Cleave
With a mother so sweet and easy to please, I had little opportunity to exercise obnoxious contrariness. She would usually say “dikkatli ol” and then let me go my American way. But, of course, transgressions occasionally flared up, as is their wont.
When she received the call that I had been caught shoplifting (age 12), she could not figure out what to say to me.
When she discovered my big lie about the trip to Manhattan (no chaperone), she applied a half-hearted grounding.
When I lit up a cigarette in front of her (age 17) in the ladies’ bathroom at the old New York Coliseum (it was 1985 so you could do that sort of thing), she said: “I never wanted to slap you as much as I do right now.”
Cleave: My mother wants to cleave me open, slice me in half, reveal the soft vulnerability that if blackened, betrayed, by anyone else, would cleave her own heart in two. Cleaver hand, to slice the smile off my exhaling American face.
But she doesn’t slap me. She hugs me.
Cleave: My mother cleaves to me only as a woman who immigrated away from her own mother at a tender age could do. Cleaves to me as the thing that replaced all the things left behind.
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Sanction
As mother tries to navigate the cleaving and the cleaving, transgressions are sanctioned and sanctioned.
Domestic usage as approval.
From Latin Sancire, ratified.
The ratification of approval.
Ok. Check. Official raised stamp. Signed off on. Have a nice day.
Not to be confused with sanctimonious from Latin Sanctus, as in holy.
International usage as disapproval.
From Latin Sancire, ratified.
The ratification of disapproval.
No. Not. Cut off. Blocked. Impeded. Outlawed.
Punishment by omission.
May be confused with sanctimonious from Latin Sanctus, and not without justification.
Did mother know if she was tacitly sanctioning with her half-hearted sanctioning? What is a scolding if not enunciated, a grounding if unenforced, a slap if not administered?
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Bolt
I recall first hearing of Diana Nyad when I was in sixth grade and learning Greek mythology…. A famous swimmer and her name is Nyad? Wonderful!
Ok, she wasn’t born a “Nyad” (she was adopted) nor was she quite a “naiad” (being an open water swimmer rather than a river nymph).
Still, a beginner bookworm, I shivered with delight and wondered what other mythical mystical etymological insights awaited me.
So, now: “Bolt.”
Can it really be possible that Usain Bolt’s name is really Bolt? The sprint champ of the world and his name is Bolt? Really? What designer brought that moth to that heal-all? What finger touched him with such speed and agility and also named him Bolt?
Bolt bolts, but is not bolted, that is, made stationary and unmovable.
He was made fast, but not made fast.
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Fast
To be fast is to move quickly. To be made fast is to be secured. To be fasting is to be made fast by lack of food and drink.
I first fasted at the age of thirteen. Ramadan fell in the month of July. I tried to not eat or drink from 5:26am to 8:28pm. This was perfect for me as I was a pudgy adolescent American Muslim with a hearty appetite and a mother who loved to feed me pancakes for dessert after a steak and potatoes dinner. I wanted to be rail thin to look great in my Calvins and win the guy. When I would get the guy, I planned to be a fast girl. Ready to make out in whatever way he’d have me. So I fasted to be fast, but in fasting, I became slow. In the not eating, I became a sloth, fastened to the bed in a stupor of sanctity, dreaming of water and anything at all to eat. Like a sugared doughnut, for instance. Fasting made time .stop. put me into a floating reverie of hunger and thirst time stands still stands still doesn’t stand still jerks forward like the dial on the scale when fasting fails.
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Dust
I giveth of the dust to the coffee cake with confectioners’ sugar, that is, I sprinkle it about, to start the day with something sweet. Then I dust the kitchen table, removing all the particles of sugary dust that have settled there. I taketh it away.
To say that the dust settles means that it’s calm, but to be dusted is to be killed. The ultimate calm?
I have been teaching for over twenty years and have had many students. I estimate five thousand. I learn the names of one hundred new students within the first few days of each semester, and I forget them all shortly after the final exam. An MRI would surely show the seating chart in my brain and just how its self-clean feature dusts away the name of each former student, making room for the next batch. But Dustin is still sitting there.
To dust: to remove dust.
To dust: to sprinkle with dust.
Dustin was a profound contra. In appearance, demeanor, and attitude he was a bro, a jokester, and a jock. Every day he entered the classroom with a backward baseball cap on his head and a bag of coffee cake sugared doughnuts. Anyone would have said he was a too-cool-for-school future owner of a tree trimming service or maybe an HVAC guy. But in fact, he wanted to be an English teacher. He was absolutely serious about everything he read and was determined to get perfect scores on everything he wrote.
His curiosity was vast.
Dustin not dusted.
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Oversight
Five thousand students. I try to do my best by them.
I try not to be too fast
in sanctioning
or to dust away
their distinctions.
I hope that the choices I make help them bolt
forward. I cleave
to this hope,
hoping that my inevitable human oversights bypass oversight,
that
Mother’s kind of cleaving,
the kind kind, guides me.
Filiz Turhan’s work has appeared in the Threepenny Review, Litbreak, The Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, The North American Review, and elsewhere. She has been a professor of English at a community college for several years; like many of her students, she is a first-generation American and was a first-generation college student. Her academic publications explore the topics of Romantic-era Orientalism and Contemporary World Literature. She can be found at filizturhan.com.