A Writer's Half Day

 

 

I wake to a bowl of tea brought by my husband.

We read in bed until my lazy, like-to-sleep-in pup gets him up for a walk. I miss him because we share words, phrases, sentences /or news if one of us is checking the internet.

I'm on the last of the Louise Penny mysteries, having read them in order. Unlike the others, I read slowly instead of rushing to the end. I don't want to leave Penny's village of Three Pines and Ruth with her duck, Clara the painter, the boys who owns the BnB. I will miss the description of the wonderful meals and snacks. They are people, I've come to know.

I do read other things along with the series, knowing I can go back to Three Pines with the next book. I hope Penny is working on another.

Rick is experimenting with a new recipe. It is his day for lunch which frees up time for both of us that we alternate days on making lunch. And there are the days that either one of us Decide to "cook" at one of the local restaurants.

Although I had planned to sit down and start writing on a short story, immediately after my shower, I don't feel it. Having worked as a journalist, in PR and Marketing, I usually can write on demand but it is harder. The dog wants lap time so I put on a Netflix film as Rick walks to the butcher.

Rick and I decide to go to the "Boys" a cafe behind a small hotel, which serves almost the same purpose as a UK Pub. For the first time I will free write with him. In the past I've done it regularly with another writer, but lately her schedule does not permit it. I miss it.

We arrive. We find seats in the shade under the mulberry tree.  

I order Yorkshire tea: he orders fresh squeezed orange juice. The dog settles under the table. By taking our our notebooks and pen, the friends we know, realize we are writing and keep greetings short yet still warm.

The object is to fine a "victim" and free write ten minutes about using that person as a prompt. 

Our "victim" is a man we passed on our walk to the café. He was sitting in a chair outside his house, his face lifted to the sun. In our ancient village the streets are narrow and the 400 year old plus houses are touching.

After about 10 minutes, we put down our pens and read what we wrote. There are similarities and differences. My husband is a good writer, but writes mostly journalistic pieces. I feel my writing pump has primed me as much as putting water in pump to get it going. This afternoon I should be able to work on the short story that I've had trouble getting to.

At home, I smell Rick's cooking project. I write this blog, will do research on another project until after lunch.

Life is good.

The Hoarder and Old Age Lessons

 

Edith Hall was my grandmother's friend from forever. She never married, had what my grandmother referred to as "money." My grandmother also described her as thrifty. She recycled Christmas Cards obliterating the name of the previous sender name and adding her own.

Miss Hall was also very creative and my grandmother arranged for me to spend one afternoon a week making crafty things. The  only thing I remember making was crepe paper geraniums.

I hated being in her apartment that was chock full of everything imaginable. I didn't know the term "hoarder" at nine.

Finally I rebelled against those afternoons and nothing my grandmother could say about how happy Miss Hall was in teaching me crafts, would change my mind.

Fast forward. At 22 I was returning from Stuttgart where my husband had been in an Army band. We needed an apartment. Edith Hall's house had an upstairs apartment where my mother and father had spent the first few months of their marriage. 

It was free, cheap $80 a month. My German Shepherd, brought back from Germany would be welcome. However, it was barely possible to walk through a room. Where things had been piled as high as my calf before, now there were stacks that were taller than I was at five foot one.

I worked part time in a dry cleaner and was working on my degree at Lowell College. My husband went back to his job for the Reading Light company.

My mother gave me a spare bedroom suite. Perhaps it was cursed because every couple who slept in it ended up divorced. We bought a cheap couch and a Formica kitchen table and two chairs. other necessities were contributed from my father's, mother's and step mother's storage.

Unlike downstairs, the flat was empty. It had a spacious living room, bedroom and bathroom with a claw foot tub. There was a pantry.

The kitchen sink was pre-WWI. The stove was identical to the one pictured above - but it worked.

Downstairs it was even more crowded than when I was a child. By this time, Miss Hall was in the early stages of dementia, although I didn't know the term then. She was often terrified that someone had entered her place and had taken some treasure. 

Often I would help her look and more times than not we found the missing object.

We saved money by not having a telephone. Miss Hall let us use hers and we would battle our way through the clutter to locate the phone when we wanted to make a call. Only a few people had the number and they were told only emergency calls. We didn't want to upset Miss Hall.

