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Searching for the red thread: On structuring a Turkish-American marital memoir (Part 1)

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In search of my elusive red thread – the thing that will pull my memoir together…note that as in this photo, in which the spool is somewhat blurry, so too is my own conceptualization of the red thread that pulls this body of writing all together…

Today, I am going to talk about my elusive “red thread” as it relates to the writing of my Turkish-American marital memoir. My dear friend and soul sister K., also a professor type who edits students’ papers a lot, refers to the “necessary red thread” in any writing one does.  It is the theme that pulls it together, the point that acts like a magnet for all of the words included in any given bit of writing.

And it is this red thread that is elusive to me as I try to consider the revising of the first draft of my now 300 page memoir on my own Turkish-American marriage “road trip” as I like to call it.  Having completed the manuscript over a year ago, I can now see how crappy it really is – as it has a faulty red thread.  Now my M. read it and loved it, but, of course, he is a biased audience. I cringe when I look at it.  I especially cringe when I look at my first draft as I am so good at finding and elucidating red threads in my academic writing, but I really suck at it here.

I am sure my wonderful brother, would make some very fine bits of advice after a day full of cringeworthy reading.  I am too embarrassed to show it to him as he is an MFA who writes masterpieces full of thick red threads.  The thought of showing this work to him makes me even more stressed out and inspired to keep going, possibly with the help of the #38write movement developed by Kristin Bair O’Keefe over at Writerhead.  Sometimes, you just have to take the “butt in seat” approach, and write – and maybe that red thread will find you there.

Now, red threads also seem to have to do with what my friend, the Turkish-American playwright, SInan Ünel, has to say about the importance structure in writing (as well as in writing practice), and although he doesn’t know it, he has impacted me as I have listened to the few words he has said to me on the topic.  And that reminds me of what my e-friend Jack Scott once said about how he got his first book done (Perking the Pansies: Jack and Liam Move to Turkey), namely by remembering as a novice writer that ”every story needs a beginning, a middle and an end.” Well, when it comes to marital road trips, I suppose learning to drive and driving – that could fit with either red threads - and beginnings, middles and ends, – but I am not so sure…

But I digress, because it is easier to talk about others than to talk about my own struggles.  Let me get back to my faulty red thread.  So, in the first draft of the memoir, I center my writing around the idea of our marriage as a“road trip” with “backseat-driving Karagöz puppets.” When I started this project, three years ago, I thought about relationships and marriages as being akin the process of learning to drive- and driving.  There are all sorts of parts of this process:
  • Taking a driver’s education course,
  • Getting a learner’s permit
  • Practicing driving with an overly-anxious parent
  • Finally obtaining the damned driver’s license
  • Getting into an accident
  • Experiencing road rage
  • Missing an exit on the highway
  • Switching lanes
  • Cars breaking down
  • Buying new cars
  • Trading in cars
  • Bargaining for cars
  • Perfecting the art of paralell parking
  • Learning new traffic rules in other countries (such as Turkey, where there are no rules)
  • Getting a traffic ticket…and the like

…And on the face of it, it seems to me, marriage (however you define marriage, legal or not, partnership or otherwise), is really quite akin to learning how to drive a two-handled moving machine of some sort, is it not?  But I was not convinced….here is the current chapter structure

Chapter 1: Being driven: Navigating cultures (This chapter talks about how I came to accept the idea of dating non-American guys, and the various things I encountered along the way – including the beginnings of maneuvering a Turkish-American relationship)

Chapter 2:  Driver’s education:  Serving tea, Episode I (This short chapter addresses the cross-cultural aspects of tea drinking in my British-influenced American household, and M.’s Turkish-American household)

Chapter 3:  Choosing an insurance policy: On veiling and the perfect nightgown (This chapter addresses my preparation for my first trip to Turkey, in which all of my personal stereotypes about what I would find there, along with my families, are laid out in the open)

Chapter 4: Stuck in traffic:  Hair color, wine tastings in a mosque and the call to prayer. (This chapter highlights the utter confusion I often felt in the first few years of my relationship with M. when faced with Turkish realities that did and did not fit the stereotypes I didn’t know I had about Turkey, men and Islam in general)

