A Long Summer

It’s been a long summer and, unfortunately, not much time to be able to get on here and post anything.

Fuat’s 13 year old sister, Menekse, was with us for the summer and he has just taken her home yesterday ( honey please hurry home… I miss you!) . We had a great summer, and we were able to take her to a lot of great places including:

Michigan for the Annual Whitney Family Strawberry Party
Washington DC for July 4th fireworks ( very cool by the way)
Virginia Beach
Cedar Point
Atlantic City
Niagara Falls
New York City

I really have to give credit to all of you that have managed to have a job AND kids. I can’t imagine trying to have a job and taking care of babies or really young children. Having her here gave me just a small taste of what it must have been like for my mom. Mom.. you are AWESOME 🙂

It also opened my eyes a little more to things we all take for granted..like going bowling, playing putt-putt golf, going to McDonals at least once a week or going to the movies. These were all “firsts” for her…

Yes, of course they have  McDonald’s, bowling alleys, putt-putt golf and movie theaters in Turkey 🙂  (I know at least one of you is thinking this question…

These are just things that we consider part of a normal childhood, and take for granted, but it isn’t a normal, “every day” occurance everywhere else…I am really glad that we got to share them with her. She just couldn’t get enough of her favorite cheeseburger! Thank goodness she doesn’t go to McDonald’s every week at home. If she did, she’d start looking like an American ( and if I need to explain that.. then you don’t want to hear the explanation 🙂 )

So much of mine and Kerrie’s childhood revolved around these kind of things.. and almost all of them with Pam and Cathy Rosenburg.

Pam, maybe you were too young to remember, but the four of us used to walk down the street to a little putt-putt golf place on Commerce Road. We’d go there at least 3 or 4 times a summer… bowling… I already wrote about that, but Kerrie loved bowling and we would go to the bowling alley over by the Commerce Drive-in.

And movies.. I fondly remember the first time the four of us went to see Star Wars. We went to the Milford Cinema. Back in those days you could take in your own food, so we had a huge paper grocery bag full of popcorn, a bag of candy and some cokes…and they didn’t have “occupancy” limits in those days… the theater was sold out. People sitting on the floor in the aisle and the four of us sat on the ledge on the right side of the cinema, because theire were no seats left.

We went to see a couple of movies together at the Commerce Drive-in. I think one of them was Herbie the Love Bug ( though my memory is getting a little bad about that, so can’t be sure) and I think we saw another Disney movie there too. I can’t recall the movie, but I do remember the four of us leaving the car and going to the snack bar. I wish we had taken the time to find a drive-in somewhere in Virginia and taken Menekse to one.

Mom and Dad took us on a couple of trips to Cedar Point, and I know Pam and Cathy went with us one one trip…but the one that I remember the most was the trip the four of us took alone. We asked if we could go and our parents said yes.. and none of us could believe it. We left early in the morning and we were driving my dad’s old, blue Delta 88. Mom had made all of us some tuna fish sandwiches for lunch and we were eating them while we were driving down the Ohio Turnpike. I was driving…. Cathy was sitting next to me and Pam and Kerrie were in the back seat. One of use, either Cathy or me.. I can’t remember which one of us did this, decided to throw the rest of our sandwich out the window and it landed on the windshield of a Semi-truck. We were laughing so hard we were crying… I don’t remember much else about that day, but I rememer that flying tuna fish sandwich. Pam, do you remember that?

Every time we took Menekse to do one of these things I would have a memory of doing them with Kerrie, Pam and Cathy. What would our childhood have been like without those two?!?! I can’t even imagine, so I really need to thank my mom and dad for picking that house on Red Arrow! Having neighbors and friends like that is somethign we took for granted too…

Although we had a great summer, there were some things that were not so great.. I had surgery to remove cysts on my left wrist, the day after Menekse arrived. At least that gave Menekse a chance to experience an American Hospital… and gave me 10 days off to spend with her while she was first here. 🙂  The plan is to remove the cysts on the right wrist some time in November.. and then…Mom had surgery in August. She keeps calling it a small procedure.. but it wasn’t… the good news is that there was no cancer.

Ok enough of the bad stuff…

Having Menekse here gave me a chance to do things with my “sister” that I never really go to do with Kerrie. Like go shopping and be silly in the perfume section of Nordrstroms. Watching the saleswoman, as Menekse put on 100 differnet kinds of perfume was hilarious..I wish Kerrie and I had done more things like that. Kerrie and I had one great shopping day together that will remain in my mind forever…May 5th, 2006.. two months before she was diagnosed.  She had just had her bariatric surgery and we went shopping for jeans..she picked up a pair of jeans I just knew were going to be too small for her and told her not to be too disappointed if they didn’t fit yet…. and when she came out of the dressing room in the size 18 jeans, with the big smile on her face, I burst into tears…that was a great day! The perfume shopping trip with Menekse will always stay in my mind like that too.

I can’t share these things with Kerrie anymore, and I took them for granted when I had the chance… but now I have four new “sisters” to share these things with and, although they can never fill the void that is in my heart every single day… they can help me to feel like I have a sister. I will do my best to never take my time with them for granted.