Nostalgia for Christmases past...

Asheville, N.C. - 2020

 

            The Christmas season is here. When I get out our decorations, play the familiar Christmas CD’s and think of all the different places where I have lived in my life, it is the Vermont Christmases that I miss the most.  

Christmas 1955 in Buenos Aires

 

Buenos Aires, Argentina – 1950 to 1957

 

            The spindly, pine tree in a rusty pot stayed in the corner of our walled in back garden all year long. In December, summer in Buenos Aires, Pedro, our gardener, would carry the tree into the living room. We decorated it for Christmas with homemade ornaments, plain round balls, and lots of tinsel to fill in the open gaps between branches.  The potted pine lasted for the seven Christmases of my childhood in Buenos Aires. Looking back, the tree was pitifully small and the weather always hot and muggy, but that never lessened our excitement for the holiday.

            Throughout the year we kids would spend hours looking through the thick Sears & Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs’ toy section.  This was our window shopping in a place where there wasn’t much to buy.  Mother and Dad ordered all our presents from the catalogs weeks in advance and they were shipped to Argentina and delivered to the US Embassy.

            Christmas morning we’d be up early and head downstairs to find our gifts piled around the tree.  By 8 a.m., they’d all be opened, and the boys would be playing with new toys.  Mother was in the kitchen preparing breakfast as she let the maids go for the day.  By 11 a.m. we’d all be worn out just as the day was heating up.  Dad would suddenly lose his patience with the chaos and the mess of wrappings.  He’d get out the ornament boxes, take down the decorations on the tree and start the vacuum, declaring loudly  “Kids…Christmas is over for another year!”.   

             Mother packed the picnic basket with sandwiches and drinks, and told us to gather towels and swimsuits. We’d drive off for the rest of Christmas day to the Club Naútico on the Tigre River where we would swim in the muddy water and play on the playground. Mother and Dad sat in beach chairs resting from the commotion of the day. We’d come home tired, take baths, and just as we were going to bed, there would be a drenching thunderstorm.  When it eased up we’d drift off to sleep knowing we had had the best Christmas ever.  The potted pine tree was back outside on the terrace. When the gardener came to work he rolled it down to the end of the garden where it sat for a year till the following December.

            

São Paulo, Brazil – 1959 to  1962

 

            The house on Rua Terra Nova in Jardím America, was large.  Two stories, it had a high walled garden around it and gate that led to a two car garage.  It was an older house with high ceilings built of beige stucco and a double glass front door that rattled when it was opened or closed.  The first floor was perfect for entertaining large groups of people which Mother and Dad did frequently during the years we lived in Brazil.  The house had a glass enclosed space that had been added next to the living room that Mother called the winter garden.  Perhaps she had seen such rooms in decorator magazines or possibly dreamed of houses with a conservatory much like the country homes in England.  Now she had her winter garden in Brazil.

            Remembering Christmases in São Paulo, I think of the decorated tree that stood in the winter garden.  With many strands of lights and much tinsel and shiny ornament balls, it glittered at night and looked magical as it reflected against the glass walls.  Unlike Argentina, we had no living pine trees in the tropical back garden.  Instead there was a large fig tree and banana plants that produced branches full of green bananas and lots of bougainvillea s growing over and down the high walls. Our Brazilian Christmas tree must have been an artificial one but I don’t remember. 

            It was in São Paulo, where Mother began the holiday tradition of inviting the people in Dad’s office at the U.S. Consulate to our house on Christmas Eve for cookies and eggnog.  She baked dozens of holiday cookies of different kinds.  I watched her squeeze the trees, stars, candy canes and other shapes expertly from the cookie press onto the flat cookie sheets. Then I helped decorate them with icing, colored sugar and sprinkles. Cracking the dozens of eggs for the homemade fresh eggnog was always fun.  Dad would bring out the liquor and be the “taster” while we children watched. 

            We would get dressed up in “party” clothes and go downstairs where our house glowed with the Christmas lights and candles on the dining room table laden with delicious sweets. Dad would put the Christmas records on the stereo phonograph.  The “office staff” were like family to us.  We knew them well and many went to the Club Harmonia, our country club. All the American kids went to the São Paulo Graded School like we did.  

            Mother always said those gatherings on Christmas Eve helped stave off homesickness for family far away.  I remembered that after I was married and spent Christmases abroad far from my family.

 

Santiago, Chile – 1975 to 1978

 

            “It’s almost Christmas,” I said to Art, who was now my husband, on our first Christmas in Santiago. “Let’s go out and look for a tree to buy and bring home to decorate.”

            “ Sure, you can get one,” he replied.  “I’ve never had one before, but I don’t mind if you buy one.” 