Chapter 5: Defensive driving:  Turkish love rats, wind farms and environmentalism, Turk-style. (This chapter documents my easing into the realities of what Turkey is and is not as our relationship progressed)

Chapter 6: Three point turn:  Serving Tea, Episode 2 (This short chapter addresses my first botched attempt to acculturate in the form of serving M. tea when his friend visited, and my husband’s dual comfot and discomfort with this action)

Chapter 7: Managing road rage:  On Turkish bureaucracy and the demise of beyaz peynir  (This chapter addresses our families’ views on our elopement, our attempts to be recognized as married in Turkey -and how we drove closer to defining our own Turkish-American cultural space within our relationship) 

Chapter 8: Learning to use the GPS:  Co-navigating the road to Canakkale with Melia (This chapter documents our continued path to understanding how we are percieved as a married couple in the U.S. and in Turkey – and the joys and challenges therein)

Chapter 9: Parallel parking:  Serving Tea, Episode 3 (This short chapter describes a perfect tea service, alla Turca, performed in my United States’ living room – and everything that it meant to me)

So, this is contender #1 for my memoir’s red thread – and although I am not sure it works, it might work. However, tomorrow, I will tell you about my other potential red thread, using a theory of migration often used in social work practice with immigrants in the United States. TO BE CONTINUED

Papers to grade, tea to drink…life in a Turkish-American household revolves around the consumption of these tiny glasses of tea although we have shifted from the traditional sugar lumps to Agave nectar…(Image by Liz Cameron, it has been used before, as the papers I am grading today are electronic, and not those shown here – but the stack is equally large). The tea glass, however, remains the same!

Note: Hello dear readers, this is the first post that comes to you directly from my mouth to the computer screen, no hands involved.  Here’s to Dragon Naturally Speaking Software – it has its bugs, but it works pretty darn well! You can learn more about Dragon Naturally Speaking by clicking on this link.  This is a software program that you train to your voice, and use to speak into the computer’s microphone in order to have your words made into text on the computer screen.  They key, I find, is to speak slowly and pause after each word.  You have to add paragraph breaks on your own – and often it mis-hears names, so you may need to do a bit of editing, but I would say it is 90-95% accurate.  When M. tried it, however, the computer did not recognize many of his words due to his Turkish accent.  So far, we can’t figure out how to train it in Turkish, but luckily, he’s not the one with the shoulder injury! Unfortunately, Dragon doesn’t provide any red thread guidance, either, thank god that artificial intelligence has not yet gone too far.

Today’s post comes as I am failing trying to finish up my grading work before my medical leave begins in earnest.  So, I hope that my momentary procrastination has been interesting to you -perhaps if you too are struggling with your red thread, or how to structure some of your writing.

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Çay emergency: The puppets riot, the car dies

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çay yok

When I realized we were out of tea (çay), I should have known it was a harbinger of things to come that day...

When I last left you, I was musing on the White Ribbon Campaign which addresses violence against women – and was quite happy to see the dialogue that ensued (thank you, my e-friends).  Our campaign was a success and the puppets’ artfully-crafted ribbons were a big hit with my students.

After a long, 12-hour teaching day last Thursday, full of White Ribbon Campaign events, I wearily made myself a cup of çay in my office with my new hot pot to perk myself up for the long commute home.  After slumping into the seat of my car, puppets splayed everywhere around me with a lot of snoring, I heard it,  the unmistakeable sounds of a car problem.

After calling M., I decided to try to get home, and made it.  We resolved to check it out that weekend unless something more emergent happened.  I got home with a funny engine sound, but no incident. On Friday, we consulted with the resident parental car expert, and decided something or other was loose…and kept on driving the great green lady who has served me so well for the past 12 years.

Saturday morning I awoke early to a great cacophony emanating from the kitchen.  I should have known it was the harbinger of challenges to come that day, but at that moment, I had forgotten all about the green car and all of her odd sounds.  Instead, I was focused on great squeals of horror and cabinet doors slamming and drawers bashing in and out of their spaces, and it left me confused. What in the heck are those puppets up to now?

