how I spend my days

From Barbara: Always the question... Larry sits in his office, prepares lectures, chats with fellow scientists, sends e-mails, lectures, gives scientific advice...His days change little regardless of setting, or so it always seemed to the children when they were little and had to answer the question what daddy did. But what about me in this place where I don't have to clean, prepare food, fulfill any of the housekeeping chores which fill a little of my time in Colorado? People ask if I'm bored since during the week we don't sight see. I'm obviously tied to the university campus, which has limited places to explore...But what a silly question...since I have stacks of books to read, e-mails to write and answer, a reading journal to write...Boredom would only be a problem for someone with no imagination.
We have fallen into a routine. Our traditional breakfast at 8, lunch at 1, dinner at 6:30 or 7, viewing of the News Hour from the previous night followed by charlie Rose...Oh, it's all so predictable...and sometimes we'll hear the bloop of Skype telling us one of the girls is on..and for a moment we could be home chatting about the day's trivia..
But I like my days of reading and writing. I like wondering what book to pick up next. I like the time to think and wonder and imagine...I just wish sometimes I could share more of the moments with those I love. I wish Anders could watch the strange football practices taking place down the hill from our dorm where Turkish players try to master the art of tackling or receiving...Larry teases me that I should be their cheerleader or at least give them pointers on how American football is really played...especially since rules about holding seem not to be part of their playbook. Tackling looks like wrestling holds resulting in players being lifted above the tackle's head and then thrown to the ground. It's a wonder there aren't more practice injuries...But we will never see an actual game; the season apparently starts sometime in November, and no one can tell us what teams this ragtag group of Yeditepe football players play. Certainly on the tv we see in the student center, soccer is the game of choice, prompting the noisy cheers of an American college football audience at a sports bar...
I wish Anni could sit with me, pencil or paint brush in hand, and capture the mood and sight of the sunsets we see as we eat dinner. The buildings, so often seeming nondescript during the day, become ethereal in the purple and orange streaks before dusk.
I wish Allegra could hear the echoes of voices calling in the distance from the minarets. I wish our Turkish travels could include the children, all of them, Rob, too, like so many travels in the past when their children's eyes found the most amazing sights we would never have noticed. I miss those other sets of eyes, perhaps more sophisticated now, but still so full of strange awareness and insight.
Just as I traveled for years with Larry in my imagination as he set off for innumerable foreign meetings and we stayed home and could only picture where he was, I hope our children travel with us now in their mind's eye, knowing someday this world or maybe one we will never see will also be theirs...To travel and become part of a larger world, not to stay within the safe confines of tours and American style hotels (not that a real bath tub wouldn't be a much appreciated luxury right now), but to see in a new way with open eyes to a world so rich, so varied that can only make you somehow larger, more human...citizens of the world, cherishing home, but treasuring what every new place offers.
So how do I spend my days? Don't worry. They are rich and varied even if I just open a book, send a few messages, walk up and down the hills of this campus, chat with Larry's colleagues...never boring...And to see the pleasure Larry has here would make this experience worthwhile even without the sunsets...