The day that changed everything

 

"Lobster sub?" My housemate and I parked on a Boston side street lined with townhouses. One was for sale. After eating our subs, we bought it, a handyman's nightmare triggering wonderful years living in Boston. 

 Because of that house, I was able to buy the Riverway condo I adored which allowed me to buy my Nest in the South of France.

 

  "You can speak English," the woman said on the telephone. I was then living in Geneva, Switzerland.  Little did I know when I made the call, she would become a major part of my life by sharing success, silliness and sorrow for close to 30 years.

"I'm in Geneva, Do you want a cup of coffee," the LinkedIn message read. Those words on my computer screen changed my a life that was as close to perfect as possible to something even better. It was from my past. It changed his life too. He moved countries, married me, found his best career move ever, and developed a whole new way to play his beloved golf. He did not expect that with the offer of coffee. He never got the coffee, but a fondue instead.

We never know what little event, what words spoken will lead us into an entire list of events and circumstances that will long-range change our lives. It may takes us years to follow the trail.

Most days are ordinary filled with ordinary actions: buy a melon, do the laundry, play with the dog.

In the same tract, I think of walking into the Polaroid Credit Union before moving to Europe. I had a job interview thinking it was a labor organization. Fortunately, I never let on and that lead to the rest of my meaningful career. Our management team went on to start a credit union for Digital now a billion dollar financial institution.

After moving overseas, I was the international correspondent for Credit Union Times followed by my starting Credit Union News, an internet journal for Canadian credit union executives. Through this work, I met and interviewed a number of world leaders, something as a child in the small town of Reading, MA I never expected. I still am amazed.

Through the World Council of Credit Unions, I ended up fighting FATCA, suing the U.S. Government and appearing at a Congressional hearing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4N9aW5NdE4&t=130s  Scum bag and future White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, then a congressman, hugged me telling me I was his favorite Democrat. None of it did any good. The U.S. is still bullying banks all over the world.

Even more meaningful was during university, my friend Paul Harvey found me in the cubby where I was studying. It was in the music building and I loved hearing the students practicing. "Your father is at Administration," he said. I hadn't seen him for over five years and even before my parents divorced, he was a foggy figure in my life.

That started a relationship not just with him but with my aunts, uncles and cousins that enriched my adult life. My stepmom, an exceptional woman, a loving woman, was the reason he swallowed his fear of rejection and came to see me. She added so much to my life and I hope I did to hers.

On each and every of these life-changing minutes, it can take years to realize what a simple conversation, a lobster sub, not drinking coffee and more can have on our lives. The paths can be convoluted but they make up the journey of our lives.

 

Finding a place to eat

 

"You eat Kermit," my daughter said, after I ordered.

"You eat Miss Piggy," I replied.

That was a couple of decades ago. And during that time I didn't have any more frog legs. I kept thinking of the cartoon I once saw with little frogs escaping from a restaurant kitchen in wheelchairs. I also say very few frog legs on menus either near Geneva or Argelès.

Sunday, we were coming up from Argelès to Geneva via the French autoroute. In past years we would stop at the rest stops with their many restaurants, but now that we had Sherlock, dogs aren't allowed like they are in most French restaurants.

Rather than buy sandwiches and eat at the picnic tables in the heat, we decided to leave the road and travel parallel to the autoroute through little villages.

Only there weren't many villages. One place we passed through had several traffic lights. The village was full of pizza places but we wanted a meal.

Then at the side of the road when we were back on a country road across from a factory, we spied a unicorn statue on a restaurant terrace and auberge. They said every thing was home cooked. 

The dog was welcomed. 

The waiter brought menus on an iPad that which we were able to use to order.

Gazpacho, definitely. They also had frog legs, (they said it was a regional specialty) which I passed for the menu du jour. And they had my favorite dessert, Iles de flouant.  

Back on the road, we located the autoroute, tummies full.