Still asleep, as of course he can’t hear the puppets and their goings on, M. was sleeping heavily, his face mashed into the pillow in a manner sure to leave creases that might rectify themselves in a hot shower followed by a brisk frigid walk to work.  Sneaking out of bed so as not to disturb M., I tip-toed into the kitchen to see what was what. My dog’s radar ears followed me before he deigned to leave the warmth of his spot at the foot of the bed in favor of loyalty.

I walked in to shattered glass glitter all over the floor – and a çay tabağı (tea saucer) cracked in half. It was then that I noticed that the Write-a-matrix was back (you can read about her here, but to make a long story short, she is the academic writing whip-cracker in my mind). And there she was, in my kitchen, cracking the whip.  “I thought you would never get up, you slovenly, slothful professor wannabee!” she said in the deepest, most disappointed tone ever.  “Liz, you really are a loser.  You have at least 3 manuscripts you are totally ignoring – and 2 “revise and re-submits” that are languishing, untouched, get your sh@@ together!”  She was on one side of the room and Haciyatmaz was on the other side of the room, rocking on as he always does.  As you may recall, he is the guardian of my work-life balance efforts on the writing front, a big fan of me keeping this blog.  Clearly, their battle was being played out in the early morning kitchen (it was only 4:45 a.m.) and the çay tabağı were the casualties thus far…

After cleaning up the mess, I set to brewing tea for the morning – hoping to achieve the just-right “rabbit’s blood” consistency that M. likes so.  You may recall the post on moving from vegetarianism to rabbit’s blood tea, if not, click here.  Of course, as soon as I opened the tea tin, all I was met with were a few strands of forlorn Assam and a few tiny nuggets of Rize çayi.  No dice, no other loose tea in the house.  I settled for a peppermint teabag instead.  While we made it through the morning without caffeine, it wasn’t until mid-morning, when M. took the car to go to his art studio, that I realized we had a much bigger problem on our hands.

As I picked up the phone to speak with M., all I heard was “it’s going to be $923.00.”  To make a long story short, it’s time for a new car.  Hanging up the phone, I decided I needed caffeine desperately, and walked down to the local, expensive market to get my fix – much to the chagrin of BOTH the Write-a-matrix and Haciyatmaz, who have been YELLING IN MY EAR for days now to get writing on something or the other.  Many glasses of çay and car discussions later, we’ve settled on a plan to purchase a new car. We have done the preliminary negotiation – with M. breaking out the major Turkish hard-as-nails negotiation and intimidation tactics, much to the chagrin of a salesperson who finally yelled “uncle,” saying “I’d never play poker with you!” and “my boss will call me a yellow-bellied flatfish and a 220 pound weakling” (whatever that means).

Now that we are back in business on the transportation front, it’s time to brew some çay and get back to writing.

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A Karagözi intervention after multitasking with meatballs

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A terrifying image - the puppets tell me I am going down this road - thanks to this website for the image: http://www.motifake.com/the-modern-woman-bad-drivers-crankyhead-demotivational-posters-113611.html

Today was not my finest driving day.  Let me start by saying that despite being constantly exhausted and ready for a 2 hour nap just about any time of day, somehow, I am starting to get things done.  While the horrid on and off fevers and deep, phlegmy cough and dizziness have subsided somewhat, I am still totally tired, and literally surviving my commute and teaching moments via excessive amounts of caffeine and the eventual burst of adrenaline that comes when you have to talk to a group of students for 3 hours at a time.  The Karagöz puppet troupe is ever-present in my psyche through this time of strange health.  I think they are quite worried and don’t really get what is going on.  Sometimes they talk to me in a soupy, drawn out, slowed-down-recording voice and I realize it is because my brain is tired, slow and not functioning optimally.  Karagöz himself is pretty funny looking when he jumps up and down and twists – in slow motion.

