Sheki, Azerbaijan: Happy New Year!

Its mid February and I still haven't wished you "Happy New Year!".

We had an earthquake in Baku couple of days ago that I did feel in the office and our nanny who was at home with two of our kids did feel at home. Well these shakes, real shakes, make us really philosophic! Imagine me, in the office, at around 4pm with something to finish until the end of office hours...and suddenly the desk starts moving - you realize that its an earthquake. Your colleagues realize it too. I called my mom to see if she is at my place and if panicking. Well, she wasn't and she didn't know. So I pretended that it was a random call and called nanny to see if she was panicking. She seemed to be OK and I said...what can we do...let's pray. At that moment, at that very moment, even the idea of going downstairs and waiting to see if anything more happens doesn't matter. Because your kids are at home and you are not with them...My next call is to my father. No, not only because he is the geophysicist and he knows the subject but also because, just like in childhood, he would be the one to tell me that everything is and will be OK and I will believe to what he says. Because I want to. And he said that "don't you worry, its all gone and don't tell me that you got scared in the first place!" And I said "oh, of course I didn't"...and this is when the same feeling from childhood came, when you pretend to be strong and behave as grown up (and now come on, at my age of almost 38, I am (supposed to be) soooo grown up) and you smile but your tears are so close in your eyes and somewhere in your throat and this is it - the moment when MOTHER is so vulnerable...You see when kids are small you have that illusion that you are very much in control, what is nonsense of course. In Azerbaijani we have a saying, well like in any other language I suppose which means "Let God protect you/save you" - "Allah saxlasın"...

As we all know media and people (well media is done by people...sorry for this play on words) rarely suffer from wisdom. Therefore of course we had articles to say that there would be more shakes to take thousands of lives...And people spreading the news...But then there was someone cleverer to say that, that was it and I told it to my nanny and here I want to write...and we happily lived ever after! :)

So, my dear readers, I really hope that nature, God, destiny would be kind to you and us, to all of us and allow us to have a meaningful end to our lives. That we are able to meet and greet many New Years going forward and as clever books say realize that life is beautiful in its many ways and as MJ used to sing "we can make it even a better place".

P.S. In case you are wondering, my husband didn't feel anything and I called to say that "everyone is well and not panicking :), but that I still have some sort of a headache and it was very unpleasant..." and I wanted to feel weak and vulnerable for another couple of minutes, but the strategy started working less and less and besides I had to finish those two paragraphs anyway now and it was getting late. And what kind of mom reaches home late on the day of the earthquake anyway! I guess that would be me :)!

Be safe and Happy! New Year!

Photos are not mine. They are both taken in Sheki. First one, beautiful photo of even more beautiful and delicious persimmons is a courtesy of Jalal Sevdimov.