We only stayed a couple of years. My ex-husband liked that the low rent meant we could live well under budget. Finally, I insisted we move to a "normal" place. 

My grandmother felt sad that her friend would no longer have someone nearby to help her. All her family was gone and she'd reached an age when most of her friends were either dead or unable or unwilling to help.

We found a tiny bungalow in back of an Italian Builder's home. They became friends. I felt relief in the new place. The rent was $125/month.

When there is a TV program about hoarders and/or dementia, I think about Miss Hall. As I age, I understand better the problem of being alone with problems, although I am surrounded by friends and loved ones and feel gratitude that I won't end up as Miss Hall but my empathy and understanding has increased ten fold. 

Where I live now there were many "mamies" or old women who were friends from their childhood days. They would put chairs on the street and chatter away. Some times they would find a bench in the village. Often they remind me of Miss Hall.

Over the years, I became friends, despite their Catalan accents and my French. I listen to their stories. Sometimes I would bring them flowers, carry their groceries. It has given me a chance to be kinder than when I was nine and in my early 20s, not for me but for them.

Kissinger

 

Years ago I was covering an international conference for the paper I worked for. The head of the Australian delegation was saying pridefully how he was working with Kissinger.

I shouldn't have because I was representing a journal, but I quietly said, "I wouldn't brag about it."

Just because the man is turning 100 doesn't make me think he is any less of a war criminal.

A new book out  by Nick Turse just reinforces my belief that the man should have been in prison from 1970 on.

It also reinforces the  pain I feel at all the people who were hurt and/or died because of the lies of Vietnam. I take no pleasure in being right.

Here's the Amazon write up. "Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were "isolated incidents" in the Vietnam War, carried out by a few "bad apples." However, as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this pioneering investigation, violence against Vietnamese civilians was not at all exceptional. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."

Drawing on a decade of research into secret Pentagon files and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals the policies and actions that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded. He lays out in shocking detail the workings of a military machine that made crimes all but inevitable. 

Here's an interview with the author.

Could Americans beside the kids that fought it done more to discover the truth and stopped the war?

Americans also accepted the lies about the Iraq war.

Whom I really feel badly for are the men and women who put their lives on the line for a lie.

Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam

 https://theintercept.com/2023/05/23/henry-kissinger-cambodia-bombing-survivors/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter&fbclid=IwAR26-HccO3X9DWP1Vz2Qyq1gEEasJYZ8Wc6D9w_LNxzdMMr12pxGXDZseBc

The? Necessary?

 

I'll admit it's been donkey years since my linguistic courses, but language still fascinates me.

Living in both French and Germanic speaking countries, spending time in other language countries and even being aware of the click language in Africa, language and its interrelationships are not quite a hobby, but always on my radar to read about when stumbled upon.

Today the new Chinese ambassador gave a speech on his arrival in New York with almost flawless English. Even well-educated mother tongue Anglophones do not speak flawless English. I'm not sure that flawless English even exists.

I noticed his only error was he did not use the word "the" at all where it would have been appropriate. It made me wonder how necessary is the word.

The is not like the French le or la which denotes gender. I'm not about to get into the gender debate on pronouns here.

I looked up the history of the word the on line at https://www.etymonline.com/word/The

"definite article, late Old English þe, nominative masculine form of the demonstrative pronoun and adjective. After c.950, it replaced earlier se (masc.), seo (fem.), þæt (neuter), and probably represents se altered by the th- form which was used in all the masculine oblique cases.

Old English se is from PIE root *so- "this, that" (source also of Sanskrit sa, Avestan ha, Greek ho, he "the," Irish and Gaelic so "this"). For the þ- forms, see that. The s- forms were entirely superseded in English by mid-13c., excepting a slightly longer dialectal survival in Kent. Old English used 10 different words for "the," but did not distinguish "the" from "that." That survived for a time as a definite article before vowels (that one or that other).

Adverbial use in the more the merrier, the sooner the better, etc. is a relic of Old English þy, the instrumentive case of the neuter demonstrative (see that)."

That's a big history for a little three-letter word.

For the fun of it, I picked up a book and counted the number of times "the"  was used. In some cases it wasn't necessary. In others it was. 

From Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Falks.

"He had read that the Marshal believed the French Army had been humiliated." 