The chain of tea delivery was in slow-motion as well, this morning, but it helped to get me up and out.  I even drove M. to work.  The little puppets were notso hot on this idea, but I was feeling the strength of morning and we managed to get there despite a lot of screeching along the way (“Watch the bicycle, how do men wear these pornographic outfits in this century?” the little ladies commented upon seeing a spandex-clad muscle man, shocked but fascinated in their Ottoman era temperaments).  Karagöz just tries to get my goat by calling me a “typical lady driver.” I ask him where he gets this term -as there are no cars in Ottoman times – and he says “watch, learn and listen, m’lady, my intellect will glisten and the television provides many revisions!”  Nonsense speak such as his takes time to decode.

Today, at one particularly chaotic moment, everything seemed to slow down as all of my efforts focused on forgetting my meatball sandwich and instead not hitting the parked car I was heading for.  I woke up early, ready to meet a colleague before 2 student meetings, a doctor’s appointment and another student meeting after that – all in different locations in my trafficky New England town.  Sleepy even after a super venti latte, I downed a Red Bull energy drink.  The puppets were up to their usual tricks to keep me awake – pinching body parts, opening the window wide for fresh air shock treatment and screaming punk rock lyrics at the top of his lungs, Karagöz was at the center of it all.  As I was chugging the cough-syrupy but enticing and powerful stuff, I remembered a conversation with a student from the previous day…she had caught sight of me downing a Red Bull and said -”Really, Dr. Professor, you are REALLY drinking a Red Bull? I thought only rave kids drank that.”  Yup, that’s me, the caffeine addict of the moment, I thought, before I realized I was about to hit a parked car.  Narrowly averted, I gripped the wheel, and soothed the terrified puppets splayed all over the car after being thrown off of their perch on top of the back seat.  Many were cursing and shaking their fists at me for a bit, but they soon resumed their efforts to shepherd and guide me through my life despite their very different values.  The little chorus of dancing ladies, well, they just cannot seem to understand how it is that ladies go out and work – they are doing their best to accept this reality – while secretly scheming for other ways of life to enter in.

Juicy, soft, home-made köfte from Kenne Teyze, the wax paper puppet from the Ottoman empire era who is one of many who inhabit my head

I made it to the next stop on my busy agenda without incident.  Dragging myself out of there, having promised my nurse practitioner to at least eat a good lunch, full of protein, I stopped in an Italian deli and ordered a meatball submarine sandwich. “Totally un-ladylike, madam, not even good looking köfte, these are.”  Kenne’s patience with me was wearing thin.  She thought another week of bed rest would be a better option.  I ignored her, slumped to the side of the 1980s-decorated vinyl-sided wall, and closed my eyes for a bit, dreaming of her delicious thyme and red pepper-infused lamb meatballs.  Once the submarine sandwich was in hand, I dashed to the car to eat my lunch on the way to my next meeting.  I do this all the time, but rarely do I dump the whole damned sandwich in between my seat and the gear shift.  It happened in slow motion and I – along with the entire puppet troupe – screamed “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” as it played out perfectly – sauce everywhere.

So, it all got cleaned up.  I was a little late to see my student.  I didn’t have another accident, but tonight when I got home, the puppets staged an intervention.  They have determined, they tell me, that I have to be happy, healthy and safe in life, and something has to change.  They are engaging in a morning tea boycott until I can make some healthy choices in my life to get through this Lyme’s recurrence or walking pneumonia or whatever it is…at least until then, if not more, they are adding.  They hopped onto my laptop and jumped around on the keys (a great string of them, each on the other’s shoulders, so their wax paper selves would have enough weight to press the keys).  They are the ones who found the “modern woman” demotivational poster pictured above.  “You don’t want to be that woman!” they tell me, with grave, gravely voices and stern furrowed brows.  They are threatening to whisper to M. at night about the benefits of keeping me in a New England-style one-woman harem from now on…it’s getting into serious territory with these tiny wax paper figures in my brain.  Something’s gotta give, I guess it’s gotta be the meatball submarine sandwiches while driving…and the public consumption of red bull…and probably a lot more than that.   Let’s see what happens.