My 45 birthday paved the way for the next 35 years

 My 45th birthday.

I had just made an offer on this studio in the grenier (attic) of a 400 year old building in the village of Argelès-sur-mer, France.

My dream. To retire in France. To have a studio. To own as little as possible.

The studio because of the strength of the dollar put the cost at $18,000.

Because I spoke no French at the time, a French friend helped me. I flew from Boston and he had five days of visitations arranged.

On the third day, I walked up the stairs and knew. That was it with its beams, skylight, fireplace.

This week while looking through papers, I found this photo of me saying "Oui. Je le acheterai."

I showed it to Rick. We both realized that 35 years later I still had the same dress, which I was wearing that day. I think of my clothes as friends and may update but won't throw out if I still like it.

 

                                                         

 The Nest furnished. 

My plans to retire there only half worked. I now live part time in Switzerland, part time in France. Because Rick came back into my life, it was too small for two (perfect for me alone). For when I'm in France we rent a lovely flat two doors down.

What happened to the studio, named The Nest? It is a guest room for people we like. We use it for internet interviews. Sometimes if our guests are more than two, we sleep there and turn our other flat over to them. 

We did think about making it a B&B but I'm a bad business woman. I don't want to make money on something that I love so much and is a part of my heart. It was an investment in a life I wanted to live, not to enhance my bank account.

Not really a WASP

 

 I grew up thinking I was a WASP, White Anglo Saxon Protestant. 

No matter that my family's only connection with being Protestant was the Congregational Church with an occasional church supper where my grandmother took her scalloped corn casserole and the church Christmas Fair. They had great chicken salad sandwiches in a tasty roll and lots of nice homemade hats and mittens.

As for the AS, my mother's side of the family could trace their English heritage to their arrival on the Blessing in the 1630s. An ancestor, John Sargent, fought in the American Revolution.

No matter that my father was born in Nova Scotia and had been naturalized at 25. My WASP family considered him foreign which made me half WASP with a French last name.

No matter that his side of my family was Catholic, also denied by my WASP side. He did take me to Mass once and as we left for church, my mother said, "Don't be afraid of the bloody statues."

The only part of me that is WASP is the W in WASP. I'm white.

It's a good thing my identity never relied on my WASPdom.

A DNA test confirmed my English/French heritage and added a 1% Norwegian. Hmmm...Maybe a Viking while raiding an English visit spied a pretty lass or maybe he even stayed and raised a family. That might make me a WAFAN. White-Anglo-Franco-Atheist-Norwegian. Or maybe WASFAV, White-Anglo-Saxon-Franco-Atheist-Viking.

Moving to Europe, I was able to visit the village where Michel Boudreau had sailed to Nova Scotia (La Rochelle, France) and proceeded to have 11 children. Prolific devil.

Moving to Europe, I became more aware of the European part of my personality. The first time I arrived in Europe I felt I had come home.

Over the years I took Swiss nationality, gave up my American nationality because of FATCA, and took Canadian nationality through my father.

What do I feel?

I'm a Swiss-Canadian writer born and raised in America. We spend a lot of time in Southern France. Yet, in all of them I'm a bit of an outsider. It doesn't mean I don't meld with some of local customs, follow the politics, celebrate national holidays. In Switzerland, I vote with religious fervor during the many votations during the year.

When I go back to Boston, I feel even more of an outsider, one with a lot of memories, good and bad, as one would have in any life. 

Thinking of myself as an outsider isn't bad. I observe things that people who lived in the same place wouldn't notice. It's enriching.

Maybe a better term than outsider might be international. 

Or I could use the French word Melange, mixture. 

Or, or, or maybe it doesn't matter. I'm me.

 

Climate Change

 

 

 "It's 50° in Vegas, today," my husband said.

That's not so hot, I thought, until I realized he was talking centigrade not Fahrenheit.  122° is bloody hot.

Watching the world weather, the planet is experiencing massive heat waves earlier and stronger than ever before.

