Sunrise Sunset

 

Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly flow the days

Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers

Blossoming even as we gaze

Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears

 I realized that it is almost nine years since I received a message from Rick: “I’m in Geneva, can we have coffee.” 

The answer was yes. After 24 years we'd found each other again. 

We had our commitment ceremony the next year and in 2015 our legal ceremony. I guess we can’t say we’re newlyweds anymore, although I love him more now then I did then. It doesn’t seem that many sunrises and sunsets have passed since that message, but most were as beautiful as the first, even the ones hidden by fog, snow or rain.

I’ve lived through many sunrise/sunsets. There’s another lyric in that Fiddle on the Roof song.

Is this the little girl I carried?

Is this the little boy at play?

I don't remember growing older

When, did, they?

When did she get to be a beauty?

When did he grow to be so tall?

Wasn't it yesterday when they, were, small

I think of the children that have wandered through all those days between the sunrises and sunsets. A good part of my heart is occupied by my own daughter. Memories abound: her head popping over the bumper guard on her crib. I can tune into the big and small events of her life. She is now a fully grown woman, a woman I like as well as love.

I think of telling my daughter about Nandita delivering a baby. Nandita lived down the hall and visited me almost nightly. We watched The Weakest Link, made cookies, carved pumpkins over the years. She gave tours of my apartment to her friends, “and this is her penguin collection,” she’d say. We would “shoot” rainbows with my prism. “I didn’t know she was married,” my daughter, a continent away, said. “She isn’t. She’s a doctor,” I replied.

I think of Tim as bump now in his third years of university.

I think of Viv, first seen as a bump. I didn’t want to say anything to her mother, in case it was weight gain. My friend laughingly told me she was pregnant. Eleven-year-old Viv is taller than I am.

Sunrise Sunset

I think of all my parents, my stepmom, my aunts and uncles and a couple of cousin now dead and the holidays and regular days spent together.

Sunrise Sunsets

I think of all the people who influenced me, gave me my world view.

Teachers: Dr. Helen Zimmerman, Leonard D’Orlando, Dr. Patricia Goler

Friends: Mardy Willson, Susan Jordan, Julia Schmitz-Leuffen, Dr. Marina Rizk, Dr. Barbara Hagaman who were there when storms hid the sunrises and sunsets. Mardy once said when we hadn’t been in touch for several weeks after almost constant contact during a difficult period for both of us, “You know I’m more than a foul weather friend,” referring to how damp both are shoulders were when we were going through the traumas. There were better survived with friends.

Many in the list are gone into the sunset while remaining in my heart and soul.

Sunrise Sunsets

I’ve lived in many places watching the sunrises and sunsets, some for decades some for weeks: 

• Reading, Lowell, Waltham and Boston, MA
• Bluefield, WV
• Bramwell, WV
  
• Washington, D.C.
• Westport, Ireland
• Edinburgh, Scotland
• Castanet (Toulouse) and Argelès, France
• Stuttgart, Germany
• Môtiers, Payerne, Grand Saconnex, Corsier Port, Collonge-Bellerive, Switzerland
  

Each are as fresh in my mind as when they happened. I remember where I put the dishes, the pots and pans, the silverwear, although I misplace things that are in my daily life. I can conjure up the smell of my daughter baking, except the night we ate all the brownie batter before baking while watching Dallas.

Sunrise Sunset

I’ve fallen asleep after many sunsets, a book across my chest. I’ve reached for the book with the first sunset. I fought for my education. My schools:

• Mrs. Jones’ Kindergarten
• Lowell Street School
• Miss Blanche’s Academy
• Highland Street School
• Prospect Street School
• Parker Junior High
• Reading Memorial High
• Merrimack College
• Lowell University (now, although it has had many names)
• Boston University
• Glamorgan University (Wales)
• Lancaster University (England)

Sunrise Sunsets

Like the song says, the days have passed swiftly. Most of have been different degrees of happy with enough sadness and pain to truly appreciate the good. Although it has been torn down and replaced with another house, I can picture coming home from school and stealing my brother’s last cupcake my grandmother had made, the flat in Stuttgart with a bathtub, taking notes in class and researching a paper at the Boston Public Library, sitting watching DVDs with my housemate, watching my husband’s excitement at the beauty of the Alps.