The first the is unnecessary, the second is. However, if Marshal is a person the the becomes more important.

Here's a paragraph from today's Washington Post.

"When Israel left Gaza in 2005, it attempted to impose a solution, denying the Palestinians a voice. The recurring, deadly battles between Israel and Hamas-ruled Gaza are the consequenceS of that mistaken strategy."

The is not necessary but consequences needs to be made a plural which is stronger because their are multi consequences to the proposed solution. 

I'm not proposing the elimination of the word the (I could just as easily have substituted the elimination of thes) from writing. I'm not proposing anything. Thinking about it provided me with amusement on a Wednesday morning and was a delay in having to work on my own writing.

Still, as a writer I want to make every word do its job. More important is the depth of meaning the word carried. For example annoyed, upset, irked, miffed could all be used to tell what someone was feeling. Better to show (no the necessary here) annoyance than tell it, but that's another blog.

 

Solving the border

 

 

1. Set up an internet employment office that every company that can't find employees and plug in a border immigrant. There could be levels such as fruit picker, dish washer, along with higher levels. That would solve the need for workers that Americans won't do those jobs.

2. Have the new employer pay transportation and provide minimal housing. Pay the immigrant the going wage.

3. Finally make sure that ALL consulates and embassies have the capacity to handle asylum requests.

4. Shut down the School of the Americas at Fort Benning Georgia. It has trained and torturers, dictators, and massacres throughout the Western Hemisphere and is still active. 

5. Set up English/culture classes to help the immigrants integrate at least on some basic level.

I wonder of those who fight the entry of immigrants, how many of them could survive what they have survived. 

Swapping Leaders

 A look at any national news leads to the conclusion, the world is mess. Some countries are in more trouble than others.

As a general statement, I find the small countries like Switzerland and Iceland escape the worse problems, although a baby scandal or two does surface from time to time and seem to be solved in different degrees of satisfaction before the country is destroyed.

Sitting with my cousin and husband discussing the problems in the U.S. France, and U.K. we wondered what would happen if leaders were swapped.

I imagined Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau. That would also be a generational switch. 

What about Macron and Sunak. They both are dealing with a defiant population. Would Macron be able to sooth the British population better than he has the French? Could he improve the British health system?  Would Sunak appreciate his own rebels more after seeing the French ones?

What would be a bigger difference would be if Erdogan wins a post and then swapped with Swiss president Alain Berset. I imagine a wantabe dictator having real problems with a country where the president changes each year, and an all country vote is held at the drop of a 100,000 (or less) citizen petition. Could Berset undo some of the dictator like trends in Turkey?

That's just three examples. 

A Tale of Two Restaurants

 Oar and Anchor

This restaurant was the downstairs of a house located on Route 28 on the Reading/North Reading Border and a favorite of my mother and mine. This was in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Worthens owned it. She cooked: he did everything else.

 The couple were probably in their fifties. He looked as if he could be a diplomat or an aristocrat in his tailored suit, bleach-white shirt and silken ties.

Sixteen tables all had linen table cloths, beautiful china, silver and glasses. 

For my mother and me, they had the best menus in the area. We went there often for the food and service. 

Mr. Worthen could not do enough for his clients. We realized that when we discovered my brother was drinking glass after glass of water because the  second it was empty, Mr. Worthen refilled it.  My mother chastised my brother and he was left home for almost a year after and even then his joining us was limited.

The Oar and Anchor fruit cup had home made sorbet. The fruit was so fresh, I suspected he visited strawberry, blueberry patches in the afternoon before dinner service selecting only berries that had reached perfection.

My usual order was baked stuffed lobster. Every now and then I'd do the roast beef or whatever caught my eye and taste buds.

Dessert was usually meringues fresh from the oven, ice cream and chocolate sauce. In adulthood I would discover they were called profiteroles. 

La Bartavelle

Stephanie and Thibault are artists in food at La Bartavelle in the French village of Argelès-sur-mer and we are lucky enough to live around the corner from them. 

It's small, 16 tables. One wall is a blackboard covered with praise by people who have fallen under its spell. Stephanie's art work decorates the place. Everything in the restaurant was chosen with love.

Likewise the menu, which changes regularly is a work of art from the amuse bouche to the dessert. I learned that the food sometimes doesn't look like anything I know, except for the taste which exceeds any expectation.

