Good Morning Bodrum, Türkiye

Who isn’t excited to start traveling again? Me too. 

Except, I’m nervous when I travel alone. Because I lose shit.  Even when I’m mindfully mindful to an obsessive fault. Sunglasses in ubers. iPhones in seat pockets left behind in that impulse to get off the plane as soon as the ok-to-unfasten-your-seatbelt tone chimes. I really should keep a manifesto of don’t-lose-this-or-your-fucked articles Sharpie’d on the inside of my arm. 

I took this particular trip because one of my dearest besties up and left the country 6 months into the pandemic to go back to her homeland. One day I realized … she’s not coming back. (Maybe I should have known this when she sold everything she owned and packed up her 2 cats. Clearly, I was in denial.) 

Suzan has been a rock in my life since she became my publisher 25 years ago. My career was finally on the verge of sprouting and I just had a baby. I needed HALP. She got me. She told me truths about my songs. Busted me on weak lines. And let me nap under her desk before a co-write … exhausted from another night of interrupted sleep.  

Sure we’ve been speaking in snippets via FaceTime …. but it’s not the same as being in the same room and conversing at our leisure. No more spontaneous day-trips. No more going to restaurants and filming ourselves as “The Know-It-Alls” — food critics who are experts at table service, restroom cleanliness and key lime pie. I’m thankful for FaceTime but…

I asked my GP for a prescription of Paxlovid (just in case) and booked a ticket to Türkiye (Turkey). We’d be able to catch up on all the mundane things we forgot to tell each other for the last year and a half — things that only we’d be interested in. My husband didn’t coin her “my wife” for nothing.  

I made it. AND miraculously, I didn’t lose anything along the way. Although I didn’t follow my pre-planned travel schedule for the 13 hour flight: dinner - watch a movie - take an Ambian. Instead, I had 2 martinis … which you can’t combine with a sleep-aid. And so I had to power though. 😳

Luckily Suzan received me at the Istanbul airport, guided me through baggage (re)claim and traveled with me on a second flight to the seaside town of Bodrum. 

We had a delightful “meze” for dinner (a Middle Eastern selection of hot and cold dishes) and then I crashed hard — woke up @5:30 to the sound of morning prayer broadcast from a mosque in the hillside. At first I thought it was my stomach responding to the many pungent and unfamiliar flavors in the meze … or it could have been the cat calls of the 10 strays (Suzan has taken to feeding) crying for their next meal. 

I tiptoed out of bed and pushed start on the coffee and watched the sun rise on the other side of the world. 

I think about how we become accustomed to the environments in which we wake up, go about our day and fall sleep, the wonderful friends in our respective villages, our bubbles, our routines. But when we start to travel again we can see that our home base is like a palette cleanse in-between the rich and different lands and people we may visit. 

We breakfasted on fresh figs and REAL yogurt! (Not the low-fat Kroger brand), and meze’d (again) for lunch. (I think I can meze every meal for the rest of my life), lounged by the sea and then (thankfully) siesta’d. 

Suzan and I still talk about songs and music and teaching and students … today we got into song structure and is there such a thing any more? She’ll be the guest in my online college pop songwriting class this week although we’ll beam ourselves in to Murfreesboro, Tennessee from 11pm to 2am 🥺😵‍💫😵 instead of the usual godly hour of 12-3 in the afternoon.

But there’s so much more to our friendship than music — that wonderful common language that brought us together in the first place. Who would have guessed in 1997, when she was pitching my songs to Celine Dion, that we’d be swimming together in the Aegean Sea 25 years later? But then again, when do we ever know who might be a lifelong friend when first we meet? Especially in this very transient music business.   

I look forward to soaking up the next 10 days of reconnection, comfort and understanding because it’s clear Suzan is never coming “home.” She is home. It may be that every year from now on we meet somewhere in the world to continue our journey of nurturing a friendship where the space between is merely miles. 

More meze, please! 

Thelma and Louise/ 2017

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