bobgarlitz

THE PROFESSOR Entwell Stories,  by Virginia M. Garlitz, inspired by the writings of local NH authors: Ruth Mac Dougal of Sandwich and Annie Valdmanis of Rumney

1.”How I met Professor Entwell”

My first year teaching at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois had been tough.  I had broken up with my college boy friend and fiancé.  and the pickins seemed pretty slim in Decatur.  I was ready to leave until my good friend, confidante and colleague in the Spanish department, Conchita, convinced me that leaving a job after just one year would not look good on my record.  I agreed to let her fix me up one last time with a young man who had been to Europe and had “slides!  After seeing his slides taken from the plane over France and from the plane over Spain, I almost left again, but I stuck it out until the next September. That Fall not one, but six, young, single male professors joined the faculty.  At the time I was rooming with a woman right across the street from the University campus.  She told the young professor who had moved into the apartment next door to me that I had just returned from Spain and probably had packages to bring back from the post office and would need help since I didn’t have a car, so that young man came knocking at my door. When I opened the door I saw Professor Entwell standing there.  Not only was he very good-looking, but the little tuft of back hair showing above the collar of his T-  shirt was endearing to me as someone with a special spot in my heart for teddy bears, so I flung open the door and invited him in for a frozen turkey pot pie which was  the height of my culinary  ability at the time and, the rest, as they say is…

 

2. West meets East.

For a girl born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, someone from THE EAST was a curiosity.  I knew that Professor Entwell embodied the sophistication of the East when he wrote me a note asking me to meet him at “6″ish.”

I fully expected us to do like people did in my Nancy Drew novels and take our “roadster” to “luncheon”.  When I found out that the Professor was not only from the East but also from the South I asked him why he didn’t have a recognizable Southern accent.  He denied that he was a Southerner until we drove to his home in Cumberland, Maryland and I pointed out that we had crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, which according to my father’s Alabaman family, meant he was definitely not a Yankee.

Another indication of our cultural differences came later when I took Professor Entwell to New Mexico for the first time.

On our way, the Professor and I stopped for lunch somewhere in Oklahoma.  When I returned to the table from the bathroom, I saw that the Professor was obviously upset.  When I asked him what was the matter he said that the waitress had been coming on to him.  When I asked him what made him think so, he said “She asked me who I was , where was I from and where was I headed.”  I explained to my man from the East, that that is what is called just being friendly in the West.

 

3. BYOB

On our honeymoon in Greece, we had returned to Athens after visiting the islands and found that every hotel in the city was full.  After fruitless searching, we decided to split up.  One of us would look in one direction, and the other in the other direction until someone found a place for us to stay.  The Professor was the first to have some luck and signaled me to come join him.  As I walked in, with my suitcase, I noticed that the several women grouped around the receptionist’s station seemed to be pointing and chuckling about me.  But knowing that that is a common perception of someone who doesn’t speak the language other people are using, I didn’t let it bother me.  I paid attention, instead to Professor Entwell. He was pointing out that not only were we lucky to find a room at this late hour but that it was incredibly cheap.  As we carried our bags up the rickety stairs, we noticed tell -tale sounds coming from some of the rooms and realized that we were in a brothel.  The girls had probably been laughing at us because the Professor had invented his own version of BYOB (Bring your own booze), making it “Bring your own babe”.

 

4. It’s Greek to me

 

On that same trip to Greece, I proudly announced to the Professor that as a sorority girl I had learned the Greek alphabet and could guide us back to the street our hotel was on.  But when we tried to retrace our steps without any luck, someone told me that the sign I had memorized meant “One Way street”

 

5. DREAM HOUSE

 

One of the first things that attracted me to Professor Entwell, other than the fact that he was handsome, liked to dance and was sophisticated enough to order a brandy Alexander, was his interest in architecture.  As a girl I had spent many happy hours in my father’s architecture office studying plans for his houses and making up my own.  So I recognized in the Professor another fan of fine buildings.  One of the Prof’s  favorite subjects was to tell me about  Anselm House in Philadelphia  where he had spent time in the Christian Brothers’ seminary.  The house was built in the 1920s in the Tudor style favored by the Main Line families.   This house was a copy of a real English Tudor House called Compton Wynyates. The Philadelphia house was a wedding present to the Wiedener daughter who was marrying her tennis coach. (Those are the same Wiedeners who gave the money for the Harvard library which bears their name.)  Professor Entwell would lovingly describe the linen fold walnut wainscoting in the dining room and the landscaping.  There was a hill of daffodils that bloomed in the spring and a weeping cherry trained to blossom over a reflecting pond.

I was charmed and the house became part of my fantasy life.

Soon after we were married, we visited Philadelphia and the Professor offered to show me The House, so we drove out to see it.   Even though the Tudor style carriage house at the entrance looked a little shabby, the Prof me assured me as we drove down the long winding driveway, that any moment I would start seeing the house from its various, carefully designed perspectives.  We drove and drove without catching sight of the house.  Finally we came to the end of the road only to see the remains of two beautiful handmade brick chimneys lying on the ground.  The house had just been demolished to make way for some condominiums!  I was very disappointed, but the Prof promised that I would see the real house on our next trip to England.

On that occasion, we rented a car , consulted our map and drove out to see Compton Wynyates.  We got just close enough to read the sign that said “closed to the public”.  All I got to see was the roof of the house as we drove away back to London.

During our sabbatical stay in Madrid several years later, Professor Entwell wrote to the current owner and resident of Compton Wynyates, Spencer Compton, Lord of Northhampton.  We were both amazed when “Spence” wrote back thanking the Professor for his interest in the house, and, even more amazing, inviting him to come for lunch and a visit. Of course the Professor had to go, but I needed to continue my research in Madrid and take care of our nine-year old son, David, who was attending school there, so I stayed home.

Professor Entwell was received very graciously and served lunch by the butler in the magnificent dining room of The House.  “Spence” gave the Prof .permission to look over the house on his own and he spent three hours exploring the many floors filled with antique furniture and old paintings , but he had not brought the camera, which in the days before digital would have been too invasive anyway. That meant that I didn’t even get to see photos of The House.

So maybe I am not destined to ever be there, but I had another glimpse of hope the other day when the Professor announced that among his “anxiety” dreams that come regularly at the beginning of every semester, he had dreamed about The House.  Maybe that means that The House is still alive in our dreams and I can continue to hope to see it one day.

6. “Lake house”

 

I didn’t realize how anxious I had been to leave our Plymouth  house rented to students when we went on a year -long sabbatical to Spain until I had the following dream:  I was on our favorite beach- Wellington on New Found Lake- when a huge fish washed up on the sand.  We cut it open, and inside we found our house in perfect condition.

 

 

7.The Retreat

 

Professor Entwell and I were on a year long sabbatical in Madrid, when he announced that he needed to get away and thought a religious retreat would be just the ticket.  I was not exactly pleased since the only thing that the Prof could possibly “get away” from, since we were miles from home and from our two teaching jobs and living in an apartment right across from the lovely Retiro Park, was me.  Besides, even though the Professor had once spent time in a seminary, studying to become a member of the Christian Brothers, since we had been together, the only sign of his interest in religion or the Catholic Church had been an occasional mass on High Holy Days like Christmas or Easter.

But sensing that maybe the Professor really did need time to be by himself, away from my constant researching and taking care of our nine year old son who was enrolled in a local school, I finally acquiesced and, what’s more, I even gave the Prof. the money I had earned from a recent lecture in Valladolid to pay for a nice retreat in one of the famous art-filled monasteries that every good tourist visits in Spain.  However, by that time late in the summer, those really beautiful places had already filled up and the Professor was forced to go to a little known monastery in the province of Soria.  Santa María de la Huerta is located in a little town lost in the plains, far from the beautiful medieval city made famous by the poems of Antonio Machado.  The Prof. experienced the first of many disappointments when he got off the train after a long ride and had to walk through dusty terrain that showed no sign of the orchard or “huerta ” which the name of the monastery seemed to promise. Since it was a Trappist monastery, the Prof had expected total silence to reign there.  However, he was greeted by a very garrulous brother who never stopped talking.  He explained that he had been released from his vow of silence to welcome outside guests and was enjoying making up for the many years he had had to keep his vow of silence.  The Brother escorted the Prof to lunch in the refectory. To get there, they had to pass through the medieval cloister, which may have been very beautiful at one time, but then was completely dug up by a team of archeologists whose work echoed throughout the house.  At lunch, the Brother introduced the Prof to a beautiful young woman who was part of the archeological team and was to be the Prof’s table -mate during his stay.  So much for escaping worldly attractions!  Professor Entwell found his cell to be equally disappointing, He had expected it to be small and stark but not to be so COLD!  He later found out that the monastery was built over a stream that came down from the mountains which made everything cold and damp even in the summer months.  During the night, the Professor had been determined to observe matins and get up to pray. However, when the bell sounded at three in the morning, he couldn’t bring himself to get out onto the cold stone floor and he went back to sleep instead.  When he did get up the next day, he went to mass in what was left of the old chapel.  He was looking forward to hearing real Gregorian chant. But, another disappointment. The six very old monks who remained in the monastery were only able to squeak and whistle through missing teeth and there was very little music to be heard. Then there was an announcement that there might be a railway strike that day which would make leaving the monastery any time soon very difficult. So Professor Entwell packed his bags and his prayer book and ran to get on the next train out and back to Madrid.

 

8.The Gift of the Magi

It was Christmas time in Madrid and we took our son David who was then nine years old down to the Avenida de Alcalá to  watch the “cabalgata de los Reyes”  or “parade of the Kings ” which is the Spanish equivalent of Macy’s Christmas parade, but, instead of Santa Claus, this parade ushers in the Three Kings:Melchior, Kaspar and the black king Baltazar who is the children’s favorite since he is known to bring the most gifts.  All three Kings leave gifts in the children’s shoes. In order to get the greatest number of gifts, the children put out the biggest shoes they can find.  Instead of coming down a chimney, the Kings climb up the balconies of the apartment houses.  For that reason, their floats are accompanied, not by elves, but by helpers carrying ladders.

Instead of arriving in a sleigh like the Manhattan Santa, the Kings each have their own bejeweled float and since they are desert princes, they are accompanied by camels.

All three of us were enthralled by the Oriental splendor of the Kings and David was busy gathering up the candy that they threw out along the way.  When we started down the street with the crowds to accompany the Kings to their final destination in the Plaza Mayor, we realized that David had disappeared.  We frantically asked the police for help, but when they found out that David was nine, they said not to worry, he can take care of himself.  Even though we didn’t believe them, after searching for a good hour, we finally returned to our apartment.  David was there and was calmly teaching our portero or super how to use the calculator he had gotten for Christmas.  David seemed unperturbed by our anxious inquiries as to what had happened, where had he been.  He said that when he realized he had lost track of us, he checked his pocket and, seeing he had enough money he went to Goya station and rode the metro home to our  building where the portero and his wife had invited him in to stay  in their apartment until we returned.  We were so grateful for that “gift of the Magi”, that we went out and bought the biggest  roscón de reyes or Kings’ cake we could find to give to  our porteros.