George W. declared he didn't want to lose any jobs fighting alleged climate change. Well if we think of all the jobs and economic havoc caused by heat waves, blizzards, tornadoes, droughts, fires and floods ... perhaps it would have been better to spend the money on prevention.

The CEOs of oil companies that read climate change reports and denied them, afraid of lowering profits, governments, the people who toddled around in big cars are also responsible.

When will people change their lifestyles? When will the powers that be do what it is necessary?

My guess ... when it is too late if it already isn't.

 

Golf Blood Money

 

                         

The Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi Memorial Golf Tournament

I did not get the passionate Golf DNA my parents had. In fact, I did very well not even thinking about the sport for decades.

Enter Stage Left: One golf passionate soul mate.

At least I can speak golf to him: bogie, birdie, 3 wood, tee, etc. 

We are also news junkies from Congressional hearings to Boris's antics, Macron's hopes for a compliant parliament to Zelensky's fights, etc.

Now put them together. 

The Saudis have offered huge sums of money to top golfers to play a limited number of exhibition games. Some like Phil Mickelson and some others jumped at the chance. The PGA, has reacted by banning them. 

Why? 

The Saudi's human rights history is such that this event deserves not to exist to upgrade the image of its despicable history. What did the country do?

• Contributed most of the 9/11 pilots who flew into the World Trade Center Building
• Deny women basic rights that they enjoy in other countries.
• Bomb Yemen with regularity
• Add to the gas price problem
• Killed journalist Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi

Why anyone, especially those that have had a lucrative career already support any country with such a horrible record of human abuse, condone their activities?

The answer is money. Greed. 

The world is in a horrible state. Amoral golfers do nothing to improve it. They probably don't care.

Jubilee

 

Usually the news is enough to make me want to hide under my bed. One can only stand so much war, climate disaster, shootings and crooked politicians.

The Queen's Jubilee was a welcome relief.

The Royal Family has always intrigued me, but not just the Windsors. That the monarchy has survived for almost a 1000 years, albeit with some blips, is amazing.

I like tradition. I like ritual. It doesn't always have to be tradition and ritual over centuries but sometimes that of my own family such as Rick making Sunday breakfast.

Queen Elizabeth was crowned when I was in elementary school. She has always been there. Like her or not, like the idea of the monarchy or not, she has done her best. She has been a symbol and in this crazy world, symbols can help heal.

The clip of the Queen having tea with a beloved literary figure, so much better to watch than stories about guns at least for the moment.

Putting the kettle on

 

It seems every English/Irish/Scottish novel I've ever read, at some point, some talks about putting the kettle on to be followed by a cup of soothing tea appearing. Okay, almost every one.

It always reminds me of when I first was in Switzerland and living in a little village. It was Saturday. The phone rang and a friend from the States called to tell me a mutual friend had been knifed to death in her home giving me as many details as was known.

It was the early nineties and the electronics were better in the office, so I drove the twenty minutes up and down the mountain to it. I expected to be alone, but two of my co-workers were catching up on paperwork.

Caroline looked at me. "What's wrong?" she asked.

I told her.

"I'll put the kettle on."

We talked over tea. I mentioned my memory of Kathie helping me move, of stringing popcorn at a tree-decorating party. She wasn't a close friend, but more a friend of one of the children of my housemate, still her death in an upper class community was a shock. She had called the police around three in the morning. The cop on duty thought it was a hoax and didn't send help.

In the morning, when the chief came in, he had asked about it. He immediately sent a patrol car to the house only to discover my friend had died minutes before. If someone had arrived hours before she might have been saved.

Tea did not change the facts, the sadness, the anger. It did create a safe place for these emotions, a deep appreciation for my colleague who put the kettle on.

 

 

Good bye driver's license

 

With only a gulp, I slid the envelope with my Swiss Driver's license into the post box in France. Even though I'm sure that I can pass the required physical, a fainting spell made me doubt that I would be a safe driver. 