The couple resource the ingredients locally, but we are sure that only this couple work such magic on anything as ordinary as a carrot or any veggie.

We try and eat their regularly. They also did our pre-committment ceremony for the 14 of our guests who came from around Europe and the US. Ten years later our friends still are raving about it.

One never leaves hungry. We've learned days we are booked for lunch eat practically nothing to leave room for each delight.

I've eaten in many great restaurants in many countries. These two will always be my favorites.

Creative Friends

 

Yesterday one of our favorite couples not only had us as lunch guests, but turned it into a celebration for Rick being granted Swiss nationality.

We walked in to the Swiss national anthem. They were saluting and he had a special Swiss-themed chair.

As usual the meal was delicious, the conversation thought-provoking and fun, but the creativity of the welcome was doubly appreciated. 

What's in a Name

 

     A ship probably similar to the one bringing my ancestor to Canada.

"It's all right, you're in a hospital. My name's Dr. Boudreau."                                           Louise Penny, Kingdom of the Blind.

I stopped reading. Boudreau was my maiden name, with which I had a hate-love relationship. 

My mother, a devoted WASP told me my French Canadian relatives were ignorant foreigners. 

Only in my 20s, did I meet them and discover a wonderful group of loving, sharing people. I missed out on lots of cousin fun and stories of their lives from a lighthouse in Nova Scotia to moving to the States and building a normal middle class life starting in the 1920s.

My mother wasn't a white supremacist. When we lived in the south, she paid our black staff, white wages and earned the contempt of our neighbors by sitting down at meals with the staff. She thought all negros should be treated equally. 

She was a WASP supremacist. She didn't want to mix on the same level with people from different countries, especially the "inferior" ones.

Her belittling of the name and my ancestry,  left me feeling inferior. I was glad to shed the Boudreau for Nelson when I married. 

Attitudes aside, Donna-Lane Nelson sounds  better with the l and n sounds. I chose to keep it after my divorce. Part of me just didn't want to face the Massachusetts Registry of Vehicles and the rest of the paperwork to change. And life was easier if my daughter and I had the same last name.

However, moving to Switzerland and France and living in a francophone environment makes Nelson a foreign name. If the name didn't identify me as a foreigner, my accent would. 

I've received some prejudicial reactions. When Brexit was voted in, one person told me "good riddance." I replied I wasn't English, but Swiss without mentioning only since 2006. She told me that was worse.

Over the years, in researching my father's family, I discovered my ancestor Michel Boudrot (the spelling morphed into Boudreau over the years) first went to Nova Scotia in 1620 and made a permanent move in 1640. That was earlier than my mother's WASP ancestors in 1636 on the Blessing.

My ancestor became a general and fathered 11 children. Boudreaus people the area even today. There's even a Boudreauville.

I visited La Rochelle, where Michel Boudrot had been born. I saw the parish church where he'd been baptized and married. In the harbor was a reproduction of the type of ship he would have sailed on.

It has been a life lesson. I have no reason to be ashamed of not being 100% WASP. That side of the family served in the American Revolution and led normal lives as far as I can establish. They are no better or worse than the French Canadian side.

I just received my Canadian passport thru my father James Boudreau. My mother would have been horrified.

There is another lesson which I wish others would learn. One is not superior or inferior because of their name, nationality, skin color or religion.The value of a person is determined on how s/he lives his or her life and how they treat others.

 

Rockfall

 

The village of Brienz in Switzerland has evacuated its 100 residents.

Why?

Some 71,000,000 cubic feet is expected to fall on the village caused by melting permafrost triggered by climate change.

It is not a just any village. There's a mention of a church in historical documents in the 800s and another mention in the late 1200s.

It's age is not what makes it special. When Rick and I visited, we discovered so many of the residents were wood carvers and had been for centuries. A variety of wood sculptures, beautiful, funny, historic were all over the village. Other wooden products were for sale in the few shops.

 

We had wanted to stop in Brienz because I had given Rick a wood carving of William Tell, (Wilheim in German) that was a copy of the famous statute in Altdorf carved in 1905 in Brienz. I'd been looking for a Tell statue for almost 4 years when he said it would be cool to have one. 

I finally found it in an Italian antique shop on-line. My fingers flew to the telephone for more information than the webpage brought. 