            That was my Jewish husband’s response.  We had fallen in love, married, and were now in “a mixed marriage” – Jewish and Unitarian. That first December I realized that we were going to have to work out how we would celebrate holidays.  The importance of Christmas in my family was never a religious one but it was the one  holiday we celebrated each year no matter where we lived in the world.  I couldn’t fathom not having Christmases anymore.   I hadn’t imagined I’d be preparing for it with Art watching from the sidelines. Our first year together I did that.

            I bought a small, live tree probably at the feria or market where we shopped near our apartment on Avenida Pocuro.  Having little money to spend, I made paper chains and bought a box of Christmas balls and strung popcorn.  Art sat on the sofa and watched me with interest put it together. I had my Christmas tree and I was happy. I don’t recall how we celebrated that first year except perhaps with one of my not-so-memorable home cooked meals (I had just learned to cook) prepared in our medieval kitchen of our fourth floor apartment. I was a newlywed and married life was full of wonderful possibilities.

 

            “Are we going to get a s tree this year?” Art asked on our second Christmas in Santiago.  I was taken by surprise but pleased.

            “Sure,” I replied, 

            “Good,” he said.  “I’ll help you pick one out at the feria.”

            No more was said as I realized my Jewish husband was “hooked” on picking out and decorating a tree.  I soon learned that he loved all classical Christmas music and played our CD’s  throughout the season every year.   

            It helped that throughout our 45 year marriage we never lived geographically close to the Jewish side of the family and so we had the freedom to celebrate as we liked. We have always enjoyed beautiful Christmas trees in most places we’ve lived.

 

Other Christmases….

            It would take a book to write about the Christmas adventures Art and I have had in our life together. Christmases in Huntsville, Alabama always included Mother and Dad. Once or twice we traveled to Hilton Head and Asheville for Christmas with them. There were special Christmases in Princeton, NJ in the picturesque stone caretaker’s cottage we lived in on the Princeton Day School campus. The highlight in Princeton was the special service of carols at the large, gothic Princeton University Chapel so reminiscent of European cathedrals.  Living abroad we took holiday trips such as the Christmas we trekked through the bamboo forests of Northern Thailand and the  three-week adventure to India from Manila where we were living..

            Art’s family didn’t celebrate Christmas and so we would visit at other times during the year.  Lighting the Chanukah candles became part of our holiday when Hayden went to Sunday school at the Reform Synagogue in Huntsville.  I baked challah and made the latkes and each year.  Hayden told everyone he had the best of all worlds getting presents for Chanukah and Christmas.

Christmas in Huntsville, Alabama

Christmas in Princeton, N.J.

 

Rochester, Vermont – 1990 – 2011

            We bought our house at Gt. Hawk Mountain and named it Hawkcrest in November 1990 where we spent our first snowy Vermont Christmas there as a family.  In our excitement of buying our first home we had not checked out details of heat and many other things that we should have asked about.  Instead, we stood on the upper deck looking at the spectacular view of the Green Mountains across the valley and fell in love with the place. Mom and Dad were with us on that first Christmas at Hawkcrest, as we huddled by the big stone fire place in front of a roaring fire which sucked the heat out of the rest of the rooms that had baseboard electric heaters.  It took some years of practice and a changeover to a gas furnace to be ready for the Vermont winters.

Christmas Dinner at Hawkcrest

Ready for Christmas at Hawkcrest

             Our Great Hawk house had an acre of land and was a gravel road with very few cars passing by.  It was far from a big town so that there was no hum of traffic in the background, no airplanes flying overhead, and a magnificent star filled skies at night. 

            Hawkcrest did not become our primary residence until 1995 and even then, we were not to live there full time except for the years we worked in Vermont while Hayden was at the University of Vermont and when we retired permanently in 2009. 

 

            It is Vermont and the house on that mountain, that I am the most nostalgic for during the holidays.  It will forever be the picture book perfect Christmas place.  I can see the snow coming down on our upper deck as I look out the southwest facing windows at the changing winter scene across the valley. I hear the favorite CD’s playing with the familiar holiday music including the complete Messiah (Art’s favorite which he just got out this week) I smell the aroma of baked cookies coming from my tiny one counter kitchen and revel in the lights on our tree when it gets dark around 4:30 p.m.  I see the packages under the tree with labels from our favorite Simon store in Montreal where we bought our best Christmas gifts.

 

            I can still feel the excitement, anticipation and anxiety waiting for family to arrive.  Travel to  the remote village of Rochester in winter was not easy. We made many hour and a half and two hour drives on snowy roads to meet airplanes at Burlington Airport or Manchester Airport in New Hampshire or the bus terminal in Lebanon, NH for anyone coming via Boston.  Once or twice Hayden missed planes or they were delayed and we even had to spend the night in Burlington.  Megan came often from California and Minnesota and became part of our family during her college and graduate school years and even after she married and lived in Boston.