At 13, I began counting the days to get me license at 16. My mother gave me a private driver ed course for my 16th birthday so I wouldn't have to wait a year to take the high school program open to seniors but not to juniors.

 

Once I had my license, I would drive downtown about a mile from the house via the towns of North Reading, Wakefield, Lynnfield. I was able to buy my own car, a 1953 Pontiac. For graduation I received a 1956 Ford.

When my first husband and I were stationed in Stuttgart we bought a Triumph Spitfire. With Kimm, my German Shepherd in the backseat, I explored the area.

I adored driving.

Once I moved into Boston, I really appreciated public transportation. There was no need to find a parking spot for the T.

Time passed and in the early nineties I moved to Switzerland and had a company car, but the fun of driving was deteriorating although I roamed Switzerland, Germany and France. There were trains and buses that went everywhere frequently and riding them was far more pleasant. I could relax, read, look at the scenery.

I had exchanged my Massachusetts license for a Swiss one. I realized I didn't need the expense of a car. Savings mounted. I went several months without even getting in a car.

In Argelès, I shared a car with a friend. We only used a tank of gas between February and November because almost everything we needed to do was in walking distance.

I'd go months without driving.

When a new husband appeared on the scene, we did buy a car. It was handier for the trips between Argelès and Geneva than the train. I had mastered one small suitcase and a laptop, but his needs were greater. Add in Sherlock and the car was more practical than the train.

My husband is NOT a good passenger. He drove 99.9999% of the time.

I realized at one point, I went years without driving. A couple of time I got behind the wheel and like riding a bike, you don't forget how to drive.

Every two years after 70 I took my physical to make the Department of Motor Vehicles happy. I told my doctor if he wanted to reject me, he could. He told me he would pass me

In March I got the notice it was time for another physical, but that was shortly after I fainted for an unknown cause. What would happen if I were driving and it happened?

I didn't bother to make an appointment with my doctor. I thought about it for a couple of months, then yesterday I slipped my license into an envelope and dropped it into a post.

People have asked when I tell them about giving up my license, what about an emergency. If it were a life or death emergency, and I was the only person to be able to save them, I would get behind the wheel, license be damned. But chances of that are remote. 

I suspect I will continue to live where a car is unnecessary. It's a good feeling to be free of it, but from time to time, I will take out a memory of this or that trip and smile.

Guns, banned books, locked doors

There is a bill in Ohio to arm teachers.

Good god.

I think of going to school in the 50s and 60s. I can't imagine Mrs. Beaton, who taught my mother and uncle, packing a pistol. She was too busy making sure we learned as much as possible.

What about my favorite high school English teacher, Mr. D'Orlando? He was in a fight but with the powers that we be allowed to read Othello. He lost. Our 17 year old minds were too delicate to read the words of a 16th century writer who brought in a  dark-skinned main character into a white world. I can't picture him with gun on his hip.

 

That is nothing compared to the book banning of today. Teachers can't decide what books kids can read. We can't let the teachers arm students with knowledge, but can arm them with guns.

Which guns?

 

A hand gun? Must it be kept loaded all the time? Worn in holster? Locked in a desk drawer so a kid can't get his hands on it and kill someone deliberately or by accident? Must it be left loaded or unloaded while waiting for another killer to come.

If it's a handgun locked in a drawer, the door opens, and a shooter sprays the classroom with bullets from an AR-15, would the teacher ask him to wait a minute while she unlocks the drawer, take out the gun, load it if not loaded and shoot before s/he too is mowed down?

What if the teacher, pushed to his/her limit, frustrated with low pay, too many students, has a mental breakdown and uses the gun in the classroom against an offending student(s)? Or decides the kids need a lesson in suicide?

Must the teacher buy his or her own gun? Many are already buying their own supplies? If there's money for guns, will there be less money for crayons?