The shop owner spoke English, thank goodness. (My Italian is limited to food.) It arrived one day before Christmas.

 

 

It is as close to identical as possible to the original in Altdorf. Size of course differs. The original, made of bronze, is a giant four meters. Ours barely 60 centimeters high fits on a small cabinet.

I've always been amazed at the detail in the wood carving even to the two perpendicular wrinkles between the eyebrows.

 

The original statue was designed by Swiss sculptor Richard Kissling, who won the commission as part of a competition.

The day we were in Brienz was beautiful. Besides looking in all the closed wood carving shops , we sat along the lake, checked out the various carvings, admired the architecture. The memory of that day adds to the pleasure each time we look at our statue. 

The idea that the village will be decimated by rocks is nothing but sad. I find myself checking for news from Brienz along with the international and U.S. news each day. As of Tuesday, May 6 it is still there. 

Coincidence in writing

 

Sometimes coincidence plays a major part when we are writing.

For the past few months, I've been researching my book with the working title "Exceptional Women."

I started out wanting to find one woman for every day of the year who did something exceptional in her life but was not necessarily known for it. If she were known for it in her own area, geographical or subject, she wasn't known beyond limited boundaries.

Often the woman's accomplishment would be reported under a man's name.

Almost all of the women did good things, but some did exceptionally bad things. Others would be considered a heroine by some, a traitor by others depending on location and time.

All did something different. I wanted all to be deceased.

What I thought would be one woman for a single date, often turned out to be two, three, four or more.

Other dates, I'm still trying to fill although it is now only a few. Friends have helped with suggestions.

"I have a book for you," my cousin, who is visiting from the U.S. said and handed me, "The Other Einstein." She did not know about the project that I've delved into to a point of almost oblivion.  

Einstein's wife, in the novel is the epitome of the woman I have sought for my book. 

What my cousin couldn't have know, I was getting discouraged with my project. After 17 books, I know this happens with every one of them. www.dlnelsonwriter.com. And with every one of them, I didn't give up. Sometimes, it was a matter of taking a day or two off. Other times it was simple as a walk or as bad as months of ignoring that file in the computer.

In bed, I opened the book for my nightly pre-sleep reading. It was set in Zurich, a city I know well. The writer went to school in Boston at the same school where I didn't finish a masters. The explanation of the author at the end was like a magic trigger getting me back to my laptop.

The coincidence of being handed a book, the book I most needed at a time when I had special face-to-face time with a loved cousin...? The fact she brought the book from the U.S. to France???

There's a word I've always loved -- Serendipity. 

Serendipity.

The Green Shower Curtain

 I don't usually stay mad long, but there is one thing that has raised my shackles for a couple of years.

I bought a studio in the former attic of a 400-year old house in a southern French village. Everything and I mean everything in it was there because I wanted it there.

When my husband came into my life it was too small for the two of us, but I kept the studio. We use it as a guest room.

Somewhere the green shower curtain that I adored, that was a gift, that matched the green in the ceramic mirror frame in the bathroom was replaced by a guest. For two years I've tried to find the same color shower curtain. 

This spring I came close, but not enough to totally assuage my anger at someone, and I don't know who, had the nerve to change it.

Was a result we are much more careful on whom we invite. We don't charge for the studio. It is a nest not a place to make money from.

My cousin, whom I love dearly, will be using it this month. We've other visitors scheduled all carefully vetted to not throw out my possessions.

Shootings too close to home

 The shooting in TX is at the mall where my husband's daughter and grand kids go regularly. When he lived there, he went too.

Waking in a morning to news of mass American shooting is almost like waking to the weather report. It was why I did not want to go to Florida and only when I was in the conference compound did I feel any sense of safety.

When I lived in Boston and there was a crash at Logan, friends from around the country and outside would call to see if by any chance was that one of my travel days.

I know his family is probably safe, but with time differences, probably isn't good enough to stop the worry.

We are cancelling any unnecessary trips to the U.S. although business may make it necessary for him to take some trips.

Rick's blog says it was well as I can.

I Am Afraid of America

 

I am afraid for America.

As I write this, I am hoping for news that my daughter, SIL and grandchildren were not among those killed or wounded in the mall massacre in Allen, Texas. They live near the mall and go there often.