 

9. World Cup ‘98

I was on my way to continue research in the National Library in Santiago, Chile when I heard the announcement that Chile had made it through to the second round of the World Cup games.  That was a very big deal since the country had been banned from the Games for fifteen years because of a minor infraction(a fan had killed a referee).  The whole street broke into cheers, confetti appeared from nowhere and everyone began partying in the streets.  I was walking behind a woman and her little boy who was waving the national flag and singing the Ricky Martin song which was the theme for the year, when, all of a sudden, people started screaming and running to try to get into the stores before the metal curtains came down and were locked by terrified store owners.  Down the street I could see the anti terrorist troops riding their horses towards the crowd and behind them huge gray tanks with water cannons which were spraying people with water and tear gas laced with pepper.  I started coughing and crying like everyone else.  I wrapped my muffler around my mouth to be able to breathe a little until I managed to run behind the main buildings.  I made it to the rear entrance of the library.  The doors were officially closed, but the guards recognized me as a regular researcher and let me in.  I ran to my sanctuary in the microfilm room in the basement and tried to continue my work. I think it was that day that I came across my most valuable find of the research trip.  It was a full-color caricature of Valle-Inclán, the Spanish author whom I have been studying for a 100 years.  To my knowledge, I was the first person to have seen it since it was published in 1910 while Valle was on a tour of South America with his wife, the actress Josefina Blanco who was part of the María Guerrero-Díaz de Mendoza theater Company.  But even that find was not enough to make me forget what was happening outside.   I had no idea how I was going to find Professor Entwell in all the confusion, but, luckily, he found me in the basement and we took several buses and a taxi to finally make it back to the Chilean couple’s home where we staying.  We watched the news that night to see what had happened down town, but there was not one single mention of any problem and the next day there was not even a scrap of confetti left on the street.  It gave us the eerie feeling that nothing had changed in Chile since the old Pinochet days when all “disturbances ” due to sports or politics were brutally silenced.

 

10. The Road to Coroico

 

When I told Professor Entwell that we needed to go to the lovely town on the Bolivian side of the Amazon called Coroico, I explained that we should see another part of Bolivia, not just the Andean highlands in order to get a more complete view of that wonderfully complex country.  I neglected to tell him, however, that our bible, the Lonely Planet Guidebook, had named the way to Coroico as the most dangerous road in the world. More than 180 people had been killed when their vehicles fell off the still unfinished road down the cliff towards the Amazon river below. I did make sure, though,  that we did as Lonely Planet recommended and got tickets on a minibus which was supposed to fall over the cliff less often than regular sized buses.  At first, the ride up into the highlands above La Paz seemed very uneventful.   Then our driver stopped to let everyone pee over the side of the road before we started our descent towards the jungle floor.  We noticed that the driver threw some bones to the wild dogs along the road and poured a little aguardiente on the tires of the minibus.  He was appeasing the guardians of the road and blessing his vehicle for the next part of our trip. And we were going to need that blessing!  The asphalt turned abruptly to dirt and the highway became a one-way road. barely wide enough for one vehicle let alone one that needed to pass.  On our right side, there rose a steep cliff covered with dusty vines.  On our left, the road fell off over another cliff. An occasional waterfall ran under the bus making the road a little slippery.  Then it began to rain.   But, the scariest part of the trip was when a truck, not just any old truck but one of those huge Japanese work trucks with its bed full of other travelers, would approach us, from the opposite direction, determined to pass .The two drivers would get out to use their foot to test the ground to see how close they could get to the edge without falling off.  Then everyone would hold their breath as the two vehicles inched their way past each other. And every once in awhile a lone cyclist would come racing down the hill crisscrossing the road between all the vehicles lined up behind each other.   Professor Entwell could not open his eyes.  I couldn’t close mine. We told each other that we had had a good life and were ready to go if it had to be.  But we were happy to finish the trip alive, that part at least. Coroico is indeed a lovely place, green and blooming if a little damp.  Our “hippy style” hotel had a balcony overlooking the valley and we could hear the student band practicing in the school below.  The food was good even though we didn’t feel like eating too much.  I don’t know why, but we spent only one night there and the next day we started back up the road to La Paz.  This time we took a seat farther towards the back so we wouldn’t have to see the road.  We had just gotten more or less comfortable, when the driver stopped to pick up two other passengers.  One was a very large woman whose multiple skirts, worn one on top of the other in the indigenous style   made her larger still. She was bound and determined to take her huge sack of potatoes with her on the trip.  She argued with the driver and yelled at him until he finally agreed to load the potatoes on top of the bus which caused the roof to bend down  dangerously close to our heads.  The other traveler seemed to be the big woman’s daughter She was carrying a baby on her back. We thought we might have to put up with some crying during the trip, but the woman nursed her baby and it slept the entire way back.  This time, we were old pros and were not at all worried about making it back in one piece.  We were even telling a new traveling companion about our adventures.  The challenge on this part of the trip was the dust. that rose from the very dry road.  There were two choices, open the windows and choke on the dust or close the windows and choke on the odor of bodies which didn’t have the luxury of being bathed very often.  I honestly don’t remember which one we chose, but I do remember very clearly returning to our hotel in La Paz and taking a long hot bath.

 

11. Provence in the Andes.

 

The town of Aguascalientes, Peru, at least the way it looked in 1998, confirmed our notion that things in Latin America, to our eyes, look like they are either in the process of being built or of falling down.  After spending a glorious pair of days in Machu Picchu, we wanted to have dinner at a restaurant that Professor Entwell had overheard someone raving about on the bus coming down from the Inca citadel . The Prof thought he heard the name of the restaurant to be “Indianapolis.”  But the owner of our little unfinished hotel in an unfinished street had never heard of the place. Finally he realized that the Professor was talking about “El Indio Feliz”(The Happy Indian) and he insisted on leading us there by the hand since it was hard to navigate the dark streets which looked especially unfriendly at that hour.  When we went into the little building that looked very unassuming from outside, it was like being in Provence, with the signature blue and yellow  pottery, flowers and table linens.  The” Indio Feliz” was run by a Bolivian woman married to a French man.  They hoped to finish the upstairs one day and turn the place into a BandB.   To help them with that goal they had placed on the rafters the ceramic bulls of Pucará whose magic powers  would ensure completion of the project.

It was too early for the French style meal which was to be served at the French-style hour of 9:00pm , so we decided to order a drink beforehand. We ordered a pizco sour made with Peruvian bitters, very high in alcohol which we expected to come in a small glass like we had been enjoying  in Cuzco.  Instead it came in very large tall glasses.  It was delicious and when we went outside for a walk, Aguascalientes had been transformed!  The people were so friendly, every shop was beautiful and the town was totally enchanting. We finished the evening with a fabulous dinner and arrived back at our lovely hotel with some lovely jewelry from one of the many  lovely shops.

 

 

12.The perfect hostess

 

When we knew we would be renting an apartment in Paris for the months of April and May, we invited everyone we knew to come and stay with us.  We were sure our apartment would have a sleep sofa, but when we moved in, although the apartment was very spacious according to Parisian standards, had spectacular views (Sacré Coeur out the front window, the Eiffel tower out the kitchen window), was beautifully  furnished  and even equipped with a large pink tiled jacuzzi bathtub next to our double bed, there was no such sofa bed.  However, by that time, our friends Greg and Gerri from Portland, Maine were already on their way over to stay with us and it was too late to warn them about the lack of sleeping arrangements.  But, like good troupers that they are, our friends made themselves as comfortable as possible on sofa cushions laid on the floor.

They never complained and seemed to be enjoying the many delights of the city.  One night , after we all returned  home from a late night dinner, I had a grand mal seizure and was rushed to l’Hôpital Lariboissière.  I ended up spending a week there, thus becoming the perfect hostess by giving up my bed to our two friends.  Poor Professor Entwell had to take the floor.

 

13.Family Treasures

 

When our son David was in second grade, his class was assigned to research their family ancestors and then give a presentation to the rest of the class with some family members in attendance.  David was paired with his best friend Jon and we went to hear their presentations.  Jon told about his Maine family who were teachers, silversmiths, farmers, all upstanding members of their community.  Then it was David’s turn. He explained that the first member of his father’s family came to this country as a Prussian mercenary, who was hired as a scout for General Braddock.  He was later hanged as a horse thief.  David said that his great grandmother Drake was related to the Sir Francis Drake, the pirate and that a member of the Alabama branch of the family had been a bandit on the Natchez Trace.  But his best story was about the Voorhies part of the family.  They wanted to immigrate from Holland to America for greater freedom to practice their Protestant faith, but they had no money, so had to content themselves with continuing with  farming. Then, one day, while working in the field, a member of the family felt something hard under the ground.  When he dug it up, it turned out to be a coffer filled with gold, left over from the time of the Spanish occupation.  The family used the money to buy a ship.  When they arrived in America, they all agreed to keep the name of Voorhies (from the town of Hies), to remember their humble beginnings.   At that point, someone in the class asked if David still had some of the gold.  Sadly, he had to say no.  Professor Entwell and I looked at other and agreed that our family treasure had become quite a storyteller.

 

14.My Hero

 

Professor Entwell and I had been married for 35 happy years when I suffered a severe stroke which affected my left side and  paralyzed my left  arm and hand.  When he found me crying for the life I had lost (30 years of teaching Spanish language, literature and culture at Plymouth State), Professor Entwell  said to me “We may not have the same life as before, but together we will build a new life.”  That gave me the strength to go on.   Now, six years after beginning that new life, with the Professor’s help and the help of many dedicated friends , therapists and caregivers, I am  able to walk with the use of a cane and a leg brace.  I can even accompany my right hand on the piano, by playing along to music, recorded onto a machine called a music tutor.

Every time the Professor takes me to my continuing rehab at HealthSouth in Concord, and we see all the people who have many more challenges than we do, we are reminded of the verse from an old Spanish play which says “I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet. ” and we repeat our mantra “CBW”(It could be worse)

 

15.Is she or isn’t she?

 

It has taken me many years to come to grips with and finally appreciate the fact that I am a very tall woman.  That can sometimes lead to funny situations.  Once when Professor Entwell and I were in Sevilla, our Spanish friend, Ricardo, took us to a female impersonation show that he thought was especially good.  Since it was Feria(a big fair in Seville which features beautiful Arabian horses and dancing the regional folk-dance called the sevillanas),  I was wearing my red and white polka dot  Sevillana dress  which emphasized my height and my long body which at that time was fairly slim.  I was leaning against the bar listening to the show which really was great when Professor Entwell noticed that some Spanish guys were looking me up and down. Ricardo explained that they were probably trying to decide whether or not I was part of the show. I had to tell them that even though I was flat chested, what was there was real.

 

16.Spanish 101

 

Professor Entwell has a nice singing voice and a good ear for music which makes him potentially a great language learner, but like every beginner he sometimes makes some mistakes which, in his case, can be amusing or even dangerous.

While we were staying in Madrid with Señora Aliste , the woman  I had roomed with while a Master’s student, the Professor, who is a morning person, would get up early and go down to the street to bring up things for our breakfast.  When I, who am definitely not a morning person, finally rolled out of bed, there would be a lovely array of orange juice, rolls and coffee waiting for me.  The señora was very impressed and asked me why the Professor did that for me.  I told her to ask him.  The Professor wanted to say that it was because I was perezosa( lazy), but instead he said it was because I was peligrosa(dangerous) The señora laughed and from then on called me “la peligrosa”(the dangerous one).

After the Professor learned that in Madrid a small glass of wine is called a “chato”(snub-nosed), he ordered two chatas. in a bar. He was surprised when the bartender laughed and said they didn’t serve those there.  A chata (a girl with a turned up nose) is another word for prostitute.

