped their keys off at our house.  They were going skiing and would be back in a week. 
Only Ceylan never came back. 
Sitting next to Torsten and her children on the plane, she collapsed. 
 The plane turned around and the Gatwick police phoned us. 
Could we come.
 Selma and Luis  ( 1year and 3years old) were sitting in the police station because Torsten was in hospital with Ceylan.
 It didn't look good, they said.
The police room had a dirty brown carpet and bare, stained walls. Even on a good day it would have drained the soul. Selma and Luis were sitting on a red plastic sofa, so small and young, clutching their teddy bears. 
 In the end the waiting was too painful. 
So I  brought them back to our house and tried to help them sleep.  We weren't allowed to bring any of their bags, the police had to keep them.
 Their clothes and toys and anything that might have comforted them had to be left behind.  
"Mama," whispered Selma as she sobbed herself to sleep.
I sat watching the stars on that long, long night, trying to hope.  
Just after 3 am Ninesh texted me from the hospital.
" Our good friend Ceylan rests in peace."
And the next morning NInesh, Mia, Joss and I watched, standing in our kitchen, while Torsten, numb with grief, told his son and daughter that their mum had died.
 All day his phone rang and again and again I heard him say: 
" 10 years training to be a doctor and I couldn't save my wife."
Selma and Luis played and cried and ate pancakes.
I took them outside because none of us could think what else to do. 
Selma stood on the doorstep and looked up at the sky.
" Becky. Is Mama up there now?" she asked me in German. " Is she behind those clouds? Do you think she's crying."
" I think she's smiling," I said, " I think she will always smile when she sees you." 
The weather stormed for the next days.
 Thunder and wind and rain.  Ceylan didn't go quietly. There was too much passion smouldering beneath  her dark eyes for that.
" I think maybe somewhere deep down inside she knew," her mother-in-law told me in the grey, grieving weeks that followed. " She seemed to live her life faster than anyone else. As though she knew there wouldn't last long enough.
" I'm a bit sad," Selma told her dad, sitting on our sofa one evening as he held her and Luis close.  " I'm a bit sad that Mama's died."
" We are all a bit sad," Torsten said, stroking her hair.  
And he's right. 
We are all a bit sad Ceylan.
 We always will be.

Fuer Ceylan                                                                  For Ceylan

Die dunklen Sterne deiner Augen                                    The dark stars of your eyes
Am nachthellen Himmel                                                 In the night light sky
Deine Finger auf meinem Ruecken                                  Your fingers on my back
Werden zu den Nebeln ueber den Wiesen                         Are turning to mist over the meadows
Wo bist du, wenn ich nachts nach dir suche?                    Where are you when I search for you at night?
Wieviel Leben passt auf die Seiten unserer Tage?             How many lives fit onto the pages of our days?
Und zwischen den Zeilen                                                 And between the lines                                                
Eine Traene                                                                   A tear
Und der Traum von der Zeit                                            And the dream of the time
als wir Koenige waren.                                                   when we were kings

By Torsten                                                                     By Torsten

RIP Ceylan
14.11.1971
28.03.2010

Searching for heroes and random acts of courage

Walking normally through the routine and grind of every day, I often find myself looking for heroes.

It started a long time ago when I was listening to my Austrian grandmother, Omi, talking about the 2nd World War.  Young, headstrong, half Jewish, unmarried and pregnant, she was forced to flee Vienna as the Nazis took control. Smuggled out by the Quakers, she was one of the lucky ones, ending up safely in England.  But what I remembered from her story was not the excitement of the adventure, nor the knife-edged fear of fleeing for your life, instead, it  was her telling of  the courage of others. The neighbours who hid Jews in their houses, knowing they would all be killed if they were caught. The Quakers and all the others who risked their lives to save complete strangers. There were so many ordinary people who were so brave and no one will ever know who they were. They didn't do it for glory or praise or recognition, they did it because, however dangerous it was, they believed it was the right thing to do.

And I remember thinking then- "that's what a true hero is." And wondering if I would ever be brave enough to be one. 

 And so I started collecting stories of random acts of courage ( perhaps you have some to add.)

There were the Singhalese neighbours in Sri Lanka who hid Ninesh's Tamil aunt in their bathroom while her family house was burnt to the ground, and then smuggled her to the airport in the boot of their car. There's the mum at the Nursery where I work, who lost a leg when she threw herself in front of a lorry to save her daughter from disappearing under its wheels. There's the dad, born with no arms, who has never let it stop him from doing anything. 

 And then there's Liam.

 I met him when I was having lunch with my friend in a cafe in Littlehampton. Like her, he is undergoing treatment for cancer and after ordering lunch for himself and a friend, he walked over to our table and put his arm around my friend's shoulders.

" Have you seen that film The Way?" he asked her.  "All those people  following a footpath through France and Spain. When we have beaten this illness, Claudia, we will walk it together, you and I." 