We learned of the killings when we woke early morning in France, but Texas is several time zones away, still middle of the night. Have not seen any messages on the internet - from anyone in the area - that they are 'marked safe.'

Maybe the mass shootings have become too commonplace. Allen did not even make the Drudge Report. After all, there have already been nearly 200 mass shootings in the US this year alone.

The Republican puppet who represents the district pushed back against gun control, saying 'God is in control.' If God is truly in control, he must love the NRA. Either that, or he is allowing the gun nuts and the fascist religious fanatics to hasten Armageddon. (Why should God do all the work when his 'people' will self-destruct the planet for him?)

I wonder if Republicans would take comfort in 'thoughts and prayers' if it was their children being shredded with an AR15?

Where is the outrage? Over killings of children. Over corrupt Supreme Court justices. Over the Dobbs decision. Over Citizens United that allows dark money to control elections. Over eejits like Trump, DeSantis, Pence, McCarthy, McConnell, Greene, Gaetz, Lake, Cruz, Abbott, Romney... too many to count.

I have been out of the US for 10 years now. I typically go back once or twice a year to visit family or for conferences. I am seriously considering not ever setting foot in the United States of AmeriKKKa again. I don't want to get shot. I don't want my wife to worry while I am there that I might get shot.

Even if I learn that my family are okay, it will not change the fact that loved ones from other families are dying every day because of the abject greed - that's all it is, payoffs from the gun lobby - to politicians with no spine, no balls, no moral compass. What's another dozen deaths today compared with millions in their pockets?

F*** RepubliKKKans.

-----

 

Writing details and Three Pines

As a writer, I often stop reading to admire a phrase, the choice of a word, the plotting.

I am the moment I'm working my way through Louise Penny's series set in Three Pines. For those who don't know the series it is set in a hidden village near the Canadian-Vermont border peopled by characters such as Myrna, Ruth, Jean-Guy, Reine-Marie. Even Rosa the duck seem as real to me as Pierre-Bernard, Sylvie, Lydia and other people I see in my real village of Argelès-sur-mer.

As a writer, I know the importance of grounding whatever I'm writing to help the read visualize the scene. 

Penny did something I considered brilliant. The story had a number of flashbacks set in winter. The other part was the trial in summer. She never mentioned when and where, but made sure winter cold and summer heat were obvious of the location and time.

My reader when I was going for a doctorate at the University of Manchester, which I never finished, hated it when I mentioned food. It was my way of showing an the values of an almost vegetarian family. I dropped out of the program, but the novel Family Value was published to good reviews despite the lentils mentioned.

I try not to read the series when hungry. Penny's characters cook and eat well: baguettes are fresh from the oven, casseroles almost send their perfume off the page, tea is served in bowls, French style, blueberries melt in my imaginary mouth, etc. 

Of course this is all background to the mystery itself which is a good read in itself.

Chance Encounters

 

CHANCE ENCOUNTERS

My penchant for talking to strangers has to come from my parents’ DNA. As a child I would wait as either my mother or my father would chat for what seemed like hours. Most of the time I want to go home to play or go for that promised ice cream, but every now and then, what they were saying was fascinating.

After they were through talking, I’d ask, “Who was that?” and almost always they’d answer, “I don’t know.”

Looking back over the decades, I found I’d collected so many memories of conversations of people I’d met by happenstance on the street, in restaurants, planes, trains, buses… just about anywhere people were.

Some were momentary when we went separate ways. Others may not have become friends so much as acquaintances where contact was maintained over years until they dribbled out or didn’t.

Here’s a sample.

Daughters on a train: My 17-year-old daughter Llara and I were on a train from Cologne, Germany to Paris. It was what my cousin called a milk train, stopping at a number of small cities and towns. It was also the type of train with compartments like in those of old-time spy movies. Two seats each for three people faced each other flanking the large picture window. Six people could be seated comfortably, but it was only Llara and me. There were windows on the door and on both sides of it, facing out to the corridor.

I had noticed a woman, no more than in her thirties, walk by three times. Her coat was wet and her thick hair was covered with a plastic rain hat. On the fourth time she opened the door and asked in German if she could join us.

My daughter, who had studied German for four years, responded.

Picking up an accent, the woman switched to English.

We began a conversation.

