CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In November 1993, my mother decided to come to California to visit me. She was no longer able to endure the pain of missing her only son. It had been three years since I had last seen her, and I had tried to keep the lines of communication open with letters and even international phone calls when I could, but it had been very difficult for each of us to spend so much time apart after living together for eighteen years.
I went to the San Francisco airport to pick her up, and the reunion was joyful, but at the same time shocking. I had never told her about my car accident, and she freaked out when she saw the scars on my face and my dislocated collarbone. It got even worse when we made it back to Charles’s house in Crystal Falls. She could appreciate the beauty of the landscape, but seeing the mattress I was sleeping on, in a basement no less, was almost too much for her. It made her very sad to see that this was the life I was living, all alone and thousands of miles from home.
She cried and cried and begged me to go back with her. She told me that my room in Izmir was waiting for me, that my bed was made up and my posters were still on the walls. And I must be honest, the sight of her in such an emotional state affected me greatly. Part of me considered going back to my simple old life, to be surrounded by my loving family and my childhood friends in Karsiyaka. But despite the fact that I was often barely surviving, I felt I had made progress and I wasn’t ready to let go of my dreams yet.
Once my mom finally understood that I wasn’t going to come back home to Izmir with her, she decided that the least she could do would be to rent an apartment for me. We looked around, and together we found a tiny, decrepit studio, no more than 150 square feet (roughly twelve feet on a side). Not only was it small, it was in bad condition. The apartment complex it was part of had maybe ten units altogether and had a depressing, even hopeless feel to it. I’ve lived in some tough conditions, but this might have been the worst place I had ever lived in. I was actually a lot happier at Charles’s, though I didn’t tell her that.
She had brought about $3,000 with her — another loan she had taken out from a bank in Izmir. In a way, this hurt me almost as much as seeing her sad face. I knew she was pushing her financial limits and probably wasn’t even sure how she was going to pay it all back. Though it was hardly anything here in America, $3,000 was a lot of money to someone like my mom. Every time she counted out some of the money she had worked so hard to borrow, to pay for the deposit and the rent for our tiny studio or to buy groceries, it tore my heart apart. I felt a great deal of guilt. This feeling was even stronger because I remember leaving my mom in that tiny studio sometimes to go hang out with the few friends I had. Perhaps the guilt that I felt about my behavior at such times contributed to my determination to pursue my dreams.
At the beginning of January 1994, my mother left, to return to Izmir without her beloved son. The early morning drive back to the San Francisco airport, in my first-ever car, an orange 1979 Dodge Colt, was very emotional for both of us.
As we crossed the Bay Bridge, the Journey song “Lights” came on the radio. The rising sun illuminated the skyscrapers of downtown San Francisco. I don’t know which was more depressing: the drive back to Sonora after leaving my mom at the airport or sitting on the floor in my tiny studio with no furniture and empty walls, all by myself with plenty of time to feel sad.
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