The memories are in color just like the sunrises and sunsets.

Jim Crow

 A comparison...

 

A state legislator in Georgia knocks on the Governor's door when he signing a law limiting voting rights. The press says she could be sentenced to eight years in jail as a felon.

The Capital is attacked by a mob. People are killed. Yes, they are arresting people. 

Hmm which is worse?

Fathers, golf, love

My father would have adored Rick2 and would have thoroughly approved of our marriage. Both are ardent golfers and I can picture them putting their clubs in the car and toddling off to the golf course. I imagine Rick2 getting him as involved in using hickory clubs as Rick2. 

I can see them dressed up in the 1920s, 1930s clothes that dedicated hickory players wear driving off together while my stepmom and I go eat at some nice restaurant. 

Of course that's not possible. My father died in 1974 and my stepmom ten years ago.

It wouldn't be just golf that would cause my dad and husband to bond. My father would love how well my husband treats me and how successful our marriage is. He would have loved that although my life before marrying Rick2 was a very happy one, after our marriage it was even better, something I never thought possible before it happened.

I did not realize until after my father died, that he didn't like Rick1, my first husband. My stepmom told me that when we visited they would bite their tongues about Rick1 and how he treated me. Things like sending me out to walk the dog in freezing temperatures and saying I must have taken my stupid pill for all sorts of infringements including a bad bridge play were just two of many examples she gave.

They liked Rick1 even less as we divorced but thought I was better off without him.

I appreciate their lack of interference and try to copy their hands off approach with my daughter and step-daughter. If we can't do or say something helpful, do or say nothing.

My father and Rick2 playing golf together will remain a fantasy, sadly, but then again, I've had these two lovable men in my life just not at the same time.

 

Communication

Between us Rick and I have almost 100 years of communication experience from university level courses, professional courses, journalism, marketing, PR and internal communications within many corporations.

This is what left us wondering about our skills.

 

Me: You didn't put the towels in the trunk? (we had brought two towels down from Geneva)

 

Him: I haven't been to the car. (We need to park several blocks away. Our tiny street has 400-year old houses which were built long before cars of any width and garages were thought of.)

Me: Why do you need to go to the car?

Him: You asked me to put the towels in the trunk.

Me: You don't need to go to the car.

Him: The towels can't walk to the car.

I pause to think. The towels were on top of trunk where we store linens. His suitcases were still on top of it when I asked him.

Me: The trunk, the trunk. (I point but he's not looking) The trunk. (When I point he looks and understands.)

Him: That trunk.

Me: That trunk.

We both laugh. It is a case of neither of us being right or wrong. And then again sometimes we refer to the car trunk as the boot as our Brit friends do. And there are no elephant trunks in the neighborhood to confuse us even more.

Searching for peace to write

 

 

"So how big a role am I going to play in this novel," Mollie Clark is asking me.

"I do like her, but am I being disloyal to my poor dead wife?" James asks. He's with the 43rd Regiment of Foot and has only been in Boston since summer 1774.

"Where did those damn cannons go?" General Gage worries.

"I'll sell out the patriots to the English army," Dr. Benjamin Church says, "but I don't think the Sons of Liberty are aware."

Daphne is beginning to discover her bridegroom Gareth, the Boston British Counsel, is not the man she thought he was as she's working on a comic book with Florence DuBois, the Boston French Counsel's wife. That's for the modern part of the novel.

I've been working on my new novel Lexington. At this point I try and push everything else in my life to the non-essential aside. Yet, I hear that the washer has shut off and yesterday's clothes are dry and need to be put away. This afternoon I'll walk to the post office with Sherlock and my husband and to remember there's an outside.

It has been slow going because in the early chapters, I'd write a paragraph and then have to check a historical fact. Ranger Jim, at the Minute Man National Park has been incredible. Boston1775.blogspot.com also has been a great source and I've read several books which fill in the holes of my knowledge...like bread making and leather fire buckets never mind a second Boston Tea Party.