She was on the way to see her ill mother, a trip she made at least three times a week. The woman worked in Cologne as a secretary, but her mother still lived in the woman's childhood home.

The conversation morphed into mother and daughter relationships. She commented how Llara and I seemed to like each other as well as love each other, responsibilities of one role to the other and how they could change over time.

At the time both my mother and my beloved stepmom were well and healthy. Years later when my mother was dying of cancer and my stepmom sunk into dementia, I often thought back to that conversation. I would picture that train compartment with rain pelting the windows, the woman’s thick brown hair.

She reached her destination halfway to Paris. After reaching for the door handle, she turned. “I went up and down the train to decide where to sit, and you two looked interesting. I was right.” We wished her well and courage dealing with her mother. She wished us a pleasant vacation and hoped there would be no rain in Paris.

The acrobat: On the TGV from Geneva, where I now lived and Paris where I was going to spend a week with my former neighbor Marina, a Syrian doctor now practicing in the City of Light. My assigned seat was next to a woman of indeterminate age, but older than me, I thought. She was slim, well-dressed, dyed blond hair.

I can’t remember who started that conversation. She wanted to speak English because she didn’t have many opportunities. As a Jewish child, she had been hidden during the war on a farm outside Paris. After the war she became an acrobat with Ringling Brothers Circus. Now she was retired.

Her descriptions of traveling with the circus matched many movies about circus life. I wondered if she were telling the truth.

We parted at the Gare du Lyon. We never exchanged names. I wondered if she had been manufacturing a history, but not long thereafter, while visiting the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, I thought I spied a younger version of her in a photo.

The Chinese student: Going from Geneva to the south of France, I sat next to a Chinese student. Like all students she was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt.

She was studying for a masters in business in Grenoble. All her life, she said, opportunities had been denied her in China because her father had been a dissident and was in prison. Her mother had worked her fingers to the bone, and she had used that English expression, to protect her daughter and give her a chance in life, which was how she was able to go to university in France.

We exchanged emails and stayed in touch.

She did find work in China but wrote how terrible the company was.

Switching into mentor mode, I wrote back telling her it was an opportunity to shine, by bringing solutions to management.

How she did it, I will never know, but not only was she promoted, but she was offered a good position in Basel. We drank hot chocolate in Geneva at Auer Café when she had to be there to see a client.

She complained about her boyfriend. This time I did not offer any advice.

We are connected on LinkedIn and periodically check in but the time between contacts gets longer and longer and I suspect will fritter out totally.

The lost Russian woman: Geneva, Genf, Ginerva, gray, grigio, gris, grau all start with the letter G; that must be a symbol of how the city of Geneva is often trapped for days under gray skies. This day we had just submerged from over a week of cloudy, dark days to the other way the city can present itself as radiant with blue, blue skies.

I had had my regular checkup with my doctor. His practice was located near the airport. Rather than take the bus to walk downtown, I decided to walk in the sunshine through the section of UN alphabet agencies. Even though Geneva is a major city, there was a field of horses and small, wooded areas.

At the main UN building with its two rows of flags of all the member states, I was approached by a woman who wanted to know how to get to the train station.

“There’s the number 5 bus stop there.” I pointed. “However, I’m walking there if you’d like to walk with me.”

Our conversation covered ordinary topics. We were mothers of a single child, but when it came to books, our conversation blossomed. Her knowledge of English literature far exceeded mine of Russian, although I barely held my own on the classics.

We exchanged emails and that began a regular exchange that has lasted two decades.

She invited my husband and me to St. Petersburg and we found ourselves walking up a dilapidated staircase as we expected from what we had read about Russia.

When she opened the door, we didn’t expect the beautiful apartment that she owned. She told of how when she was first married with her baby son, she had lived in a flat the size of her current living room. That tiny space was shared her in-laws and several other people.

If there is a gold medal for hosting, she would win it. Also, for being a tour guide. She tried to show us everything possible about that magnificent city.

My greatest thrill was seeing the room where Rasputin was stabbed and the door where he staggered out and fell in the water.

We were intrigued when after a ballet, she went into traffic, stopped a car and negotiated a ride home.

I was also thrilled when she took me to a bookstore, where we bought a copy of my novel Chickpea Lover: Not a Cookbook in Russian.

