Istanbul Mother's Day

spring flowers in abundance on my street corner

Anneler Gününüz Kutlu Olsun!  

Happy Mother’s Day!

Today is the day here in Turkey and warm and sunny it is too.

The gypsies are out in force on every street corner, their tins bursting with fresh spring flowers. They’re doing a roaring trade.

Mother’s Day arrived late on the scene here but the commercial aspect has been well and truly exploited and it seems as if we have always had it.  Turks are a people with profound respect for their elders  especially their mothers so it didn’t take much for this to become a tradition.

This morning when I opened the front door to get the newspaper, I found this beautifully presented single red rose wishing me a happy mother’s day tucked inside: it is from the yönetici or manager of the building no less! A truly sweet gesture that I feel rightly or wrongly could only happen here.

Lucky me:  thanks to Daughter No 2 and husband, I have just come back from breakfast with the family beside the Bosphorus in Yeniköy on the other side. 20 minutes to get there, an hour and a half to get back! That’s Istanbul traffic for you. But the sun shone, the water rushed along beside us, huge ships passed within metres on their way to the Black Sea  while we had our breakfast sitting on the terrace and basked in the pleasure of being together.