To try not to be distracted by current events, pandemics, surgery, dentist and technical failures which seem to happen at the rate of one a day has been a battle. Never mind changing countries. At this point, I can't say I'm winning, but I'm not losing as badly.

Having worked in journalism and corporate communications, I know it is impossible to wait for the right moment.

And this now, is the right moment. I'll put Mollie on center stage right after I polish the chapter where Daphne and Florence plan their next step as they eat red velvet cupcakes in a Lexington tea room.

 What triggered this novel.

Puppy

Puppy is not a dog, but what I called my grandfather who died in 1946. I’m not sure when he was born, somewhere in the 1880s I guess. What a span from his life to mine. Today would have been his xxx birthday.

Puppy was a grump with few social skills. He once looked at a new baby and said, “It looks like a God-Damn (nasty term for a minority). The mother, I was told, wasn't pleased. On the other hand, with me he was as much of a marshmallow as his snow white hair. He was willing to spend hours being Freddie Bobbsey to my Flossie in whatever imaginary situation I was willing to dream up.

  

His reverence for books included opening every new one page by page and running his finger down the middle. Once when he hurt my feelings, I took one of his books and tore a page out of the middle, flushing the tiny pieces down the toilet. He never found out.

He was also a brilliant engineer. When taking the qualifying exam he was told he failed. He didn’t see how. He asked to see his test. He had a 100% right answer. I did not inherit his mathematical DNA. He did the engineering on the restructuring of the Massachusetts State House dome, a point of pride when I can look it.

My grandmother was the love of his life. Each spring he picked one lady slipper from the woods behind their house for her. 

 

His joy was being home and caring for his garden. No asparagus or stalk of corn would dare be anything but in perfect formation. I never ate a store-bought vegetable until after he died.

I wish I had known him for longer.

Happy birthday puppy.

Chinese Fondue

 

What a thrill.

My hostess served a Chinese Fondue Saturday night with four meats, lots of dipping sauces, cocktail onions, pickles and tiny ears of corns. It was topped off with a demitasse of the remaining bullion with a dab of sherry.

When I was first in Neuchatel, Switzerland, our team often went out for Chinese fondues. However, since moving to Geneva tons of years ago, I have not seen them offered that often and when I have, it hasn't been convenient.

Yes, I do have a fondue pot, but until the pandemic the regular cheese fondue was mostly unused. The Café du Soleil did it better and no burnt cheese to clean from the pot.

I'd been telling Rick, who is much more of a carnivore than I am about it saying we had to find one.

And we did at my friend's

Rumor has it the Zhou dynasty might have been the creators of the concept also known as a hot pot with it credited time wise to BC 200ish. It has worked its way across the world. 

There is no reason I can't do it myself and entertain our friends with it.

As for the dipping sauces, the best part, imagination can run wild. A recipe is below. There are others on the internet.

https://www.food.com/recipe/chinese-fondue-202596#activity-feed

 

Technology makes me want to be a hermit

 

I am not a Luddite. I embraced technology loving word processing, spread sheets, email, internet, on-line banking, etc. 

It has gone too far. Systems to do simple things are complicated eating up hours.

At first I thought it was me. Then it has happened to Rick too.

Why would my saved password at my credit union disappear? I put in the password, but it didn't work. I clicked the box that asked for a new one. They wanted my phone number. I never gave them the phone number because my European mobile has too many digits to fit the American-limits.

I called. After almost an hour on hold, someone answered. I appreciate security but reading tons of addresses to see if one was familiar was over the top. The phone automatically disconnected before the problem was solved.

I tried again but in a couple of days. Another hour plus wait and just as we were about to solve it another disconnect.

I still haven't solved the problem and am writing old-fashioned checks. (Switzerland stopped using checks three decades ago.)

My saved password for Jacquie Lawson cards disappeared. I was sent a new one immediately EXCEPT it didn't work. I emailed where they told me. Three days and no response.

I was put in Twitter jail and my attempts to get out needs a phone number. See the problem with the credit union plus I do not want to put my phone number out there. Still to be solved.