Another night, the Professor got a chance to use a phrase that he had just learned. The person who eats the last thing on a  communal plate is called” a “sin verguenza de Galicia”(a shameless person from Galicia) While we were having tapas  with our Spanish friends,  I took the last olive and the Prof trotted out his phrase.  A slightly enebriated man at the bar who was from Galicia took offense thinking that the Professor was maligning his country.  He surely would have hit the Prof if our tall elegant friend, Pedro, had not put himself between the two men and calmed down the man from Galicia, thus saving the Professor to practice his Spanish another day

 

17. Advanced Spanish

 

When we arrived in Madrid for a year long sabbatical Professor Entwell and I promptly enrolled our son David in a summer school to get him ready for starting fourth grade in the fall.

That September David got his first school uniform. He was very pleased with it. It featured an oversized Navy blue wool blazer.  Like many grade schoolers, Dave came home one day with head lice which we treated with the pomade that I saw Spanish mothers putting on their kids while waiting for the school bus.  The pomade made Dave’s blond hair stand on end like a crew cut. which he thought looked cool.  One day he came home beaming and said “Mom do you know what the kids on the bus said to me today?  They said “Te pareces a un marino americano, macho, que te cagas” (You look [so much like] an American marine, dude, that you shit yourself!) David felt like he had finally arrived!

 

18. Dungeon Master

 

The detractors of the role playing game of Dungeons and Dragons have no idea how important it was to our son who spent hours as the Dungeon master, leading his Plymouth  friends through  the twists and turns of the game.  The game was his entrée into Aula Nueva school where Dave was the only English -speaking student.  He became very popular with the Spanish kids because he was the only one who had the latest game book and could translate it for them.  One day when I went to pick him up because the buses were on strike, I expected my son to come running up to me to get his usual hug.  Instead he was walking around the playground with a small boy hanging on his arm and another taller boy looking over his shoulder.  They were all intent on working out the next move for their characters in the game.

I knew that many parts of the game involved things based on classical mythology, but I came to really appreciate how much learning went on there when I was working on a presentation for a conference when I came across a name that stumped me.

It was written as Sabaris.

I asked the Professor if he had ever heard of that character.  He said no, but David piped up and said “Oh, Mom that’s Abaris, the one who had magic arrows, could be invisible, tell the future and fly.

That information merited Dave a footnote in my published article.

 

19.Coffee mates

 

While I was recovering from my stroke in the Clough Center in New London, NH, the night nurse brought in a big copper-colored therapy cat whose name was Penny.  I was thrilled not only to enjoy her but also to see that I was not having an allergic reaction to her like I sometimes do with cats.  I realized that I could finally have some cats of my own.  After I returned home I told my friends that I wanted a black and white cat like my sister’s cat, Kitty Wumpus.  She swears that “tuxedo” cats have the best personalities.  I don’t know if it was because I was not communicating quite right then or my friends have hearing problems, but they heard that I wanted a white cat and a black cat.  They very thoughtfully found two kittens for me. The female was the offspring of some feral cats from behind Main Street .She has some Siamese blood with the characteristic beige and brown coloring and light blue eyes.  As a kitten, she was almost white and we named her Latte.  Now her ruff looks like foam, my favorite part of a coffee latte.  The black kitten, a male, came from a farm family.  He is very dark black with golden eyes.  We named him café solo, which in Madrid is the term for black coffee.  I realized from the start that the cats had different learning styles.  Solo tried to drink water out of a glass by pushing his head beyond the rim.  Latte put in one paw and licked the water off it. Latte continues to be very delicate when she eats. She takes out each bite and places  it on the floor before putting it in her mouth. .  Solo, on the other hand, puts his whole face into the bowl and gobbles.  So it is no mystery why Latte is a petite 5 pounds and Solo weighs 15 plus.  When we took him to the vet to make sure he was not overweight, she said he was very healthy, he was just a humungous cat!

The two cats also have different styles of scratching. Latte is a vertical scratcher and Solo a horizontal one.

Latte is a morning person like the Professor and wakes us up every day by chirping softly and tapping a delicate claw on our faces or lightly touching our noses with her little pink one .  Solo is more like me and takes his time getting up.

Latte also takes after the Professor in her sociability.  She is very “chatty”and enthusiastically greets everyone who comes to our door.  Solo is more reserved and prefers to let people come to him.

Now that our son has married and left home, Solo and Latte have become our family and bring a lot of joy to the Professor and me.   Like everyone with pets, we cannot imagine our lives without them.

 

20.Bringing up baby

 

After coming back from a vacation in Puerto Rico, I was feeling so sick with nausea and vomiting that I finally went to see the doctor.  I told him that maybe I had picked up a parasite on our trip .   Dr. Craig said.  “Yes, that’s a parasite that lasts about 21 years.”  I was about two months pregnant.

From the very beginning our son David had his own ideas about doing things and although he doesn’t always follow our plans for him, he has always exceeded our expectations.  It started when he was still in my womb and was a week late.  I was very anxious, not only to finally have the baby, but for him to come before my mother had to leave to return to her medical practice.  I was counting on her help with the delivery and the first days of caring for David. One friend said that she had heard that carrying pails of sand around the house would start things rolling.  Since I had no sand or pails, I decided to carry books to the library instead.  That did it. David arrived the next day at 2:00  in the afternoon which meant that I didn’t get to make a dramatic call to have Professor Entwell leave  class or brave the elements in the middle of the night to drive me to the two blocks to our hospital, but we  were both very happy anyway.

I was pleased to see that David, very early on, had an ear for languages.  One day when he returned from the University children’s center, he was telling me about his day at the “Centá”, then, realizing that I might not have understood his Eastern pronounciation,  he said “That’s centeR for you mom.

In order to make sure that David got a head start on learning foreign languages, I used to sing to him in Spanish.  Professor Entwell used to recite lines from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” to help him appreciate the “English” language.  Surely because of that early education, Dave(as he now calls himself )became a musician  specializing in Cuban salsa.  He speaks very good Spanish and now perfect French thanks to falling in love with a young woman from Paris., which, of course, is the very best way to master a language.

 

21.  Mariage à la mode française

 

When  Dave and Cécile were to get married in Paris, it was going to be a very simple affair.  They told us not to come , to save our money for later.  Then they called to say that the wedding had taken on a life of its own, that 80 people from Cécile’s family alone were coming and and Cécile’s mother had located a little chateau for the reception.  Couldn’t we please come after all. What really sold us was the fact that one friend was prepared to take up a collection to bring us over, paupers, that we are.   By that time it was too late to find cheap tickets if they ever existed, but Professor Entwell, like he so often does saved the day.  He found us a package  on line which included a direct flight and, best of all, a hotel on the same Rue Viala were Dave and Cécile live.  So we were destined to go.

The wedding took place in the mairie or town hall of the kids’ 15th arrondissment. We had to wait in line with other wedding parties.  One Middle Eastern group was giving their party the “song of honor” that sounds like wailing to us.  Instead of a non- descript office of a Justice of the Peace that where we would have a civil wedding in the States, the marriage room there was like a palace with great high ceilings and walls painted with 19th century style murals.  We sat in gilt chairs covered in red velvet.  The young mayor’s representative who conducted the ceremony with the tri-couleur stretched across her front made Professor Entwell and I think that the Revolution had ended yesterday.  She concluded her nice talk on the importance of marriage by presenting the couple with a marriage book with space for recording the names of nine children! So far not one has made any sign of appearing.

Then it was time to go to the reception.  That took us two hours since we had to compete with the traffic leaving Paris for the weekend.  The little chateau where we were going was the former country house of a local author built in the early part of the 20th century.  The exterior was beautifully landscaped , but the interior had been converted into basic reception rooms.  We still felt like we were in a very special place. There was a slight delay at first when it was discovered that the caterer had suffered an epileptic seizure that morning and things had to be arranged in a hurry.  We started with petits fours which was the first of many interesting cultural differences we were to see during the evening.  Petits fours in France are not sweet little cakes like we have here, but little savory morsels like what we would call appetizers.  The champagne , especially labeled for the occasion started flowing easily.  There were 150 bottles for around 100 people.  There were also special wines to accompany each course of the potluck style dinner.  The biggest star of the evening was the cheese course.  The Professor and I have decided that the main difference between the French and Americans is cheese.  It is much more anticipated and appreciated that the dessert.  But the dessert was also very special.  There was not one but three “cakes” made of layers of crêpes and cream.  The youngest guest, 4- year old Maxime got to choose which one to start with.  He made what would be a typical American choice : chocolate.  There was yet another wine to go with the cake.   Dave and Cécile did feed each other a little cake.  That and Cécile’s throwing of her bouquet of peach-colored roses to her unmarried friends were the only wedding customs that we recognized.  Americans would have been under the table by then with all that alcohol, but the French seemed happy but sober.  The secret seemed to be that they would nibble a little, drink a little, converse a lot, and instead of toasting, play games like trivia about the couple(such as  from how many rooms can they see the Eiffel tower from their apartment ?(answer -3 and 1/2 ), a scavenger hunt  (the most  fun object to locate was a large sized bra on one of the guests ) and a puppet show with hand puppets made to look like Dave and Cécile.  “Cécile” had long chestnut hair and “Dave” was wearing his little gold earring.

The main activity, besides drinking and eating, was dancing to marvelous music provided by Dave’s salsa band and friends.  The Professor and I had planned to leave at what would considered a decent hour in the US, say around 11 or 12:00.  Instead we made it very happily until 5:30 in the morning.  We then returned to Paris and collapsed into our hotel bed, planning to get up the next day and go to the new Museum of Anthropology which had just opened. The next morning, we  went to the bus stop but when we saw that the bus didn’t seem to be running, we  finally asked someone what time it was .It was 6:30 pm the next day!  But it was all worth it.  We were so happy not to have missed such a special occasion.

 

22. Wedding,American Style -

SPOILER ALERT(The following is more like a journal entry than a story.  If you prefer to return to more”humorous” stories, skip to number23)

 

It had always been Dave and Cécile’s plan to have a wedding and celebration in the States for all the friends and family who had not been able to be there in Paris. in 2007.  It was to be a combination wedding, family reunion.   They billed it as Dave and Cécile’s ,Marvelous, Musical Multi-cultural Mariage. They came a year before hand to find the perfect location.  They chose a beautifully renovated farm house in Conway ,NH which could sleep 15.   There was a huge field in the back of the property which had the Saco River right next to it and a magnificent view of the mountains of the Presidential Range. The best thing about the house was that it was within walking distance from town, but felt like it was way out in the country.

There were several pre-wedding celebrations:

On the day that Cécile’s parents and friends arrived in Boston, on their way to the Cape and then to Montreal and Quebec City, Professor Entwell, the kids and I went down to Acton ,Mass. to spend four hours at  a wine shop where Dave’s friend,Mickey used to work, to taste and select the wines for the wedding.  Mickey brought them plus the real French cheeses that the kids selected in another place with him to Conway. The evening of the wine tasting, Cécile and Dave showed us their brand new wedding and engagement rings., very tasteful in platinum.   Then the whole group of us were hosted at dinner by the Desertennes.

 

Another evening, our group of Plymouth friends came to see our house with its newly painted hall and kitchen and the garden(then made glorious by Patsy and other friends),  to meet Cécile and get reacquainted with Dave.  After having kir, cheese and crackers(the French never serve cheese that way) here, we all went up  to eat at the Gypsy Café in Lincoln.

