Turkey time

Somebody else's daughter in Istanbul
by artist Miru Kim 

I have one daughter. One is a very small number when it comes to daughters. And you really feel just how small a number one is when your daughter takes herself off to the other side of the world as our nineteen year old daughter did three days ago.

Yesterday we spent some tight time waiting to hear of her safe arrival in Istanbul, which finally came in at 4.00 am Turkey time. We are now on Turkey time. Tomorrow we will be on Greece time. After that Rome, and so on through another sixteen countries, all so far away they may as well be Mars for how long it would take us to get there should anything go...

Right now it's 10.20 pm Turkey time and we haven't heard anything since 4.00 am. That's a very long time in Turkey time! I've messaged her twice since then. I am tempted to make it thrice. In fact we have some good news to give her and want her to call. She got a Distinction in her Trinity College Drama exam, which she took ten days before she left, the day before a Law exam. Daughters do so much! Both our boys (21 and 16) are sleeping right now -- and it's 9.23 am (Amendment in the name of gender equity! Five days hence and the 21 year old is on a bus on his way to his first day of a summer internship in software engineering and it is only 7.55 am! He is not happy about it, mind, as the travel time on public transport is almost two hours each way and costs over $60, but mainly because it interrupts his mission to be top in the world in his chosen computer game; he is currently 9th, or so he tells me and I can believe it because of HOW MUCH TIME he spends on his computer not engineering. Still, he is not sleeping).

I have to get my book in on December 1, ten days hence, and I can't be on Turkey time for that. When you're a mother of a daughter and a daughter you are lucky if you know which time you're supposed to be on at any point in time. Right now I'm somewhere between Turkey time and Takapuna time. It's not easy being/having a daughter (or having two sons; just for VERY different reasons).