Rick wanted to cancel Canal Plus. He responded to the instructions on the renewal notice. There were no instructions of how to do it on line and there is cost with a phone number that doesn't respond.

He also had a problem with our Swiss bank account. The only solution was to call. Hold times were less than for the credit union in the States. The woman said she would send the password. She didn't. We were able to book a phone call for Friday. No call.

And then there they are the codes they send to verify the transaction or request. We are about to run out of fingers to count the time the codes come too late -- the screen had gone blank. The record for a late code arrival was two hours. We'd forgotten almost what we wanted.

We are talking hours and hours and hours spent trying to solve simple problems. 

I can't give up banking unless of course I become a hermit. Then again, that might not be that bad. Do you need a password or code to be a hermit?

Vaccination Moderna

Today was the day.

I wasn't thrilled to get a Covid vaccination, but decided to anyway not so much of fear for myself but fear for others. Also I want to travel and cross borders and airplanes easily. Where we live in France we can go to Spain for lunch and where we live in Switzerland we can go to France for lunch. Italy and Germany are not that far away.

Rick drove me. 

A medical building had turned it's basement floor over to vaccinations. The Civil Protection Service (an alternative to the required Army Service plus other departments) were greeting people and then directing them to the intake people.

The uniformed young man who took my information asked me if I wanted English. French through a mask behind a plastic shield is hard to understand. So was his English. He came around to the side. He gave me information on the web site, type of vaccine, and more.

A number of really old people (said by a non-spring chicken) were there and the Civil Service People helped them to chairs, out of chairs and walking. 

One old man came in angry. He was ten minutes late because he had to take a taxi. The poor civil service man kept telling him it didn't matter but the man kept saying, "Don't you know I'm old?" He spoke in English. When calmed, he was given a seat and was admitted before me. Probably to get rid of him as fast as possible.

At any time I would guess there were about 50 people waiting of which maybe four were care takers. 

There were a few young people waiting. Three were on crutches.

One man who had an oxygen tube asked how much longer. He had a doctor's appointment at 11. He was breathing heavily. Since the building was a medical center, I was sure medical assistance would not be a problem should he have a crisis. When my turn was called, I told them to take the man. He thanked me.

There were nine cubicles. Each one had a tri-color board outside and a timer. A moveable arrow on the board allowed the civil service guide to see when a cubicle was free. 

I was asked if I wanted it in my right of left arm. The nurse was smiley and quick. It picked not hurt. 

"Please sit here for 15 minutes to make sure you are okay. Aha! The reason for the timers outside all nine cubicles.

My time was up and I rejoined my husband, who was beginning to worry. His age group is just becoming eligible. Makes me a cougar and him a toy boy, but now I'm a semi-vaccinated cougar waiting for my second jab April 15.

Travel in the time of Covid

A Brit friend on Facebook said that he was taking his first trip in months to Iceland. Then he was planning to go to Waitrose and Morrisons. For people who haven't been to the U.K. they are all supermarkets. A bit of isolation humo(u)r.

We have done a little bit of travel over the past year from our flat in Argelès France to our flat in Geneva. The virus caused us to cancel trips to Iceland, Ireland and Norway. None of these were once in a lifetime trips, just routine almost.

We were spoiled by our travel prior to the virus. We went places for pleasure, golf, writing research and business at the drop of an airline ticket.

However, we are about to take our first trip in a long while from our flat in Collonge-Bellerive to Mellen and Einsiedeln in the German part of Switzerland. 

Rick, as a journalist has scheduled an interview for a story he is working on. When he travels for golf or business, I often go. At first we thought we'd spend a night in Zurich, but the virus and crowds still factor into the decisions.

We had thought about going to Biernz the town known for wood carvers where the sculptor of or our William Tell carving was from. The museum we want to visit is closed as are most museums in Switzerland.

My husband is wonderful in finding interesting hotels and BnBs and this looks like no exception. It is on a lake with its own dock if we wanted to arrive by boat (we don't). Nature will surround us which will be good for our dog Sherlock. I've often claimed Switzerland is postcard and I'm looking forward to being in a different postcard.