It turned out to be a perfect idea because it made our friends feel special and made things less overwhelming for Cécile to meet so many English -speaking friends of the family in a small group rather than all at once  at the wedding.

 

Cécile then left Plymouth to go to Manhattan to meet her bridesmaids who were coming in from Spain , France and Germany, thanks to the generosity of Fanny  who works for Air France. and gave up a year of her passes to bring the other girls over.  They spent the night giving Cécile a bachelorette party, salsa dancing at a club.  The girls were planning not to stop in Plymouth and go straight from NYC to Conway. That meant they were going to miss the cook out at our house.

 

Before our Spanish friends , the Castañeda family from Madrid had to cancel their plans to come for the wedding due to the death of Grandmother Margarita, we had been planning to have them here for a cook-out with my family who were arriving on that same Thursday. My wonderful neighbor and care-giver, Patsy helped clean house, make food and set up tables.  My sister, her two boys, my brother and his two boys and our cousins from Santa Fe and Bainbridge Island, Washington had arrived and we were having dinner, when Cécile called to say that she, the girls and their driver, Mike  were coming  through  Plymouth after all on their way up to Conway.  Thanks to Patsy, we had enough food for everyone and a great time was had by all.

 

Then the group took off for Conway, the girls to stay at the farmhouse and the others to stay at the Merrill Farm resort. Cécile’s parents and their friends, the Champions and the Grare family and later C’s cousin Valentin and her brother Florian were also at  the Merrill.  I am not sure where René Paul’s brother Alain and his wife, Christine stayed. Professor Entwell’s family stayed  at two fancier resorts in Jackson, the Thornhill Inn  which is on the National Historic register and the Snowflake. Some other friends and musicians stayed at the White Deer Motel and the Holiday Inn and some of Dave’s friends either stayed in the farmhouse or camped out on various parts of the property. Magdaliz , the singer with the gorgeous voice arrived at the last minute and roomed with Gail Dorval, one of my former care givers, who was to be the photographer for the wedding

 

After many tribulations which included almost losing the house and having to move the whole affair to another location the week before, the wedding itself was PERFECT.

The day before, it had been raining cats and dogs while all the friends got things set up and we rehearsed the ceremony in the tent.  We weren’t planning on any special dinner that night, but the French family and friends made braised pork chops and roasted potatoes with the first real sour cream and fresh chives I have had in years. Delicious! We ate under the tent with the table cloths pushed to the middle of the tables. That night Dave’s former teacher and mentor, Robin, gave everyone a salsa lesson(la rueda style) to wonderful music.

 

August the first , 2009 was one of the only beautiful days of a very rainy summer.-sunny but cool  , not a cloud in the intensely blue sky. The very abundant vegetarian food- appetizers, main course and bite-sized desserts (no wedding cake), catered by Chinook Café in Conway was fresh, well-prepared, beautifully presented and served buffet style.  It was also nutritious and delicious. The wines and the “champagne soup” (which included 30 hand squeezed limes) were fantastic, as were the French cheeses. The flowers by Adrian at Flower Drum in Conway in summer colors of bright oranges, magenta , yellow and red  were fabulous! They went into bouquets for all 15 tables and for the bride, her 9 maids and 2 trainbearers.  In addition, there were ivory freesia boutonières for the nine “best men” and the fathers, and a  single ivory rose for each of the mothers.(in Paris, flowers did not seem to be an important feature).  The 15 round tables for 8 were set with white tablecloths. Placemats  in magenta and lime (Adrian had told us that those were the “in”  colors of the season) were  crossed on top of each table. A round rattan mat.(We got the mats at a close- out sale at the old Basket World on the Tamarack road) was placed on top of the placemats There was a bouquet of flowers on every table . Also there were lime green votive candles (which no one remembered to light). I had made place cards out of paint chips in bright summer colors.  The kids organized seating according to regions of the world where they had gone in their many travels.  Guests were guided to their places by photos on a map on a big poster set up on an easel.  Each table had its name held in a colorful pipe-stem cleaner atop a wine bottle The kids also set up plastic framed pictures of themselves in the places represented by the name of each table.  Dave made CDs for everyone to take home. They were stacked to look like the Eiffel Tower. We had put together gift bags with brochures on local sites of interest, edible goodies , fridge magnets in  the shape of a loon and of the Old Man of the Mt. to give to out- of town guests.

 

The tent which was kept almost mosquito free by huge fans (a big feat in a very buggy summer) was ample for the tables and a small dance floor.  The interior of the tent was draped with clear Christmas lights  which were more and more beautiful as the sun went down, coloring  the mountains in lovely shades of rose

 

The day of the wedding, the Professor and I put on our finery, helped my sister decide on hers and drove to the wedding site.  We were required to close the house to everyone but residents at 10:00 am, so only a few people (The Prof’s sister, brother and  sister -in law) got to see the interior, but we took plenty of photos.

After the flowers arrived and everyone was dressed, Gail took pictures of the wedding party and families on the front lawn, then she and the bride and groom stole away for more intimate photos on the bridge overlooking Lake Conway.  The Prof and I had thought it was not a pretty place, but the sunshine, Cécile’s lovely ivory gown made by her cousin, Lili and the couple’s special glow made for some lovely shots.  Gail really knew what she was doing and worked very hard both the wedding day and the morning after to put together a fantastic album for the kids.

 

As the 120 guests began arriving, they were directed to take a seat in the chairs placed down by the ledge overlooking the river.  First, 11-year- old(?) Laura Grare played a piece on the trumpet, then the guys started to play some jazz to accompany the groomsmen and Dave who came strolling down the hill(both he and Cécile were barefoot) to take their places at the side of Christian who would conduct a bilingual English- Quebecois ceremony.  The music changed to a salsa number for the maids to dance down the hill.  Everyone stood as Cécile  arrived on  her father’s arm., her double train carried by Laura and Marie Grare. After everyone was in place, the guys all took off their sunglasses at the same time which got a laugh from the audience.

The two fathers made a show of bilingualism by Professor Entwell reading a welcome in French and René Paul reading one in English. According to the original program, there was supposed to be a reading of poetry by Shakespeare and by Verlaine, but I insisted on giving the mothers equal billing , so, instead of the poetry reading,  I gave a welcome in Spanish and Annie gave one in German.  I pointed out that we are all teachers: The Prof. of English, René Paul of math and Annie and I, languages. I could have added that the bride and groom are continuing that tradition : Cécile teaches kindergarten in public school  and Dave, music, in a bilingual private school. .

Then came more music.  Mickey played Bach’s” suite for cello  on his clarinet. Robin and Magda Liz sang a beautiful rendition of the slow ballad,  “¿Cómo fue?”

. The bridesmaids (in French they are all desmoisellesd’honneur”-Anne Charlotte Granvillain, Aurelie Dessertenne, Fanny Lafeuille, Claire Chirouze Ulloa, Coralie Philibert, Gwenaëlle Leroux, Tamara André, Laura Maure, Birgit Lehner)  sang a funny song dedicated to the bride and groom to the music of “In the Jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.”  The chorus was “Say yes, say yes and Dis oui, dis oui”

 

The best men, les chevaliersd’honneur- Micah Mclane, Jon Wixson, Aaron Miller, Lucas Brown, Giga Shane, Robin Moore, Scott Macdonald, Mickey Ireland, Ian Miller (Dave preferred the title of best men, for all of them, rather than having to name any one best man. -maybe that is one key to his popularity) responded with an original song by percussionist, Scott Macdonald. – something about Dave being “zen”

Then Dave played his “Bebecito” which everyone loved.

 

The ceremony itself had been reduced from four sets of vows to two: the traditional ones like “In sickness and in health”, then the bride and groom’s personal vows, Then came the exchange of rings and the big kiss.  Everyone exited with the audience humming the tune to “Bebecito” and blowing soap bubbles.

 

The reception followed under the tent. Cécile’s parents started things off with  “champagne soup” made with the juice of 30 hand squeezed limes, then the waitresses from Chinook, including our favorite, Terry, circulated with appetizers.  The main course consisted of salads, three bean, green with grilled chicken, something with polenta which was the favorite, etc. and more wine, Then the cheese course which Professor Entwell said he decided  is so popular with  the French because it serves to cleanse the  palate and make way for more wine and  for dessert.  There were no games. and the only toast was the tour de force by Dave’s friend, Giga, from Temple which people either loved or did not understand (there were references to many in-jokes, like Dave’s penchant for over spicing the dishes that he serves).

 

With the exception of little Ricky who got very drunk on purpose and had to be taken home and put to bed, everyone had a magnificent time.  After cheese came bite-sized desserts, eclairs, lemon tarts topped with fresh blueberries(which don’t exist in France) and strawberries., came the dancing.

The music played by Elio, who drove all night to get there from NYC, on the keyboard, Robin on guitar, Rob H. on stand up bass(unfortunately, Dave’s buddy Jim from Conjunto 23,  was not able to make the trip), Scott MacDonald on bongos and cowbell, Robin and MagdaLiz ,voice.  was INCREDIBLE!.

Everybody danced, including the teenagers, Chris and Max.  The Professor and I even managed a few steps. Everything was in full swing, when the police came in to ask us to tone it down (the Prof later found out that indeed, the guys had neglected to turn things down after a set of recorded music. ) Dave explained to everyone that in the US if the police don’t come, it means the party was a failure.  We also heard that there had been a rowdy party and bon fire down on the river, so maybe we weren’t the main disturbers of the peace.  At any rate, even after the band switched to acoustic, we closed things down around 1:am.  Before we left, The Professor was able to sneak back into the house and leave a pair of teddy bears dressed as bride and groom surrounded by rose petals on Dave and Cécile’s bed. (We think they were pleased as well as surprised.)

 

The day after the wedding, many friends and family members returned to the tent for breakfast pastries and coffee. Gail was also there taking more photos.

Since we had the house for a week, the Prof and I, Cécile’s parents, their friends,the Grare family, cousin Valentin and C’s friend and bridesmaid, Bigi, from Germany stayed in the house for the rest of the week. Several Plymouth friends dropped in and out.

 

Every meal was a big occasion. Breakfast always began with that wonderful French custom of everyone saying  ” bonjour”, inquiring how someone slept, and then kissing on both cheeks.  The favorite breakfast menu was blueberry pancakes with butter and maple syrup and bacon.  Dinner was very leisurely.  We began with apperitifs, then finally sat down to eat the main course around 9 or 10. The Prof and I felt like we were back in Spain. Most of the dinners featured leftovers from the reception, including wine, though, unfortunately, some of the best wines had been mistakenly thrown out by the uninformed wait staff, and the all important cheese, all of  which, of course, tasted even better the day after. After dinner, there were games such as a version of Charades which was very difficult since the French and Americans did not know the same movies or celebrities. Since Cécile wanted everyone to try corn on the cob, one of her favorite American specialities, the French group went out and bought some, but since it didn’t get cooked until three days later, it was not so good.  So, Dave had his friend Aaron bring up some good stuff from Perkins farm in Plymouth.  That time the corn was served immediately with the proper amount of butter, salt and pepper  and it was a big hit.

 

One night, we also celebrated Laura’s12th? birthday.  Her mother Sabine gave her an Iroquois doll she had bought in Canada. We sang happy birthday to her in English, French, Spanish and German.