I deliberately never email anything about politics, not wanting to compromise her. However, I need to ask her for the cucumber recipe she made for us.

The Algerian taxi driver: Mohamed became my regular taxi driver when I went from my friend Marina’s flat to the train station. Over several trips we solved the problems of the world. I learned about his life in Algeria as a child.

Once we arranged for him to take my daughter to Charles de Gaulle airport. “Take good care of her, she’s the most precious thing in my life,” I told him.” His smile broke through his long beard.

“Mais oui, Madame.”

“Shukran,” I said.

“Awfan,” he replied.

On one ride, he called his sister. “You two would love each other. The next time you’re in Paris we will go to her house, she’ll make couscous. You like couscous?”

I did love it, but the meal never took place. It was a couple of years before I got back to Paris and by then he had left the taxis company.

Two waiters: My husband had been raving about this breakfast buffet at an Orlando hotel where he attended an annual conference annually. This was the first time I’d joined him. He had not underestimated it. Even though it was a buffet there was wait staff to meet our every need, and it was a great opportunity for more chance encounters.

Luigi admitted to being Italian saying, “At least my little fingernail is.” He told us he speaks Italian, English, Spanish. He had been a waiter at the hotel for 14 years and says the wages and benefits are good, including the health insurance.

The waiter Jean-Paul was originally from India, has two daughters, the older in university. Before working in hotels, he was a waiter on cruise ships, but he didn't like to be away from his family. He took our napkins and folded them to form a slipper. He made Mickey Mouse ears for my husband. I was decorated as the Statue of Liberty.

A wheelchair attendant: Thanks to a fall and a bad leg, my husband insisted on wheelchair access at the airport. I didn’t argue.

Rose, a Haitian immigrant to Miami, was assigned to maneuver me around the airport. She did not look her 40 years but much younger.

I opened the conversation by asking her how much she walked each day pushing people to and from planes.

“A lot,” she said. She revealed her life story as she walked.

Her childhood dream was to be a doctor, but in her broken country and with no funds it was impossible. She made her way to Florida, learned English and by working two jobs was able to help her mother move out of danger to the States. Over the years, she married and  had three children.

In one more year, she will be certified as a nurse. Her journey has been hard. Her husband recently died.

“I was so tired, I wanted to quit studying,” she said, but my older girl wouldn’t let me.” That girl is an all-A student and has her own dream to fulfill her mother’s of being a doctor.

I did tell Rose about how much cheaper universities were in Europe and although I couldn’t guarantee it would work, they should check it out.

Our conversation was interrupted by an angry man who wanted a wheelchair for his lame mother. He berated Rose although she has nothing to do with the chair assignment process. Shee made all the necessary calls without losing her politeness and did what she could to calm him.

This is a woman whose persistence and courage will stay with me forever.

 

The Saudi researcher: My husband really wanted to go to the 48th International Inventions exhibit in Geneva. I was neutral, but I learned long ago that neutrality usually leads to some great discoveries.

I passed the Iranian stand, and next to it was the tiniest exhibition booth I have ever seen. One could stand in the middle and not hold out both arms. It was woman-ed by a woman in a burka from Saudi Arabia.

"Mahaba," I said and added I did not know much more Arabic.

We decided English was easier for her than French.

She was a researcher working through a university to find natural antibiotics. She explained to me about her 4 white rats and 4 levels of tests complete with slides of results.

Since no one seemed to even notice her, I felt I was not taking up her time that she could spend with someone more important to her needs.

She was impassioned with her work.

She apologized for it, opening the door to a slightly more personal discussion.  

There was so much more I wanted to ask her as she fiddled to keep her head scarf in place.

There was much I wanted to ask her. How was it to be a woman at a university in a country where women were so limited? How did she become interested in her field? Was she married? Children? What was her daily life like? How did she feel about the burka?

I didn't ask anything, but I told her under different circumstances I would love to share a cup of tea with her. She agreed. I could tell by her eyes she was smiling. 

She asked if she could take a selfie of us.

I said yes.

 

There are many more chance encounters: a Danish economist, a woman who had a jam and jelly company and how she had designed the label, a nun in street clothing, a Finnish teacher to name just a few. I do know that every encounter has added something to my life, a bit of knowledge, a warmth, gratitude for my own life.