 

            Looking back on those special Christmases in Vermont, I think about my childhood longing for the "America" I saw in pictures but didn’t know.  The Vermont winter scenes were exactly like the quintessential American Christmas cards I had seen as a child and the illustrations in picture books that were read to me. Houses with wreaths and sparkling lights on white perfect snowy landscapes. These were scenes I had never experienced growing up in South America. It was in Vermont, many years later, that those pictures became part of my real life and where I finally had a sense of belonging and connection that I have not felt anywhere else in the world.  It is those feelings and memories that come back to me strongly during this Christmas season. 

Accordion Memories

          

My Hohner Accordion

             Often, conversations where I mention my accordion playing start with… 

            “What have you been up to these days?” a friend might ask.

 

            “I got out my accordion am playing some each day….It’s fun reconnecting with it because I haven’t played in ages, ” I reply.

 

            I know that if I tell people that I am practicing my guitar, or banjo, or dulcimer there would be more recognition such as… “Oh, I didn’t know you played.”  Something about the accordion stops people in their tracks because they are so unfamiliar with it. It’s not a common or popular instrument in the United States.

           Most of the time, people don’t respond when I mention my accordion practicing. What I don’t go into is that my accordion connects me to an unusual past, a time long ago that I now like to remember.  I didn’t realize this connection I have to my accordion until recently.

 

            Because the accordion is an not an ordinary instrument, it appeals to me now.  I didn’t used to feel that way. When I was a little girl, all I ever wanted was to play the piano.  A piano is what I wished for when blowing out my birthday candles or wishing on the first star in the night sky.  When I was eight years old and living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, my parents bought me a child-sized German made Hohner accordion.  It was white pearl with three change of registers and a keyboard that was less than two octaves.  I knew then, that I was not going to get a piano.

 

            Mother found a German music teacher who gave accordion lessons in her home in Belgrano, a suburb of Buenos Aires.  She drove me to my lesson every week after school.  She, too, started taking lessons and bought herself a full-size dark red Hohner accordion. My lessons were in Spanish because my teacher only spoke German and Spanish.  Because she was a strict, I learned to read music, something I’ve appreciated all my life. Mother and I took lessons for several years and played duets together at the annual recital held in the teacher’s back garden in early December, the beginning of summer.

                                     Mother and I playing at a recital in Buenos Aires (cir 1954)

 

            The accordion was popular in Argentina especially in musical groups playing the romantic rhythms of the tango.  As a child, I heard the mournful, haunting sounds and staccato rhythms of this music all around me.  The high-walled back garden of our house was adjacent to the Coq D’Or Bar and Restaurant.  In the summer the tango music wafted through my open bedroom window late into the night.  My German Swiss friend Marga, who lived across the street, had a college-aged brother who played the accordion in their walled-in back garden.  Next door lived los Alemanes, (the Germans).  We didn’t often speak to them but on Sundays we heard them singing nationalist German songs accompanied by an accordion.

 

            My accordion lessons ended when I was twelve and we moved to Washington DC.   This was my first time living in the U.S. and I struggled to fit in with American kids my age.  I never talked about accordion lessons for fear of kids making fun of me and noticing I was different. I knew American kids did not grow up playing the accordion. Because I wanted to be like them I didn’t talk of my life abroad at all.  Over time I forgot the accordion.

 

            It wasn’t until 50 years later when Art and I retired to Vermont, that I thought about playing the accordion again.  I had a neighbor who also played the accordion when he was young and was playing again.  We “connected” over talking about our long ago accordion experiences and I bought myself a used Hohner…adult size now.  He encouraged me to practice, gave me some music and occasionally we’d get together and play duets. 

            When I told Mother, who was in her nineties by then, that I had started playing the accordion again.  She replied, “I would give anything to hold an accordion once again.” Now I know what she meant.

 

            My Hohner accordion is with me now in Asheville.  During the many months at home because of the Covid19 pandemic I have been inspired to get it out and play more.  Yes, I am rusty and don’t play very well, but when I practice, my fingers seem to find the familiar keys even though my arms tire holding and managing the bellows.  Other than hearing myself play the familiar music I have, I like reconnecting with that long ago past in Buenos Aires.  Playing my Hohner brings me close Mother as I remember how we played together.  She would be happy knowing I’m practicing again.  Recently as I was playing some simple Christmas carols I saw myself sitting on the wide stones of our floor to ceiling stone fireplace in Vermont playing on Christmas Eve surrounded by family and friends.

 

            I have come full circle in life since I was 12 years old. Now what I like most of all about my accordion is that owning one, and playing it is not something anyone else I know has or does.  I like to think that sets me apart as being different and is proof of my adventuresome life abroad. At last, at 75 I am grateful for all the things that make me unusual and distinguish me from others around me. I celebrating that,  but won’t be giving any public concerts anytime soon.      