While Rick is doing his interview I'll visit with a former colleague and friend and her family in Einsiedeln. I've been there many times before. Sherlock and her dog Cisco are friends. I've known her pre-teen daughter since she was a bump. I even got the idea for my novel Murder in Schwyz from a visit there to a cookie factory there with her and my daughter.

Yes we will still take precautions. We will wear masks when out. We will use a lot of hand sanitizer. 

It will be a reminder of what life was like "BEFORE" and what life might be like again. And it is a reminder of how lucky we were and are.

Bread

 

I  butter the last piece of chestnut flour bread. It tastes wonderful. I can always buy more. For the past three decades I've bought my bread freshly baked if not still hot from the oven.

When I first moved to Switzerland in 1990, the local bakery was about three minutes down the street. During the morning dog walk, the smell of baking bread permeated the air and if I weren't hungry before sniffing, I was afterward.

I liked my bread well done, and always asked for bien cuit until my housemate and co-worker -- it was a company flat -- complained how the bakery always burned the bread. After that I alternated well done and normal.

In Argelès, there are several bakeries all good.

Geneva has lots of bakeries, but we live just outside the city. That doesn't mean we have to compromise on bread.

Le Panetier offers a wide variety of breads besides the chestnut flour bread. They also have some great fruit tarts and cakes. 

There is one supermarket bread that we love from Manora filled with seeds and so crusty.

My grandmother used to bake bread regularly.

When I lived with with a couple in Boston, we had what we called Bill Bread. Our housemate Bill had a bread machine and especially on Sunday morning the baking bread aromas would work their way up the heating ducts as we read the Sunday papers.

When I moved to my own condo, I would often bake bread on Saturdays. The kneading of the dough was a good tension release. I had been known to think of people who had annoyed me during the week as I punched the bread. I never checked to see if the weeks that I used it as a tension release made higher/better bread than the weeks I just kneaded.

In Europe making my own bread is rare. I do it from time to using my grandmother's oatmeal recipe or a classic Annadama bread recipe because these breads aren't available. When I make my bread, I usually fry two or three pieces of the dough for lunch. So good with maple syrup.

Today we thought we'd do a fondue for lunch. The bread we bought yesterday has a thick brown crust. 

I can hardly wait.

All keyboards not the same

 

        If you've lived in America all your life, can you tell what's wrong with this keyboard*

The summer before my Sophomore year in high school my mother insisted I learn to type with the same dedication that I was expected to remain a virgin till marriage. It was the 50s.

Her rationale: if I could type, I would always find work. I did the same thing with my daughter, but in today's world she says, if one can do payroll, there will always be a job somewhere. She still needs to type.

My mother was right. Between PR, marketing and journalistic jobs, I temped and my typing skills brought me a survivable (barely) wage.

Imagine my surprise when I moved to Europe and discovered France, Switzerland and Germany all had different keyboards.

Living on the French border, I bought my less expensive computer in France with a French keyboard. I used a Swiss keyboard at work. That meant I was using two different keyboards almost every day. Each time it took about ten minutes to adjust to the Q/A and numbers/ punctuation, etc. differences. After that I was typing away happily.

René, our IT guy, came into my office with a huge smile. He was what they would call a lovely chap, helpful, smiling, knowledgeable. "Good news, I can get you an American keyboard."

My heart sank. I pictured working on an American keyboard in the office, going home and using the time to write on my French keyboard while waiting for my Swiss boyfriend to pick me up and later that night I would once again use a Swiss keyboard. Three in one day...I may pride myself on flexibility including keyboards, but that was on the borderline of masochism.

I didn't want to hurt René's feelings. 

"That is so thoughtful," I began and then explained. "Perhaps Jenny might appreciate it." Jenny was the only other American in the company.

The differences aren't huge, but they are enough that spell check on any of the systems are appreciated and we won't get into the differences in English/American spelling.

 

 

                                                               German keyboard

 

                                                             American keyboard

*It's a Swiss keyboard. Nothing is wrong with it.