And leaving my friend wrapped in hope, he went back to his table to eat his lunch.. 

Turns out he has done many things for many people: he was in the cafe to fix the roof, he had come late at night on an SOS mission to fix something in my friend's house, he had heard that a local home for adults with learning difficulties was being closed down and single handedly and very quietly, raised much of the money to save it and then became so close to one of the residents that they now live with him and his wife. All of this he did, while being treated for cancer

" He has touched the lives of everyone here,"  my friend said.

I looked at him, eating his lunch and realised that in a tiny cafe, in a small part of Littlehampton I had found a hero.  

 

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

It's  what Holden Caulfield says in The Catcher in the Rye. And if you change the words " "mature man,' to " true hero," it is a mantra to live by.  

So, I will keep walking through life, collecting stories of random acts of courage, looking for heroes, in the world around me, dreaming that if I ever had to do it, I could be one too.

My friend at work said that his wife had said goodnight to their 6 year old son and asked him if he wanted to have the light on for 10 more minutes so that he could read.

" Yes," he said, " I do want to keep the light on, but I don't want to read. Is it ok if I just stand in front of the mirror and look at myself?"

I'd like to think it was so that he could search for the hero within- but I think it was probably to admire  his new haircut!

Football, passions and conversions

There seems to have been a lot of football on TV lately. And I know, because Ninesh, watches them all, at home or in the pub.  It is a passion, not just for his own team, Arsenal, but for the game itself. He sees it as an art form. While others hang pictures on their walls of their living room, Ninesh hangs images of perfect goals and beautiful shots on the walls of his mind. Poor play angers him and our small house is constantly filled  with angry shouts of " what are you doing?" " Get up," " How could you have missed that." " What an idiot."  Sometimes our son watches with him, sometimes he watches by himself  but when the right team scores the right goal, it feels as though the whole street must be able to hear his cheers. Its odd because mostly Ninesh is quiet and self-contained. It's his passion for the game that brings him to life. And it has become part of the reason I love him.

The strange thing is, that I used to hate  football.  It seemed to be an excuse for racism, drunkenness and unnecessary tragedy. It gave people a reason to divide themselves into opposing teams and hate each other. I remember the shame I felt at being English after the Heysel disaster in Belgium. I remember the eery silence as a friend and I walked the streets of  Liverpool on the day of the Hillsborough disaster. And the pointlessness of it all made me angry. But now, after all these years of being married to a football lover, I see another side to football. To so many people football is: " not just a matter of life and death. It's so much more than that."

While we were travelling around Europe in our camper van 7 years ago, I learnt something about football.  It's an international language.  It breaks down barriers. It crosses class and culture. As we drifted from one tiny village to another in our dusty van or stood on empty platforms in forgotten railway stations, it would often be Ninesh's Arsenal T-shirt that saved us.
"2 adults and 2 children to the island with the volcano,' we would say hopelessly to a confused ticket master  somewhere in the middle of Sicily.  He would look blankly from Ninesh to me, smile helplessly down at the children and shrug.  Then suddenly, he'd see Ninesh's red T-shirt with the white canon logo and a grin of relief and understanding would spread across his face.
" Ah, Arsenal.  Thierry Henri. Manchester United. David Beckham." And coming out from behind the counter, he would shake Ninesh's hand, call over all the men  from the bar across the road and introduce them, as though he and Ninesh were long lost friends.
And somehow, we would always end up on the right train, with the right tickets, being waved off by a group of complete strangers who had nothing in common with us except a love of football.
And wherever we have travelled since, this has been true.   A love of football is an instantaneous, international bond that means you are never lost for words, even if you don't share a language. And however poor or unhappy a nation is, however ridiculous and unethical the huge salaries payed to the best players might be,for the 90 minutes of any football game, the world stands still and the only thing that matters in the whole universe, is that your team wins.
The truth is, much as it would have once pained me to write this, the world probably is a better place for having football in it. And if you are thinking of travelling the world and don't support a team, buy a T-shirt and pretend you do.

Mother's Day- the big con

I remember one of my friends a long time ago saying that in her house they didn't celebrate Mother's Day.  
She said her mum was of the opinion that since she and her dad had had their fun creating her and since my friend  hadn't asked to be born and since she had no say in who her mother was, she didn't need to say thank you. 
And that makes sense to me.
Like Valentines Day, Mother's Day has become so commercial that it's hard to remember what it's really about. 
 For weeks restaurants have been advertising special Mothers Day deals, flower shops have encouraged everyone to pre-order hugely expensive bunches of flowers and card companies have filled the television with images of emotional mums receiving their special, personalised messages through the post. 
And for one day out of 365, we mums feel valued and appreciated. 
But what about the other 364 days?
They're more like  The Mum Song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nem0bkErGVY


Mother's Day is a cop out.  
Our kids can be rude and lazy and unhelpful for all the rest of the year but as long as they buy us a bunch of flowers on Mother's Day, all will be forgiven.
I have a better idea.
How about instead of spending all that money on flowers and chocolates once a year, our kids save their money and show us how much they love us all year round by pulling their weight with the housework, the laundry, the washing-up or finding their own football boots or school uniform. 
How about they take time out from Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat to talk to us about what's going on in their lives.
 How about making every day a mini-Mothers Day.