And of course there's Ted Cruz who wants only one locked door in a school. I can see the headline: "Kids die in School Fire" The opening paragraph could read, "150 elementary school students burned to death because the only exit was locked."

How insane is the U.S. alleged leadership?

 

 

Earth Stars

 

EARTH STARS

 

Stars fall to earth, call us

to play at evening’s dusk.

My brother and I race,

Skippy jars in hand,

their lids pierced with holes

and grass for the star’s nest.

 

The earth is hot through our sneakers

the pines hold their breath.

 

When I catch one, it is not hurt

But tickles my hand.

 

“I’ve more than you,” he says.

 

We always fight

For the biggest and best,

Count the jimmies on our cones.

The victor gloats.

The loser plots revenge.

 

“Bedtime,” My mother calls.

 

I carry my flickering jar,

set it by my bed.

If they would light at the same time,

I could read by their light.

Tomorrow night, I’ll catch more.

 

In the morning little bodies

Dot the grass.

 

I flick my nail against the glass.

 

Nothing.

 

Maybe stars should stay in the sky.

Deafness

 

 "Could you please turn up the volume?" My daughter and I were watching TV in her Boston suburban apartment.

She put down the needlework she was working on and reached for the remote. "Have you thought of getting your hearing checked?"

Three weeks later back in France, the young man who had just tested my hearing put two pieces of paper in front of me. "You see there's a 27% loss in your left ear, 30% in your right."

I never thought I might develop a hearing problem. There were none in my family.

I thought of Johnnie Raye, a transition singer from ballad to rock and his hits Cry and . He was deaf and he wore a hearing aid that had a wire attached to a device.

I thought of a fellow student when I was at uni. Ginger had been deaf from birth, read lips. Her speech was thick and sometimes it was frustrating to understand her. However, I realized how much harder she had to try and admired her courage. If it bothered her, she never let on, just plowed through.

I thought of Rene, an IT person I worked with in Geneva. People told me, when I talked with him, I had to make sure he heard me. Rene later went to Boston's Eye and Ear hospital and had an experimental implant that improved his hearing.

I thought of my widowed stepmom and her new boyfriend on a drive. I was in the back seat and they needed to repeat to hear what each of them was saying or almost yelling.

I thought of my friend Odile, who taught deaf children. I'd been a guest in one of her classes with her signing what I said. The energy she put into her work with those kids was astounding.

I thought of my husband with far more serious hearing problems than mine, that he works around. We joke that he can claim her never heard something I told him rather than admit he forgot, or I told him something that I never did and he just didn't hear me. We talked about sign language, but French and English sign languages are different. We have enough challenges living in a bilingual environment as it is.

In reality it is not a joke.

After the test, I realized how often I missed part of what people said to me. I blamed accents, French, masks.

Today we were at our favorite café and were joined by friends we hadn't seen since pre-covid. I know my husband has said it is even harder when he is in a group to hear. It was the first time, I was aware of the problem for myself. Before I would have chalked it up to French being spoken on my right, English on my left, the buzz from tables nearby and the musicians playing Summertime and other songs at the edge of the terrace. 

I found myself concentrating, looking at lips, trying to drown out the speech of everyone whom I was not talking directly to. 

At some level, I had realized and sympathized with the problems my husband had. Like many situations one can have empathy and understanding at a certain level, but until one experiences it for themselves, it can never reach the same depth of comprehension.

Having survived cancer twice, I can't say I'm frantic about the loss of hearing.  Compared to all the other things that could go wrong with my body as I age, it is minor. It is more of an annoyance. 

I need to consider if I want hearing aids. Many friends who have them have not felt they are that helpful. My husband is one of them.

I can continue to say, excuse me, repeat please, excusez-moi, repetez, s'il vous plaît.

I know bilingual couples who have to work harder to understand what the other one is saying. We'll have to do that. Mostly, I need to continue to support my husband and to work continually that we can communicate on the important and unimportant things.