Kavak Yelleri

 Populus trees—kavak ağacı—their branches stretched wide enough to shelter generations..

This is a story about a girl making her way through life, learning to fall in love with the journey itself—the tears, the heartache, the laughter, and the love. Every chapter, every person, every place has left something behind.

I won't write about statistics or theories of human behaviour. There are enough people doing that already. I want to write about the souls who have wandered through my life and the quiet ways they have shaped the woman I have become.

Not long ago, someone told me I was a romantic soul.

Perhaps they were right.

Every time I sit down to write, the same childhood memory rises gently to the surface, as though it has been patiently waiting for me. I must have been seven or eight years old. The sun warmed my skin as I wandered barefoot through endless fields of green, scattered with vibrant scarlet poppies—gelincik, as we call them back home.

Beyond the fields stood a forest of towering Populus trees—kavak ağacı—their branches stretched wide enough to shelter generations before me from the summer heat. They were more than trees; they were a refuge. A place where time slowed down and the world became wonderfully small.

There seemed to be only me, the poppies, and the Populus. The leaves whispered to one another whenever the breeze passed through, and I remember standing perfectly still, listening. It felt as though the earth itself was breathing.

When I revisit this memory, I never remember anyone else. Sometimes I wonder where everyone was. Perhaps they were there all along, and I had simply wandered into a world of my own.

A little heaven on earth.

When I think about my childhood, I realise so much of it was spent this way—lost in my own little universe, quietly searching for beauty without even knowing that was what I was doing. I have always looked inward before looking out, always searching for love in the ordinary and wonder in the smallest of moments.

Many years have passed since then.

In so many ways, I am still that little girl. Whether that is a strength or a flaw, I no longer try to decide. It is simply who I am.

When I look back on my life, it isn't the milestones that stay with me. It is the details. The warmth of the sun on my shoulders. The rustle of leaves overhead. The softness of the earth beneath my feet. The feeling of being completely present, without ever realising I would one day miss it.

I haven't stood in those fields for many moons now. Since then, life has carried me across countries and continents. I have watched sunsets from distant shores, wandered through cities that once existed only in my imagination, and found beauty in corners of the world I never expected to see.

And yet, nowhere has ever quite felt like those poppy fields.

Nowhere has given me the same quiet peace I found as a little girl, walking barefoot through scarlet flowers before resting beneath the shade of those old Populus trees.

That was magic.

When I think of her now—that little girl—I feel warmth spread gently across my chest before I even realise I'm smiling. She reminds me that happiness was never something I had to chase. Once upon a time, it found me in a field of wildflowers, under a canopy of old trees, asking for nothing more than my presence.

For that, I will always be grateful.

  --NS