 

René Paul and Sabine and Olivier Grare went kayaking on the Saco and got completely lost.  Everyone else spent their days shopping the Conway outlet malls and then in the evenings coming back together, either to have dinner at the house or to go out.  When the group turned their noses up at the newest and chicest restaurant that Conway had to offer, we ended up at my least favorite place to eat, the Moat, a huge, noisy beer hall type place.  The big hit of the evening were the huge racks of barbecued ribs(as Rene Paul said, it was like eating a whole pig!) and “the sampler” of seven of  the different Moat-made beers.

 

One  afternoon, the Dessertennes ,  the Professor and I  did go to the Prof’s favorite place, the Bistro, for a much more refined Italian meal.

 

Another day,  the Dessertennes came down to Plymouth to see our house and garden.  After all that work and money , I think people might have spent a total of fifteen minutes in the garden, but at least I enjoyed it.  That day, we took the Dessertennes out to to lunch at our favorite eating place on Lake Winnepesaukee, the Dox.  René Paul had lobster for the sixth time on his trip and declared it to be the best, even better than what he had had in Province Town during their stay on the Cape.

 

Having people stay beyond the wedding day was marvelous because there wasn’t the let down that usually follows an event that required so much preparation (about a year’s worth).  The last people to leave the house were Bigi and Valentin who found a woman on Craig’s list to drive them to Montreal instead of hitchhiking.  That was a relief for everyone, since Valentin is very used to traveling light and rough , but Bigi is not.

 

Then the kids pitched in to inspect the premises to make sure nothing was left to lower the return of our hefty deposit on the house. The Professor had to deliver the Desertenne’s rental car and return to take us to Plymouth.

We finally left the house a little sadly. We cheered ourselves up by finally finding the famous Sandwich creamery, a little place lost in the woods on a very rough  road.  Getting there is part of the fun.  You select the product you want (we were only interested in the full -fat ice cream) and leave your money in the slot.

 

We got together with the kids once more when we joined them and friend ,Ian Miller, in  Portsmouth.  We came to bring them their  wedding album and to have one last meal together. We lunched on fire- grilled, organic flatbread in a restaurant that that was new to us and fantastic.  If Cécile is pleased with the food, you know it has to be good.  After a walk to the public garden, we finally said goodby and gave each other bisous.

The kids left us with the cell phone they had used during their stay.  They called from Logan to say that Cécile had left her wedding rings in the airport bathroom.  Luckily, some one had turned it in so the attendant from Icelandic Airlines returned them to Cécile.

 

No sooner did they touch down in Paris, did the kids take off for a weekend to join people they had just seen at the wedding, Coco and Mike, at the fringe festival in Edinborough.  They take planes like we used to take buses.  Life is very good and there has been no recent talk of grad school.

Professor Entwell and I have started another semester (For us, the year starts in September with school. He continues to teach and I continue to take courses, this time French conversation and film and Arts of the Far East.  I have also returned to my low fat, low cholesterol diet since, thanks to that wonderful French food that I ate with delicious abandon, my cholesterol level has shot up 40 points! We have also returned to our financial “diet”, since we “threw the house out the window”(as the Spanish saying goes) and  it will take us at least a year to return to solvency.  ¡Vale la pena! (It’s worth it!)

 

 

23.  Homeland Security.

 

Before my stroke, I didn’t always travel with the Professor. On one occasion I had been invited by Professor Weller to speak to her class at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. That number of alliterations alone should have been enough to alert me to the fact that this was not going to be an ordinary trip.

 

That was the November right after 9/11 .  The US had become our “homeland”(a term that smacks of “Deutschland, über alles, to me) , the country was on high(orange?) alert and the new security controls were freshly in place.

I thought I was very smart to remove the small Swiss army knife that I always carried in my purse, only to put on my big silver squash blossom necklace  which did, indeed, stop me at the gate.  Maybe being a fifty year old professor wearing a foot-length black parka also helped to raise the profilers’  suspicions about me.  On the other side of the gate I stopped to have lunch in the café and noticed that there were no knives and no sugar.  Both things had been removed for security reasons., the sugar for possible  anthrax and the knives for high jacking.

My talk went fine and I was ready to leave when fog closed in the airport in Walla Walla, so we rushed to the next town over to try to make another flight to Seattle for my connection.  The airport had suspended the practice of off curb loading so we had to run into the airport carrying my big bag.  The new woman in charge of security at the gate wanted to make a show to her staff of how to do things right. She had me unpack my whole suitcase and place all of the things in there on the conveyor belt so my dirty underwear, the stone statue and other odd items that could have been seen as something to do with witchcraft that I had used for my talk went by for everyone to see.  I had almost made it through when an eagle-eyed inspector spotted a small box of straight pins I had in my briefcase that I used in my beginning Spanish classes at PSC.  They had to be removed as a sure security risk, though I thought it would take very creative terrorists to highjack a 747 with straight pins.

On my way back to Plymouth an airport announcer alerted us that ours was to be a peanut free flight and no one was to bring any nuts on board. Guess who had just bought her only bag of trail mix in years? I had never heard of peanuts being a danger before and assumed that, in the brief time I had missed ,there had been yet another assault on the homeland. What would happen next? I made it home with no further security situations.

 

24. Fleeced in Cancún.

 

The Professor, our son and I were all packed for our trip to La Havana, Cuba with a group of professors, one January when we heard that the whole Eastern seaboard had been closed due to a major snowstorm.  When our airline said they couldn’t get us out until too late to join our party in Cancún and lose the only tickets we had ever managed to obtain with frequent flyer miles, we decided to try to outrun the storm and drive to Montreal to take a plane from there.  We made it in time to change our tickets (this was before the days of electronic ticketing).  That night the storm came blasting through and we were thinking we might be forced to spend New Year’s Eve in our motel. but the shuttle driver assured us that planes were still flying.   We watched while our plane was de-iced with  something that looked like Pepto Bismol.  We arrived to our hotel in  Cancun in time to sign up for the New Year’s activities which included a huge buffet of Mexican food(my favorite kind) and dancing to a very loud rock band.

Like so often happens, our luggage had not arrived with us so I was forced to wear the winter clothes I had on.  I was the only woman on the dance floor dressed from head to toe in black winter fleece!

 

25. Secret Love

 

I had grown up knowing that Arthur, an old boy friend of our mother’s had given her the bear named Alexander Jerome Cosgrove who went with her to medical school and was a very important member of our family.  When I lost the original Alexander, Mother cried and, after completing her mourning for him , made another Alexander that we all played with growing up.

Soon after Mother died, I got a phone call from Arthur.  He said that he was in love with my mother.  When I started to say that we all loved my mother, he said “no, I mean I am in love with your mother. We realized too late that we were meant to be together and instead of saying I would wait for her until she finished medical school, I let  her go.  It was a mistake I have regretted the rest of my life.”

Arthur also talked with my brother and revealed that he and our mother had exchanged letters and gifts.  In order to keep things secret from their spouses(Arthur had married and had children), they sent the gifts to be picked up at the bus station.

Arthur commemorated my mother’s birthday by sending me a dozen red roses one year, another year he set up a cenotaph to her in the cemetery near the place where he and my mother had exchanged their first kiss.  I responded by remembering to send Arthur a card on his birthday and once I sent him his own bear.  We continued to talk on the phone until his silence and a letter from his daughter told me that Arthur had passed on. But every time I look at Alexander Jerome Cosgrove sitting in my living room, I remember how lucky the Professor and I have been to never have to keep our love a secret.

 

26.Baby Talk

 

Soon after David was born , Professor Entwell and I received an invitation to have dinner with Dr.O., a former professor of Professor Entwell’s   when he was  at the University of Chicago.  Professor Entwell was anxious about spending the evening with someone he had feared as well as respected when he was his student.  I, on the other hand, was delighted because it would be my first occasion to enjoy grown up talk about  intellectual topics.  The evening was lovely and Professor O. was a charming, and warm host. I was very pleased to have been received again into the adult world until we got home . I was undressing for bed and saw that the sleeve of my blouse which had been turned towards Professor O.  all evening was covered with spit up  baby spinach!

 

27. Culture Shock

 

When I was invited to go to Plymouth, NH for a job interview at the institution then called Plymouth State College, I jumped at the chance since jobs were very scarce in 1972,  especially for someone who had not yet finished her  doctoral dissertation and had only one year of teaching experience, So I left Professor Entwell at home in Chicago and set off.

I had never been to New England and all I knew about New Hampshire was, according to National Geographic, NH got colder faster than any other state in the union and that, according to all I had heard, New Englanders were very cold and reserved.  When I explained where I wanted to go, the travel agent in Chicago had to look it up and then explained that were no flights  to a podunk like  Plymouth, so I would have to  take the bus from Boston.  I didn’t mind since I could use the time on the trip to polish what I would say when the interviewers asked me to explain my philosophy of education as they surely would.

The trip to Plymouth was much longer than I expected. I didn’t get to there until late at night and I was the last person on the bus. The young bus driver turned to me and offered to spend the night with me since it was so late. That didn’t strike me as being either cold or reserved.  I thanked him for his kindness, but insisted he drop me off at my motel.

The morning of the interview, I put on my best orange wool mini skirt and fashionable chunky heels and started up the hill from the Commons on Highland Street towards the administration building.  As it usually is, I now know, that hill is covered with ice in March.  I fell down twice and when I finally reached my destination I had runs in both stockings.

In spite of my appearance, President H and Dean F. were very nice and told me that I would enjoy Plymouth since it was the main shopping area in the Lakes Region.  They said that PSC was like a family and there was an annual spaghetti supper. Dean F. said “And we hope to see you there, honey.   I didn’t think that was either cold or reserved. Ten years later Imight  have thought that remark alone was grounds for a suit for sexual abuse, but then, I thanked them very much for their kindness.  I was on my way home before I realized that they had never asked about my philosophy of education.

Back in Chicago when Professor Entwell  asked me if I had had any epiphanies about whether or not to accept the job if  offered, I could only say that I had seen a rabbit cross the road.

I did accept the job and the Professor was offered a part-time position and we got ready to move to Plymouth. My new  Department Chair called to ask if we would like help on choosing a place to rent and, if so, what did we want.  Imagining all those lovely Victorians that must be in an old New England town, I wrote saying that I would like something with high ceilings, and huge windows with southern exposure.  Probably the real estate agent kept my letter for years giving everyone a good laugh.   Instead of my imaginary great house, we moved into an apartment in the Fox Park complex.  It was much larger than our apartment in Chicago.  That apartment had been part of student housing in  the old Hotel Plaisance on Lake Shore Drive with a beautiful view of Lake Michigan.  The only drawback was that it was located on the edge of one of the worst ghettos on the South side. The 24-hour liquor on the ground floor store was robbed almost every night and we were often awakened by the sound of gun shots.  When we were first there, the heat was still being generated by coal and the air smelled of it.  Our first nights  in  Fox Park in Plymouth, we could not sleep because it was too quiet and because the smell of pine was overwhelming.

We noticed some interesting linguistic differences: densely populated is “thickly settled”, “regular” coffee comes with sugar and cream, chocolate sprinkles are “jimmies” and little patchy ground fog and frost heaves are not cute names of characters of a childrens’ book, but dangerous road conditions.   There was also the difference in pronunciation:  When we were planning to go to Boston for the first time, our friends told us to take Star Drive after crossing the bridge, but we couldn’t find it.  We later found out that the street was named Storrow and not Star.

