Formula 1: The GOAT

Time went by fast, though to Fatih, it felt like a crawl that couldn’t go by fast enough, and before long, the week for his final karting race finally arrived. He found himself at the airport on Tuesday, waiting to board the plane, having arrived a few hours earlier than their departure time.

Like many older people afraid of arriving at the airport late and missing their plane, his grandmother was one of them, waking them up and making them start their preparations eight hours before departure. His mother seemed to have no power to argue against it.

She had been feeling down since the start of the week, and despite Fatih’s constant probing, he had failed to discover the reason. There was nothing he could connect her mood to; it wasn’t like he’d had a fight with Burak or anything like that.

He had asked his grandmother if she knew anything about it, but she too was tight-lipped, and that was when he knew he should give up and let it take its course. They would tell him about it when they were ready. The only thing he could connect it to was the destination of his final race: Wackersdorf, Germany. It was where the CIK-FIA International Super Cup, the World Championship of the KZ2 category, was taking place, and it was also where his father was from. He chalked it up to her being emotional about visiting the place she had lived with her previous husband, a place she hadn’t visited in years since quitting her job in Germany to spend more time with him.

“Do you ever think about wanting to meet your father?” Rümeysa, who was sitting silently next to him, asked out of nowhere.

“Mh, yes, I do, but not too much. I didn’t spend any time with him to form a bond strong enough to miss him a lot. You have been both parents to me, so I haven’t felt his absence,” Fatih finally answered after taking a moment to gather his thoughts.

To him, she was more than enough as a parent, more than he’d had in his previous life. If he had spent a few years with his father, then he might have missed him more than the momentary blip of thought that would come to his mind randomly before disappearing. He felt sad, but only to the extent one feels sad about a stranger dying, someone who, had you met them, you know you would have been very good friends with.

He remained looking at the screen even after giving his answer, but after receiving no response or a follow-up question for a few seconds, his sensitive ears picked up her increased nasal breathing, followed by the sound of muffled crying. He immediately turned to find her covering her face with her hands as she silently cried.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Fatih asked as his right hand immediately moved to pat her back, his left hand already in his pocket, looking for his handkerchief to hand to her.

“Whatever is wrong, it’s going to be fine,” Fatih said as he continued patting her back while pressing the handkerchief into one of her hands. She took it and started wiping the tears away before turning to Fatih and immediately hugging him.

“It’s going to be fine,” Fatih said as he hugged her back.

They remained that way for quite a while before she finally let go of him and used the handkerchief to wipe the tear trails on her face before she said, “Sorry about that.”

“Was my answer the cause?” Fatih asked, curious as to what in his answer might have triggered such a reaction.

“Yes, sort of,” Rümeysa said, pausing for a moment and taking a deep breath before she continued. “It made me realize that I have been keeping you away from your father’s side of the family due to one person’s actions, and you saying that you don’t think much about him and have no connection just made that worse.”

“Actions of one person?” Fatih asked, focusing specifically on that part, since it meant that something one person did had led to him not having any connections to his father’s side of the family.

It also finally came to his mind that he hadn’t visited or met with anyone from his father’s side of the family at all, unlike his mother’s side, some of whom he had visited every year during holidays like Eid and other Islamically significant holidays. None of that had happened with his father’s side.

To him, it didn’t raise any alarms since he had no such connections in his previous life, so everything about parents and relatives was brand new to him; he just went with the flow.

“Yes, your grandmother,” Rümeysa said before she started recounting her experience with her mother-in-law: how she was against their marriage from the start, how she blamed her for his death while she was pregnant with him, which led to her deciding to return and stay with her own mother until she gave birth, all the way to now, with how she constantly kept trying to connect with him while still not apologizing or taking responsibility for her behavior.

During the entire recounting of events, Fatih was extremely silent, just listening to her talk. His own grandmother acted as if the conversation wasn’t happening, enjoying her complimentary drinks in the airport lounge.

“It seems that as a result of her behavior, I ended up cutting ties with that entire side of the family and robbed you of having a connection with your father,” she said, tearing up as she spoke, showing exactly why she took his answer so heavily. It appeared to her that through her overreaction to one person’s behavior, she had ended up erasing his father’s side of the family from his life.

“It’s okay, we can just correct it now,” Fatih said calmly, not feeling anything negative about her decision. To him, it was understandable to do that if you considered the mental condition she was in after having gone through the ordeal of her husband’s death while pregnant, only for someone to come and accuse you of being the reason for his death.

As for her decision to sever possible connections with his father’s side, he felt neutral about that. It seemed like they had made very little attempt to have that connection with him in the first place, and even if they had and she had stopped it, he wouldn’t blame her. She had done enough to make him not feel their absence. Plus, he could just meet them now; to him, it made no difference if he met them now or when he was younger.