And here's the other thing, Mother's Day can bring out the mean, competitive streak in all of us.
 If your bunch of flowers is bigger than your friend's, then your son must love you more.  Each year stakes are upped, as mums wait expectantly for higher and higher status gifts that they can boast about to anyone who will listen.
 Because obviously, the more your children spend on you, the more they must love you.
As the saying goes: you can't put a price on love- except if it's Mothers Day.

Glowing embers

It's March and Spring is sort of here at last.  Out of the window, if it wasn't for the rain, I'm sure I would be seeing sunshine and blue skies. It's amazing what one day of sunshine can do.  On Tuesday, only Tuesday, it was hotter here than in many Mediterranean countries and slowly people began to unfurl. Instead of scuttling down the road, heads bowed against the cold, concentrating on the quickest route to somewhere warm, people looked up at the blue skies, caught each other's eye and even smiled..There is something about lighter mornings and less cloudy skies, that fills you with hope. We all leave behind our Winter cocoon and step more happily into tomorrow. The only thing I miss about the cocoon, is the  afternoons and evenings spent " chillin," around the fire in the living room.  Sometimes it is hard to hold your children close. As they grow up, they move away from you and rarely choose to inhabit the same space. But lighting a fire is like lighting a beacon, within moments the floor in front of the fireplace is full of children and pets, vying for the warmest space. And usually it is the pets that win!  But as we draw the curtain to hide the darkness, it often feels like we are drawing a curtain around our small family, wrapping ourselves in a blanket of warmth in the orange glow.  We don't do anything special, mostly just watch television or eat dinner as we sit on the floor. Sometimes though, we chat. Watching the flickering flames we wander from subject to subject: school, friends, football, music, chocolate. And as I listen,  I realise, that it is not the special things we do that create memories but the embers of shared evenings spent round a fire that will glow inside us, however far from each other we drift.

And just in case we drift too far before next Winter, we have built a firepit in the garden!

Classroom racism and missed opportunities

Like many people in England this week, I have watched with horror as an anti-immigration party  almost won a by- election. Post election analysts can give you a million reasons why it happened: 

-UKIP  has a strong, clear message while the other parties appear wishy-washy and unfocused. 

-In times of recession we like to blame anyone who is a minority for stealing " our," jobs. We look to someone to stop this from happening.

 -With our benefits system about to collapse under the strain of increasing unemployment and life expectancies, everyone is panicking that another influx of immigrants will be the last straw.

I am not sure why people voted the way they did.   I am not a political analyst. But  I am scared. 

Scared that my mix-raced children will grow up in a country where they are not welcome.

Scared that a society, rich in ethnic diversity and constantly celebrating differences, is about to become divided and charged with hatred.

Scared that when a seed of racism or prejudice is planted in the classroom, it is left unchallenged.

Because often in England, at least, it is ignorance and lack of understanding rather than first hand experience that creates racism and prejudice.

Last week my 15 year old daughter was in a class where they were looking at photos of babies.  

" Eugh," said one of the girls, pulling a face, " Look at that ugly Pakki baby."

What I cannot forgive about  the incident, is not what was said, ignorant and unpleasant as it was, but how it was dealt with.  Or at least how my daughter perceived it to be dealt with.  According to her, the teacher said:

" Please don't say that, it's racist, now go and sit down."

The teacher has assured me since that she spoke to the girl afterwards and also to her parents and that what my daughter told me is not completely what was said.  And perhaps this is true, I will never know and nor will any of the girls in the class. In front of the class, the girl received a gentle reprimand for a holding a fundamentally racist view.  And instead of seizing the moment and using it as a learning opportunity for everyone, the teacher let it go almost unchallenged. 

Teaching is a hard job. It is target driven and result orientated and the pressure is immense.  All that you can truly do, as a teacher,  is hope to inspire a love of learning and open eyes so that children become hungry to know more.  Moments when you can truly help children to think about what they believe, question what they hear and become independent thinkers are few and far between. But if those moments are not seized upon the result is the perpetuation of ignorance and an unquestioning belief in whatever those around you, family or friends,  are telling you.

If views are not challenged in the classroom, what hope is there for the future?

When my daughter was maybe 3, she was sitting on my lap, in the kitchen, watching a group of her friends playing while us mums enjoyed a few minutes of shared adult conversation. Suddenly my daughter sat up straighter, the way she always did when she was going to say something.

" You're all the odd ones out," she announced, " because I'm brown and you're all white!"

And I remember thinking, all those years ago, " I hope you never stop believing that."