Sketches of Spain

Today I went back to work after three weeks of paid vacation. I can’t complain. I have worked at companies where employees were grudgingly assented two weeks off per year. I get 32 days paid vacation at SAP. It is one of the perks of living in Germany. But. On my last day at work I left the office at 7:00 PM after an 11 hour day, thinking how wrong it felt. At home I dropped my laptop in a corner and didn’t touch in again until this morning when my inbox groaned open to reveal 750 waiting mails, spam and all. I am not bragging. Many other colleagues go on vacation with their Blackberrys and feel obliged to continue to be on call. Colleagues in other geographies.

Instead, my husband and I packed up the Volvo with essential kit for us (including a novel of 1,300 pages for him), loaded up the kids and their even weightier kit and drove across France to northern Spain. Where I was promptly rewarded for the stress of the previous weeks with a raging fever that put me to bed for days. But I wasn’t complaining. I had seen the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. In all its glory. A thing of true beauty:

 

I had two wonderful – shorter – novels waiting for me (Arthur and George, by Julian Barnes and The Sea, by John Banville) and nothing to do but enjoy the foreignness of Spain. At least once a year I need to get out of Germany. I need to experience a different culture for a longer period of time. Actually my job has taken me on some wonderful trips in the past years – to India and China. Although they are work-related, I still enjoy the people, the food, the sounds, the sites, the shopping. In Spain, it was no different. We were lucky to have a friend, Maria Eugenia, in Cantabria who was our translator, guide, and hostess for two weeks. Maru, as she is known, teaches Greek and Latin in the local school, and directs theatre on her summer vacations. Maru is an intellectual Lolita, who can talk Aristoteles and Lorca, who wears a tiny string bikini at the beach and had a considerable collection of low cut t-shirts that showed her best feature to full advantage. She recommended the following novelists to me, none of which I have ever read: Anita Nair, Rosina Lippi, Natalie Ginzburg, and José Saramago.

My boys were delighted to find a surf school at the beach at St. Vincente de la Barquera. Run by a university educated and multilingual German surfer dude, the school is located directly at the beach, which in turn is located in a national park. No highrise condominiums here. Just VW buses with German licence plates camping illegally in the meagre parking zone. Surfnsoul was lots of fun – highly recommended. My boys will return in glory sometime to ride the waves. The blistering hot beaches are not my scene however. I was the one hovering under a beach umbrella, wearing a hat the size of a wagonwheel and wearing a longsleeve shirt. I can just feel my skin frying like bacon in a pan if I stay too long in the sun. Not so obviously the five topless lovelies stretched out in their full glory at the beach. Not a book or newspaper in sight, these ladies were at the beach for the hard work of turning even nuttier brown. Occasionally one of them would reapply some tanning oil, but they did not talk, swim, eat or even drink. Now they look fantastic. In twenty years?

When Gas Was 25 Cents A Gallon

My eldest brother sends a very minor correction to my last post: “The car with the fins was a 1960 DeSoto. I always loved that car as it had quite a large V-8 motor and had lots of pick-up. I remember  cruising in it when gas was 25 cents a gallon.”

Actually it was not a cousin, but a cousin’s husband who gave me the photo you see in my last post. Here is a link to his photo archive, which will mostly interest family, but also history buffs. When Dave sent me the link to his archive, a treasure trove of doozies of my sisters on really bad 70’s hair days, I also found this graphically and sartorially pleasing image from the 60s:

I love the horizontal cladding of the garage ontrasting with the vertical lines of the sleeveless blouse and the harmony of blues. But above all I like the shorts and top set in that Mondrian print in the back corner. Three of the girls here are my sisters (including the one in the striped top and the one in the Mondrian outfit); my brother is here too. The others are some of our 88 first cousins.

Adieu Papa

When my father died a year and a half ago, a cousin brought this photo to his wake and pressed it into my hand. I had never seen the photo until then. It was taken by my uncle. I love this picture. It is one of my favorite photos of all time, and perhaps the most beautiful memento I have of my father. That’s me on the right and my little sister Theresa on the left. Typcially, I look goofy. My nickname was Pookie. I had an imaginary friend called Maggie who lived across the street. I was freckled and skinny and skipped around like a kelpie. I have a framed copy of this photo in my living room, and people who don’t know my family often think it is quite recent. “Is that your husband?” they ask. Many German friends are surprised to learn that the photo was taken in the mid-1960’s, when color photos were still unusual in Germany. Others find it contemporary because of Dad’s brush cut and polo shirt.

I don’t remember when or where this photo was taken, but I remember the feeling of protection I had just being with my father, either on his arm, or beside him. On Sundays he would take us out for a ride in the country, and show us where the deer were likely to congregate, or where one might spot a fox, or where an old Scottish settlement could be found in Lanark County in Ontario. When I was very young he drove a pale blue Chevy with fins. Later, despite his height, he even drove a Mini.

The night of Dad’s funeral, my mother gathered her children and grandchildren, sons and daughters-in-law around her and held a speech. There were probably 50 of us in my sister’s grand parlour. All immediate family. Mom had told us that she wanted to say a few words after the funeral. I assumed she would talk about the estate, and flippantly remarked to my sister as we settled down to listen that we wouldn’t be needing any more tissues. Instead, Mom surprised us by telling us the story of their life.

She and my father were married in August 1945 when the war in Europe was over, but was still raging in the Pacific. Dad, who had spent most of the war as an educational officer in England, volunteered for active duty in the Pacific Theater. But before flying to Japan, he took six weeks’ leave to marry my mother. They spent their honeymoon in a remote cabin in the Gatineau hills near Ottawa, with no newspapers, no radio, no phone, and no other contact to the outside world. When they emerged after several days alone, they discovered that the war had ended. That was the lucky star under which their life together began. It wasn’t always easy, she admitted, having so many children, and yet, she said how proud they were of all of us. It was when she revealed that Dad had told her every single night of his life with her that he loved her, that we were most sorry we didn’t have tissues.

Yesterday my parents would have been married 63 years. And my mother misses Dad more than ever.