We thought we would be in Plymouth only a few years before we got the call from Harvard.  That call never came.  Then, after five years , both the Professor and I had tenure track positions, we had  a baby and a house and Boston got farther and farther away and we decided life in Plymouth was pretty good.

 

28.  Busted!

 

Our son David had become quite a fan of the rock group Phish and wanted to attend a concert in Maine.  He needed a ride and we were worried about the possible drug scene at the concert, so Professor Entwell decided to go with him and his friends. When they got to the auditorium, the Professor sat high up in the stands to let the kids have their space. .  The young people next to him passed him a joint which he took but, he insists, he did not inhale!

The following summer, David attended a music camp at Berklee School of music in Boston.  He was talking to one of his classmates about Phish and it turned out that they had been at the same concert in Maine.  The new friend said that there had been an old dude there who he shared a joint with.  Dave asked him to describe the old dude and realized that it had been his own father, Professor Entwell!

 

29. A World Wide Reputation

 

Professor Entwell has the tendency to think he recognizes people. where ever we go.   Most of the time they turn out to be “look alikes”.

But once in Cuzco,Perú  as we were checking into our hotel, the Professor said that he just saw one of his former students go by.  He went out to ask the young man if he had ever been a student at Plymouth State.  He said “yes and you were my favorite English professor! Of course neither one remembered the other’s name, but that didn’t make the situation any less special.

 

30 . Global art

Professor Entwell’s latest passion is abstract painting and his  paintings not only look wonderful hanging in our house but have been purchased for other people’s houses as well.  The paintings also make make great gifts for special friends.  For a trip I was to take to Spain to do more research and to visit our university’s study abroad program, Professor Entwell selected a few of his pieces for me to hand carry to our friends in Sevilla and Madrid. The procedure for going through customs had just been simplified and I was through so fast I managed to leave the paintings at the airport.  As soon as I realized what I had done, I went rushing back.. I was very relieved to find that no one had taken the paintings.  One of our Plymouth friends quipped “were they that bad?”

 

31.  Shopping Spree

 

One Saturday we realized that we had a pressing need to buy some new kitchen towels, so we decided that it was time to finally go to the Ikea store that our kids had been raving about.

We first stopped on Newbury Street to see our friend P’s painting of her dog in one of the galleries.  It was terrific!  Then we had lunch at Trident’s, one of the few independent book stores in the world today it seems.  There we overheard some girls talking about Ikea.  After  the Professor asked them how to get there without using Route 93, he was sure he could get us there without having to resort to looking at the Google map. he had so carefully copied out.  Usually Professor Entwell has a special knack for finding his way to anywhere we want to go, but five hours later we were still not there and decided to leave Ikea until another day.

When we finally did get there, we felt like we were in a different country, slightly different food, organization and the Scandinavian  style that for us had remained unchanged since we first fell in love with it in the sixties. We did find some kitchen towels, our first product made in Russia, but somehow we  also made it home with two complete sets of sheets in intense shades of magenta and apple green

.

32.  Personal Differences

 

I like to make lists. Professor Entwell doesn’t see the point.  Even when he got to San Francisco one year to give a paper at the MLA and found out he had forgotten the pants he had planned to wear, he has not completely gotten on board with the CORRECT way to do things.

Making lists for me is part of the pleasure of traveling, It adds to the thrill of anticipation, as well as being very practical.  So when we were planning a 6 -month long sabbatical, traveling through Spain and South America, I spent months planning, making lists, booking airline tickets and making hotel reservations. which in 1998, you still had to do over the phone.

The Professor claims that he much prefers not to have everything planned, but rather to land in a place and discover it little by little, letting things happen as they may.

We had been traveling for three months through four countries and twice as many cities, when he turned to me one day and said “Isn’t it amazing how we’ve never had any trouble getting from place to place and finding rooms when we needed them.?”  I just smiled and replied “Yes, isn’t it amazing?”

We have learned some things from each other.  I learned to almost be a morning person and, according to an interview he did with the college newspaper, the Professor learned from me how to travel like a poor person.

 

33.  Sweet fruit

 

When we were traveling in Italy, we had lunch with a friend of the Professor’s family.  It was peach season and our host showed us a great way to peel one of those luscious fruits at the peak of it’s ripeness.  You stroke it along the outside of the  skin with the back side of a dinner knife so as to loosen the skin.  Then you squeeze the fruit slightly and the meat slides out perfectly from the skin.

The next day we were eating in a restaurant in Rome .  At the next table was an American couple who thought we needed some tips on eating in Italy.  The woman poured water into her  perfect caffe espresso in front of the horrified waiter, because , as she explained to us, it was just too strong for her.  When I ordered a peach for dessert, she told me to be sure to wash it.  I did so and then proceeded to peel it in the way I had just learned.  The woman and her husband had nothing to say.  I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a peach so much!

 

34. Mile-High Club.

 

All the guide books tell you that when traveling to a high altitude place like La Paz, Bolivia, it is best to go overland and to proceed to go up in altitude slowly so as to avoid the effects of altitude sickness.  But the Professor and I didn’t have much time to spare and we were healthy people who would not have much trouble, so we flew directly from Santiago, Chile to La Paz which is the highest capital city in the world at 12,000 feet above sea level.  (Denver ,the mile high city” is only 5280 feet) We did what the guide books directed and went to bed immediately, to rest up for exploring the city the next day.  We planned to move very slowly as our guide recommended.  During our nap, the soroche started with a terrible headache and the sensation that there is a huge weight on your lungs which makes it very hard to breathe.  And there doesn’t seem to be any relief.  The hotel people recommended coca tea which the indigenous people drink.  It is made from the same plant that cocaine comes from, but is not  as narcotic and is supposed to relieve the symptoms of the sickness.  I drank coca tea by the gallon, ate very little and stayed in bed for two days.

On the third day, Professor Entwell came bounding in from outside, high on the altitude, telling me to get up to come see the city which was the best place we’d ever been in.   I just asked him to let me die in peace.

 

35. Magic Fingers

 

We were trying to travel economically, OK, cheaply, on the way out West, so we were staying in motels which were right off the highway.  We found one that was only $8.00 a night.  The place was a relic from the ’50s and we weren’t surprised to see a machine attached to the bed labeled “magic fingers”  If you put a quarter in the slot, the bed would massage your back.  We recognized it as a rip-off and decided just to go to bed without trying it out.  We woke up in the middle of the night to a noise that rattled all the windows.  We were convinced that the machine had turned on by itself until we saw the freight train flying past the back of the motel.

 

36. Cataclysmic Events

 

I had just finished giving a class on Spanish literature to my advanced majors and I was thinking “that was a pretty good class”, then I thought, “no, that was a brilliant class”, when that expression of hubris caused me to lose function on my left side.  I told the student to call 911 and then passed out. I was air-vacked to Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital.  There, they determined that I had suffered a stroke caused by an AVM, (arterior- venous malformation), a birth defect I didn’t know I had). I was disappointed to learn that venous had to do with veins and not with the goddess of Love.

The first two things I remember the Professor telling me when I came out of the coma I had been in for four months after my stroke was that our Plymouth State College had now become Plymouth State University and that the Old Man of the Mountain, the stone face formed by outcroppings in the White Mountains, the subject of Hawthorne’s story “The Great Stone Face” and the symbol of the state of New Hampshire had finally succumbed to the effects of winter ice and had fallen off the side of the cliff where it had been for10,000 years since the Post Glacial Period.

That news affected me almost as the events of 9/11.

 

On the morning of that day another woman and I, were visiting  high school classes in search of winners of the teacher awards that  NH Humanities Council was to give. We were in a classroom in Oyster River High school watching a very creative teacher leading her advanced placement students through a discussion of their research on Native American cultures. It was clear to us that the topic was really: what is civilization?

There was a knock on the door and a secretary announced to everyone that there had been what they thought was a terrorist attack on one of the twin towers in New York City.  She said students who might have families that could be affected should be released to contact them.

My fellow observer and I decided we couldn’t do any more observation that day, but that we could go to the library to go over our notes.  As we came into the room ,we were just in time to see on the library’s big TV screen, the  airliner crashing into the second building.

We rushed back to our homes.  I found Professor Entwell very shaken by the news.  We finally decided to go for a walk on our favorite beach at Wellington State Park on Newfound Lake.  The tranquility of that spot with the afternoon sun sparkling on the water had a calming effect on us both and gave us hope that our civilization would survive and continue to flourish.

 

37. The new Recruit

 

One of the worst things about a long stay in the hospital, besides the fact that you need to be there is the BOREDOM.  I was lucky enough to have an interesting roommate who had been a child psychologist and was writing plays she hoped to sell to the Canadian Broadcasting System.  But you can only exchange details about your stroke story for so long and then you are left to stare at the wall or try to hear what is going on in the hall.  The worst was the weekend when there was not even any rehab therapy to break the boredom.  So the Professor paid for a TV to be set up at the foot of my bed.  Then I quickly became hooked on watching whatever was on. I watched mainly at night so as not to bother my roommate.  One night a program came on recruiting people for the Air Force.  They said they would help you with your education, give you job training and secure your future.  They made it sound so good, that even though I already had those things, I was ready to sign up.  If there had been a phone in my room, I would have done it.  I finally came to my senses and had a nurse turn off the TV.

 

38. Visions of Heaven and Hell and the Highwayman

 

Research on line has shown me that it is not unusual for someone who has had a seizure (a partial-complex one in my case) to have hallucinations.  During the week I spent in the hospital in Paris, I had some doozies.  I was convinced that the night nurse was something like the hunchback of Notre Dame and was very fearful whenever he came in. I was sure I could hear the door to my dungeon being violently shut.  He wasn’t very nice.  When I asked him for a pencil to write a note to the Professor, he shouted that the one he had was for him and that this was not a schoolhouse.  I guess he did give me something to write with because Professor Entwell still has the letter. I wrote something about looking down on us dancing the way we used to and how the Professor should leave me and start a new life with someone else. I scared him one day by asking him to admire the  beautiful gold calligraphy  running along the ceiling.

I had visions of the civilizations of the world and their evolution from being primitive to being very advanced. The US and France figured very importantly there.  I remember being taken by very large metal, robotic machines  to be showered.

Unlike the normal fantastic food in France, the food in the hospital was a soft, grey, tasteless substance that I could barely get down.  But I loved the hot chocolate with crumbled cookies that the   grandmotherly morning nurse fed me as though I were a baby.  At one point I saw the world as divided into societies that were very rigid and others which were more creative and colorful. The north of France was in the rigid place and southern France the one more full of life.  I hurt my son’s girlfriend’s feelings when I refused to accept the bouquet of lily of the valley she brought me for May Day because the tight little bunch of flowers belonged to the rigid way of being.  I begged her and my son to move to southern France to escape the deadening effects of the north.

I went to a condo- like tower building whose every other floor had shops that used a different language.  If you got off on the wrong floor, it was impossible to buy or sell anything.  I saw the nurses who came to draw my blood as Dracula and his queen.  The visions were both scary and fascinating, something like a mix of Edgar Allen Poe , Swedenborg and William Blake.   I finally got the feeling that all my visions were just dreams and that if I could direct them I could stop them.  So I imagined that it was a day of the celebration of the close relationship  between France and the US.  I flew in the sky above all the parades and the crowds.  I could see what people were wearing (I remember a little girl in a pink dress.) Then I explained to them all that I was leaving and said goodbye.

