What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

Wherever we go, whatever we do, however we live our lives, we can always depend on one thing; our mothers. They are the rock in our lives, the source of every single cell in our body, and perhaps the starting point of every dramatic family meltdown. Our mothers manage to go to bed every night talking about something not done that day, and wake up the next morning with the previous day's list of to-dos not accomplished to a satisfactory level AND new tasks that must be accomplished before the end of the new day. Before there were post-its, we had our moms to serve as the bitter reminders of every mistake we made and every to-do we would like to avoid in our simple daily lives.

As for my mother, you just need to know her and if you are somebody in Istanbul, you probably do. She is a modern day Coco Chanel who not only is very educated and well mannered but also enjoys the joys and luxuries of life. I think my mother never really knew what poverty and hardship are. And you can not really blame a person for having a pretty privileged life. As I have always said, my family is not rich, we are just well off (depending on the every so turbulent Turkish Economy.) When I say we're not rich, what I am getting at is the fact that if we were to stop working we would not be able to sustain the same lifestyle we have today. My parents work hard and perhaps in some ways can never really be compensated for their hard work.

For the first eighteen years of my life, my parents lived their entire life within the context of the university they are so dedicated to. So no wonder I turned out to be so attention starved; even against my best efforts I can be attention seeking even when I am just standing there. It is amazing how our body language gives so many things away, and all the while we're thinking we're so sly.

My mother's discontent started with my move to the US. I guess she always imagined this to be a temporary move for education purposes only. She never intended me to stay here for more than ten years and then to top it off turn out to be gay in the end. To this day it is her firm belief that America made me gay, specifically the city of Austin.

At times painful, at times entertaining, and many times just darn right depressing I have to live with the fact that I decided to come out to my parents in September 2002. This was one of the hardest choices I made, and to this day, I still change my take on what happened. Don't get me wrong, this was a horrible, painful, horrible ordeal for the three of us. It really was the last bout of pain that played out with New York City in the fall for my backdrop.

My mother expected the world from me, and she still does. Good looking, smart, educated Turkish men are supposed to marry well and have beautiful healthy and smart kids that go to the best schools. It is this strange cycle of unreal expectations. Perhaps someone lives this happy and ideal life somewhere but I have yet to see a family in Turkey that had a less than perfect facade to it. I think all these lofty expectations result in mid-life crises, unhappy families, screwed up kids, and of course drama.

My family is not Greek, neither are we Italian nor Jewish. So you can understand my astonishment when I found out the disfunctionality common in my family exists in Italian and Jewish families as well. The same behavior of the mothers, the same crazy expectations, the full nine yards. So what is the connection between all these different cultures that aligns them so close to endless bouts of drama?