Holiday . . .

And now that the Christmas holiday period has passed and we are into another year, it starts to be the time to start thinking about this years holiday.

It is the one thing in the year that I always look forward to, deciding, planning, is always as good fun as going.  And I have already begun giving thoughts to this years main trip.

I would LOVE to return to NYC, the first trip mini man and I made there last year will certainly not be our last. The trip was amazing and we have often wished that we had given the 12 days after in Florida a miss and spent the whole time in New York ~ it really is such an amazing place.

Unfortunately, while amazing as it may be, it is also incredibly expensive and it then turns a trip into a very expensive trip, and as there are many things that need doing around the house, it seems that this year will not see a return visit to New York, much to my disappointment.

However, I have been looking closer to home and we are potentially thinking about doing a trip around Italy.  A place we haven't visited before, and a place where there's certainly several places that we'd like to visit.  So it is certainly an option.

I have also thought about returning to Turkey.

Now, I love Turkey, and have some very fond and wonderful memories of the trips already taken there.  But I wonder if returning to a place already visited a couple of times before is a good idea again.  Mind you, I keep saying I will return and having met one particularly interesting "local" on the last trip 2 years ago, he and I are still in touch, and he often asks if I will return.

It was a shame that we are separated by hundreds of miles, and separated by a considerable age. After all, I haven't or don't tend to be drawn to someone who is significantly younger than me, in fact quite the opposite. One of the reasons I believe that I felt more comfortable with the boy, and indeed in previous relationships was because they were considerably older and it just felt more "right".  Except for Ersin. 

On the last trip to Turkey, he took me to a most wonderful restaurant up in the Turkish mountains, the journey itself was quite hair raising, roads which seemed to fall away into nothing on the edge of the mountain road. but the setting was quite perfect, quite beautiful near Kayaköy. 

We had spent the early evening seated in these most wonderful seating areas dotted around the restaurant grounds, little alcoves filled with cushions and a low lying table in the middle, surrounded by trees and vines, the scent from the flowers and bushes around us growing in intensity as the sun went down.  The mountain location and being several hundred metres above sea level meant that the temperature was several degrees lower than the blistering sun down in the bay.

But shaded by the trees, in the warmth of the August sun, we had spent time relaxing, talking, eating meze's washed down with local raki.  We had whiled away the time, the sun going down, the moon coming out, and minutes passed quickly into hours. 

Leaning back on the cushions looking up through the vines looking at the stars, we had shared so many thoughts and things about each other.  And he had taken my feet into his hands and attended to them lovingly. Gently rubbing and massaging them as we continue to talk and share a rather wonderful moment.

It was even before we had eaten the most wonderful meal, which we cooked ourselves at the table on the little barbecue that they bring to us, the most wonderful evening.  The coolness of the evening breeze and blown gently around us as they lit the outside lights, candles and fires with obscure shadows falling all around us.

It was probably the best evening of the holiday, and probably the best moment that we had was that evening, we often talk about it now, several years on, usually when he asks when I am returning to Turkey.  He was so attentive, so gentle, so sweet. Naieve in many ways that I knew that some of the things that we had talked about had shocked him, but then he is so much younger, but he had hidden his shyness rather way.  Will I return?

I do not know.

Things could have been different. A different moment, a different time, more so perhaps a different country, but we can say that things could have maybe turned out so differently, but he lives in a place where I can see myself heading to when I am older, retiring to a life in the Turkish sun and mountains.

Who knows?

We never know what life may bring, there are many things in the past, even more recent past that could have been so different, that could have turned out so differently, but life is too short to regret what didn't happen, life is too short to think about the what if's, because it is so rare that the what if's could now become a reality.