I woke up to see a man on horseback coming down the hill towards me and I recognized him as the highwayman in the story- telling poem I used to love as a girl: “He’d a French cocked hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin, a coat of the claret velvet and breeches of brown doeskin. ” As I looked closer I saw that the horseman was my own Professor Entwell . I was very pleased by how literary my hallucinations had been and I was very happy that my literary Professor had come to rescue  me from them.

 

39. Through a Child’s Eyes

One of the best things about living across from the Retiro Park, the year we spent in Madrid was that we could cut right  across the park and easily reach the Prado Museum on the other side.  Thanks to our teachers’ passes, we could come and go at any time for free and spent as little or as much time as we wanted.

On one of our days there, as part of David’s continuing lessons in Spanish art history and culture, I took him to see Goya’s portrait of King Carlos III dressed in hunting garb.  I had always thought the portrait of one of SpaIn’s most enlightened monarchs was very unfortunate because, to me, he looked like an Icabod Crane with his bulbous nose, forward- pointing chin and sloping shoulders. I didn’t tell David what I thought before I asked him to tell me what he saw.  I fully expected him to share my opinion.  Instead, David said “He would make a good friend, Mom, look at his eyes.”  So my son taught me how to see Goya’s painting with different eyes.

 

40.Small World

 

The year we spent in Spain, both the Professor and I tutored people in  English to make ends meet.  He worked with a couple of psychiatrists from Argentina.  One afternoon, Dr E. began telling him about a patient who suffered from depression and whose husband made things worse by not taking time to understand her or be more supportive.  As he listened, the Professor began to realize that his student was talking about a couple whom we had just met and become friends with.

 

41.  Family Matters

 

My first colleague in the Spanish department at Millikin University was Conchita Castañeda from Cuba. After the Professor and I left Decatur to go to graduate school at the University of Chicago, we met Pedro and Marga Castañeda Whenever we were in Spain, we spent time with them and their family and we became very good friends.  Conchita often came to visit us in Spain and Pedro and Marga included her in the dinners at their apartment. We were all friends for at least ten  years before a  priest in the Spanish family did some genealogical research and found out that the grandfather of Conchita and the grandfather of Pedro and Marga had been brothers . One had immigrated to Cuba  and the other had stayed in northern Spain.

 

42.  Turkey Day in Madrid

 

I decided that a wonderful way to give our Madrileño tutees additional practice in English and introduce them to some authentic American culture, would be a pot-luck dinner for Thanksgiving.

I was planning to prepare the turkey.  When the Professor realized that I was thinking of the huge bird that we fix for Thanksgiving in the US, he pointed out that, even if we could find such a bird, it would be impossible for it to fit into our miniature oven.  I had to settle for two much smaller birds, which came out to be better than the big bird since they were juicier and much more delicious without any additives.

We chose the rest of the menu and assigned different dishes to different students.  We intentionally assigned a plate of raw veggies to the Argentine couple since they would have little free time away from their psychiatric practice.  Dr. E’s mother called us several times to ask if she shouldn’t cook the vegetables just a little.

We thought our friends the Castañedas would know all about pot-luck since they had spent a year in the US, but they came with a case of wine and a dozen loaves of bread for a group of only ten people.

The most difficult dish to prepare turned out to be pecan pie.  It was very hard to find pecans or anything like Karo syrup.  But María Luisa found the nuts and heavy sugar syrup and made   a pair of beautiful pies.  At least the Professor, our son and I thought they were beautiful.  The Spanish people thought the pecans looked like some kind of beetle and stood staring at the pies until one brave person took a bite and then every piece of pie was gone in a few minutes.

 

43. Shakespeare in Madrid

 

One of the Professor’s English tutees, Dr. B. was trying to thank him for his help, but I guess the Professor was not available to accept the Doctor’s invitation to an English production of Titus Andronicus, so Dr. B. invited me to go in his place. He explained that his wife would be joining him after the first act, so that I was to go home after that.

The production was excellent !  I was especially impressed by the actress whose character had had her tongue cut out and her arms cut off and was still able to express her pain and suffering.  I felt a special kinship with her, when I had to be cut off from seeing the rest of the play.

 

44.  Time concerns

 

I know it’s a cliché to point out how different the Spanish sense of time is from ours.  Even though we should have known better, when the Professor and I were invited to dinner at our friend’s parents’ apartment, we knew we were receiving a great honor to be invited into a Spanish home, and we were careful to  arrive at the time we had been told for  the occasion

When we arrived, it was obvious that nothing was ready for us.  The table was not set and the family didn’t seem to be dressed yet.

So, the next time we got an invitation, this one to a party to celebrate a child’s birthday, we took our time getting there.  When we finally arrived, the party was over.

 

45. No strings attached

 

One of the landmark events on our ten-day trip to Havana Cuba, was David’s discovery of the stringed instrument called the “tres” .  It is said that the instrument was invented by black slaves when they were forbidden by their Spanish masters to play the noble instrument, the guitar. David took to the instrument almost immediately and was determined to buy one before we left Cuba.  He found out that while it was OK for him to buy the instrument, it was against the law for the Cubans to sell it.(something about obtaining dollars illegally )  David had to go  with his seller walking along the opposite side of the street.  They got to a certain bar and the seller did some covert talking with some guys who eventually brought out the instrument.  The police in the same bar didn’t raise an eyebrow.  David paid and left with his treasure.

The tres was a little hard to play because of its parts left over from the Soviet occupation, but Dave was thrilled with it.  When he returned to the States, he had another tres made and became an expert “tresista” in the Cuban style band he and his teacher and two other guys from Temple University formed.  They played for International Week at Plymouth State one year and at many more gigs in Philadelphia and surrounding areas.  Dave has continued to play the tres  with bands in Paris and with his students at Ecole König.

 

46. Dinner with the Saints

 

When he heard of my interest in the Cuban religious cult known as santería, our guide arranged for us to have dinner with a Santería  priestess and her family.  Because it would be too  expensive for the Cuban family to furnish the food. we bought  the ingredients for the supper.  We bought a suckling pig, and plantains.

In order to reach the family’s home in the former slave section of the of the city, we took a taxi, which was one of those famous ancient American cars being held together by tape and parts left over from the Soviet occupation.

The house was nice but very tiny.  When we sat with the señora, her husband and their two children and grandfather  in the living room , all of our knees touched.

Next to us there was a display case which was was similar to my grandmother’s  knick-knack shelf.  Inside was a Barbie-like doll dressed in blue and white.  She was not a doll, ,but rather an image of Yemayá, the Orisha, or deity that the señora was dedicated to. The señora  was proud to tell us that, since she was employed by the government public relations department, her family was  allowed to have their own telephone.  They also had a bathroom(the toilet had no seat) and the señora had access to a computer at her office.  But the señora was most proud of the altar to Yemayá  she had set up in her bedroom.

I guess since she was a priestess the señora did not have to cook for us.  While her  father did the cooking , the señora showed us around and answered our questions.She  showed us the table  set with seven glasses of water which held the spirits of some of the family’s dead relatives. She showed us the cigar she smoked to send messages to them.

The meal we shared was scrumptious.  It began with pork chitlins and then every part of the pig prepared in different ways.  I think the dessert was fried plantains.  It was definitely a dinner to remember.

 

47. A Night at the Ballet in Havana

 

As a typical little girl, I had dreams of becoming a ballerina.  I took ballet lessons and I read everything I could find about the great dancers of history.  I addressed all the entries of my diary to Anna Pavlova.   So when there was a possibility of seeing  the Nutcracker Suite produced by the world-famous company created by the blind Cuban dancer, Alicia Alonso, I made sure we signed up.

January in Havana turned out to be quite nippy and the night of the ballet, I put on all the clothes I had brought with me plus one of Professor Entwell’s jackets.

The ballet took place in the Teatro García Lorca which used to house the Galician Community organization, one of the main groups of immigrants to the island.  The theater is still very impressive with huge murals and red velvet seats.  However, it was hard not to notice, that, in spite all the propaganda about racial equality in modern Cuban society, there were no black people in the audience.  Although the seats were beautiful, they had been designed for very small people and the Professor, our son and I had a hard time fitting in our long legs and ended up sitting sideways.  Our seats were in a great location for following everything on stage.  That was probably not for the best.  From the start, it was too obvious that the orchestra had not practiced enough with the dancers.  The mouse King would leap first and then the cymbal would sound.  The Sugar Plum fairy would begin her pirouettes before the music was played for them.  Clara was a good deal older for her part than one might have hoped . Maybe we had been spoiled by the wonderful productions we had seen in Boston and on TV. At least the music was recognizable and the crowd was very appreciative.  But it was hard to see that one of the great  sources of pride of  the Cuban people seems to have lost some of its famous luster.

 

48. It’s Just a Matter of Time

 

Professor Entwell and I have always had a different sense of time. I read somewhere that people who are always on time fear punishment and people who are always late fear death.

The Professor fears that punishment so much that that he is often very early for appointments.  I take after my father who thought that if you left the house at the time you were supposed to be somewhere, you had plenty of time. The Professor and I usually come to some kind of compromise, but when leaving for a trip is concerned, I have learned that it is better not to quarrel about the difference of a few hours.

 

So, on our  trip to Paris for Dave and Cécile’s first wedding, I got up with the Professor at a very early hour to catch a flight leaving Boston at 9:30 am.  We were happy to see that there was not much traffic coming into the city, but chalked that up to it being a weekday.  But, when we found no one in the airport either, we began to get a little concerned.  There was not even a person to ask what was going on and where were all the people who usually crowd the international terminal.  We had no cell phone and there were no public phones in sight.  After waiting for awhile, the Professor finally looked at the itinerary of our trip.  He had not taken in the difference between am and pm.  Our flight was not to leave until 9:30 that night. So, we were forced to go into the city and take in a few sights and now we have something new to laugh about.

 

49.  Teaching Methods

 

Early in my teaching career at Plymouth State, I became a convert to the teaching methods of John Rassias of Dartmouth College.  One of his main ideas is to break through inhibitions and reach the students directly to engage them in culturally authentic communication situations.  He would often begin a presentation to language teachers by pointing out the deplorable lack of cultural information on the part of most Americans. by mentioning things like naming a car NOVA which in Spanish means NO GO, etc.  His method intensifies the necessary repetition required to master language constructions by calling on students to respond by signaling  with a snap of the fingers, thus eliminating the need to say their name each time and  enabling them to respond  much more often than in a standard classroom.

During one of our early sabbaticals in Spain, I was asked to do a presentation on the Rassias method to language teachers at the University of Córdoba.  I began with examples of America’s lack of cultural background and then began to model the method using the snap. I called the snap  the”pito” (I was thinking of the word my Spanish dance teacher used for playing the castanets: ría, ría,  pitá ).  My presentation seemed to be well-received and I was most impressed when an older teacher whom I would have expected to be more conservative and set in her ways said that she liked this method because it would allow her to keep track of her students’ progress without giving them so many tests.

Weeks later, I was telling my friend J. who lives in Sevilla about my talk .  When I mentioned the”pito” , she said that that was the word her boys used for penis.  So much for my  great mastery of cultural information!

 

50. The interview

 

In order to enroll our son David in the private school called Aula Nueva the year we were in Spain, he was required to take tests in different subjects before starting the fourth grade and I was required to be interviewed by the head mistress.

I had been sitting answering her questions, when for some reason I stood up from my chair. When I went to sit down again, the chair had been pulled away and I fell on the floor.  I stood back up and resumed talking to the Profesora.  Neither she nor I made any mention of the fact that I had fallen on the floor.  I remember the Professor being right there, but he insists he doesn’t remember the incident at all, so maybe it was just a dream.  I credited my ability to fall so well to the antics I regularly did for my beginning Spanish classes. I don’t know to what to attribute either Professor Entwell of the Head Mistress’ lack of concern.

 

51. The Great Doctor

 

Four year old David had been coughing himself to sleep for days, when I finally decided to take him to the doctor who had worked miracles for members of our Spanish friends’ family.

His office was in a very stylish section of Madrid.  The reception room was furnished with antiques and there were several photos of the doctor shaking hands with General Franco who was still in power at the time.

 

The doctor who had a very impressive dark beard received me and David behind  a  huge desk which was placed on a dais. a few feet off the floor.  David played on the floor while the doctor questioned me about his symptoms.  The doctor never touched David, but, after listening to me, he declared that the boy had whooping cough Even after I pointed out that David  had been vaccinated against that disease, the doctor proceeded to outline the schedule of care and the many medications that David should start immediately.  As we left through the magnificent reception room, the beautiful blond nurse presented me with the bill (which I thought was extravagant) and opened a lovely metal box for me to deposit my cash in.

Thankfully, I didn’t follow any of the great doctor’s recommendations, and went back to treating David for his usual symptoms of allergic asthma. I could never bring myself to tell our friends how our visit to the Great Doctor had turned out.

 

52.Secret Code

 

Conchita, my Cuban colleague and I got used to using Spanish as our secret language whenever we didn’t want anyone else to understand what we were saying.

One time when Conchita went with me to visit Albuquerque, we went down to Old Town to do some shopping.  As usual, the Indians had laid out their silver and turquoise jewelry under the portal in front of the old La Placita restaurant to sell.  Conchita was interested in some silver earrings, but was unsure of their value.  She asked me in Spanish “Is this shit was really worth anything?  I had no way to tell her that the Indians all understood Spanish just as well as English.

 

53. Burocracía

Even though the word bureaucracy comes from French, they say that it’s modern -day negative connotation is due to King Philip the Second of Spain, who required that all the documents concerning his  vast empire which was larger than that of the Romans,  pass through his own hands.  Those  documents filled several rooms and spent years there before being expedited,  if they ever were.

When they heard that we planned to spend a year in Spain, the customs officials informed us that we would have to obtain a Certificate of Non-residency.

To obtain one, I had to deal with the people in Spain called funcionarios, whose sole purpose in life seems to be to make things difficult in everybody else’s life and to make some money for the government bureaucracy along the way.

First  I went  to the government office in our neighborhood.  Luckily, it was one of the more modern ones, so I didn’t have to talk to the funcionarios by bending down to speak through a small slot at the bottom of a barred window like in the post office.  I think maybe that window was created to protect the funcionarios from exasperated customers. In that office, the  funcionaria (thewomen are considered to be more hard nosed than the men),  told me  that  before they could help me, I needed to present the following: our marriage certificate, David’s birth certificate and a document from the police in our hometown testifying that we were not criminals.  It did no good to explain that in the US, the police do not have a record of you unless you have committed a criminal act. I had to ask our  Plymouth police chief to make up an official looking document.  Another difficulty was that all the documents needed to be original.  No photocopies could be accepted.  We had to call a friend in Plymouth, have him find the key to our safety deposit box and using the letter we had to write, giving him permission to do so,  remove the documents and mail them , special, insured, delivery to us in Madrid.  When I took said documents to the woman at the office, she said that she could not use the documents since they were in English.  I pointed out that that was because they were the originals as had been required. I offered to translate them for her, but that would not do.  I was required to use someone on the government approved list to do the translation. To consult that list ,I had to go across the city to the Office of Municipal Records. I was smart enough to only consult the list of translators living in or near our neighborhood.  All but the last few people I called on the list were deceased, but I did find a German woman whose apartment was not far from ours.  She happily accepted my 2000 pesetas (about 200$) to translate “Married at, born on.., etc.”

 

Days later, when I finally got the finished documents back from the translator, the funcionaria told me that I then needed a special stamp that was only available at another office, also across town,  which was only open on certain days, between certain hours.   The stamp cost another sum, I don’t remember how much , but maybe around the equivalent of $10.   I have no idea how people without much time or money accomplish these things.

I started the whole process in September and we didn’t receive our Certificate of Non-residency until the following  February.  I figure with all the expenses of travel and back and forth across the city, postage and the fees I was required to pay, the whole thing cost around the equivalent of $300. And guess how many times, someone asked to see it. Not once!

 

54. Andrew Lloyd Webber in Buenos Aires

 

The Professor and I had been taking ballroom dance lessons for several years before we went to South America. One of the things I was most looking forward to in Buenos Aires was seeing real tango.

I convinced the Professor to shell out a  considerable amount of money to buy us tickets to a special tango show at a dinner-concert place.  Our table mates were from Asia and not particularly sociable and the food was only passable, but the show was really going to be the thing.

It all started OK with several couples doing very complicated routines. They weren’t nearly as good as the young couples we had seen dancing on the street in the Saturday flea market in the San Telmo neighborhood.

Then came the grand finale with all the dancers on the floor grouped around a familar-looking blond woman.  and, sure enough the climax was the woman singing “Don’t Cry for me, Argentina”,  in English.

 

 

55. Following  Valle-Inclán through  South America

 

The Professor was tired of changing cities every three weeks during our six month sabbatical trip, so we decided that he would stay in Córdoba while I made research trips to the Argentine cities of Santiago del Estero and Tucumán, both of which are undeservably off the beaten tourist track.

 

Since the main part of my research dealt with newspapers printed in 1910, I usually started my work in each city by going to the offices of the main newspapers, most of which are still in publication since that year.

 

That’s where I started in Santiago del Estero.  Everyone at the various papers suggested that I consult the Museum of local history and anthropology.  Although I thought that was a strange place to go for literary research, I got the same advice so many times, that I finally went to that museum.  What fantastic luck!  The director of the museum turned out to be THE expert on everything connected with the town.   She must have recognized me as a kindred spirit because she essentially adopted me for the day.  She got the newspaper to photocopy the pages I wanted even though they were lying on the floor waiting to be bound for the archive.  She introduced me to the young director of the theater which had been inaugurated by my Spanish author and the theater troupe he was traveling with.  She took me to visit the local authority on everything theater. She took me to her house which was a museum of folkart  that she and her husband, another expert in the field, had collected over many years.  They took me and their maid Cristina out to lunch. Before leaving me to catch my bus back to Córdoba,  they  even helped me pick out a gift for the Professor’s birthday- a traditional maté  set  with silver bowl, straw and small containers for yerba maté and for sugar, all fitted together to be carried to a picnic or other occasion.

The Prof. was very pleased.

It turned out that he had not missed me very much in Córdoba. He had met and become friends with Iván, a young poet who was making his living at that time by charging people to look at the night sky through the telescope he had set up in the man square

.

My next stop after Santiago del Estero  was Tucumán.  I had quite a different reception there.   The editor of the leading newspaper essentially told me I was wasting my time, that no one as important as Valle-Inclán would have ever  visited Tucumán.  As it turned out, he was very wrong.  Not only had he been there, but Valle had given the first draft of one of his most important plays to be published by the newspaper El Orden of Tucumán.  That was one of my most important discoveries of my trip.

 

56.What is a library for?

 

When I first did research in the National Library in Madrid, it was far from the beautiful modern and technologically up to date place that it is today.

It was a major operation just to get into the building.  You had to leave your coat, purse and everything but one notebook and a pencil in the cloak room.  The main reading room  itself was  immense and very dark .  The lights provided over the reading stalls were especially dim.

 

It was a little better downstairs in the periodical section.  One day, I was busy requesting the copies of newspapers I wanted to see.  Since there was no such thing as open stacks, this required that I present a special form to the library workers. who had to lug them out for me.  The copies that I wanted to see were bound in gigantic tomes and it was only natural that the workers were not happy that I wanted to see so many in such a short time. One man finally lost it and yelled “Do you think the library exists just so you can see anything you want?  I had never thought about it before, but I decided that my answer would have to be yes.

 

57. Gypsy peddlers

 

Since we were going to spend a whole year in Spain, I decided that we needed to take a good number of our books, David’s toys and  clothes that would be appropriate for all occasions and seasons.  Since all that was way more than could fit into any suitcase, we had a man in Plymouth make us a big wooden crate that would travel by boat.  (that was still possible then)

When our box finally arrived in Madrid, we had to pay a company to deliver it to our apartment building. The men  unloaded it on the sidewalk ,but informed us that they were not required to take it up to our seventh floor apartment. So we opened it where it stood and carried up the items piece by piece in the elevator.  But the wood of the crate was still on the sidewalk and our portero (doorman) informed us that we had to get rid of it.  That’s when Professor Entwell remembered the gypsies that rode around in a mule-drawn cart collecting old things (usually scrap metal).  He stopped one one morning and struck a deal with him to give him so much money to take away the remains of our cart.  Even though the man pointed out that he didn’t usually take wood, the money that the Prof. was offering  convinced him that he could make an exception.

The next time around, he picked up the wood and had the portero call the Prof. to pay him.  In the meantime Professor Entwell had decided he had probably promised to pay too much money, so he gave the man  much less.  The gypsy was not happy, but he took the money and drove away.  Professor Entwell had bad dreams for a week about the man coming back to kill him.

 

58. Gypsy Circus.

 

When David was only three or four , we took him for a walk in Madrid’s Retiro park.  We followed the sound of a funny flute to the place where a family of gypsies was  putting on a circus.  It featured a goat who stood up on the point of a  metal pyramid and moved  slowly around in a circle. to the “music of the flute.  The dog in the act  would play dead until the leader of the band would play reveille on his little trumpet and the dog would jump right back up.  The performance ended with the traditional passing of the hat.

Years later, we were walking down a street in Madrid when we heard a very familiar  sound.  Sure enough, when we investigated, there was the same little gypsy circus including the goat and the dog.  al llooking a little tired and older but still going strong.

 

59.  Winter Wonderland

 

Our first Christmas in Plymouth, the snowiest we had ever seen in our lives, we decided to do what we thought was quintessentially New England and cut our own Christmas tree.  We found someone who offered to let us cut one on his property.  We just had to drive out, get the hatchet in the barn and pick our tree.  We found the barn and the hatchet and tried to start across the field towards the trees, but we stepped into snow that was hip deep and we could barely make it back to our car and come home.

 

When the friend asked us how we had made out, we said that we weren’t able to get to the trees because of the deep snow.  His reply was, “Didn’t you see the snow shoes?  They were hanging right there.”

 

60.

 

One last “story” – Identity Theft

 

Recently,  the Professor woke up with a start.  He realized that I had stolen his identity by appropriating the name he had created for himself .  The Professor felt “disrespected” to have had his life’s journey and passion reduced to “stories” in a collection that is a combination of fiction and autobiography.  Where, he wondered, is the real Professor?  Will there have to be an intervention to resolve the many issues of his existence, perhaps an initiative to explore their meaning and those things deemed “relatable” to the real world.  He realized the urgent need for crafting a mission statement to declare to the world at large what his life/work plan is really to be.

And so, the Professor will rewrite these stories from his point of view, some day….