 

 

 

Zoom Yoga

          

         “Hi, Kristina…so nice to see you today,” says my friend Mary with a big smile as she welcomes me into her Zoom Yoga class. 

            “How are things in Rochester?” I ask her.

            “Good,” she always says.  She might add, “we had 8 inches of snow yesterday. Or “Dick is doing well and it’s beautiful up here.”  (Mary has a way of elongating words like beautiful in her enthusiasm for life.)

 

            Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning at 10 a.m. I am transported to Mary’s living room on Gt. Hawk Mountain where I have visited many times. The high ceilings with skylights and the tall windows that are framed like a painting of the outdoors are so familiar.  We lived at Gt. Hawk for 20 years in a house on Sparrow Hawk Road, just a short walk from Mary’s.  Mary and husband Dick, have been friends for over 25 years. We all came and went from Gt. Hawk to overseas postings and second homes in Florida, New Jersey, New Hampshire and other places.  We often saw each other during the summers when we were back “home” in Rochester, Vermont.  We kept in touch through Christmas letters and occasional phone calls.

 

            On a recent visit to Gt. Hawk in September we spent time together, catching up on our lives where we had left off.  During lunches and dinner out, and visits on their terrace we talked of “old times” and dear friends at Gt. Hawk who are no longer living. We talked of our families and even our parents.  Mine, who  first built at Gt. Hawk in 1970 and hers who both visited  often and are now buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Rochester.  Our children grew up coming and going from Gt. Hawk.  We share a history of a small Vermont community we love more than any place in the world.

 

            “ What are you doing with yourselves while you live up here? ,” I asked knowing that at this time of year they are always at their condo in Ft. Pierce, Florida for warmer weather. The Covid19 pandemic has driven them to the much safer environment in Vermont.

            “I have my “yogis” that I continue with via Zoom,” Mary told me.  “I do a regular Yoga class through my church in Ft. Pierce and I continue to teach from here on Zoom.”

            “Oh, I miss my Yoga class in Asheville,” I told her.  I thought of my attempts to try short Yoga sessions on U-Tube via the IPad and how that just had not stuck with me.

            “Why don’t you join my Yoga class from Asheville?” she surprised me by asking.

            

            I knew Mary taught Yoga and yet I had never inquired about how she got started.  This visit she told me she began to want to teach Yoga during the years she and Dick lived in Moscow while he headed the American Express office.  She studied and took classes herself, became certified, and has taught for the last 20 years.  She always has students wherever they are living which now is winter in Florida and summer in Vermont.

 

            The truth is that it has taken me time to warm up to, and sign up for, activities of all kinds that now take place on Zoom.  Of all the Zoom activities now available as we stay home, I could not imagine doing any kind of exercise class on a computer screen and be able to follow it.  With such a warm invitation from Mary to join her class, I thought…”why not?” 

 

            I confess I’ve been doing Zoom Yoga 3 times a week for almost 2 months now and I can’t imagine my life without it.  Beyond reaping the benefits of stretching, relaxing, and deep breathing, I get to visit three times a week with someone I share a long history with, even though she is in Vermont and I am in Asheville.  The isolation of many months of living with Covid19 has made me long for old friends and connections to the past more than ever.

 

            Other “yogis” (as Mary calls us) start to log on to Zoom from Florida as she welcomes each one personally before the start of each class.  Over the weeks I’ve become familiar with her friends in Ft. Pierce. I take note of their suntans, their short sleeved shirts and bare feet in contrast to Mary’s sweatshirts in my long sleeves and warm socks as it cools down in the Western North Carolina Mountains.  I catch glimpses of people’s homes in coastal Florida – lots of windows, lanais and warm sunshine pouring in.  I listen to the chats with each friend and discover this a group of liberal transplanted Floridians all doing “good works” through their church and other organizations. They show up regularly with enthusiasm to this Yoga class.

            

            Mary opens her Zoom class 10 minutes early to make time to personally greet everyone and have them check in.  Sometimes Dick strolls by with his morning coffee and sweet roll and says hello.  It is a warm and friendly group. Although I’m the outsider I love being there.  I quickly discovered that Mary is an experienced and committed instructor. I am impressed by how she adapts her class to teaching via Zoom while still able to check up on each person’s form.  We do not move around as if we were in a large Yoga studio but she works us hard sitting in a chair or on the floor, and often standing for balance poses. She varies the movements and poses we  work on each session. No two classes are alike which makes it far more interesting for me. Mary is full of praise always saying "perfect", or "that's it...you can do it" .  I know the power of positive reinforcement is key to excellent teaching..  I have such a sense of well-being as she concludes each class with a long shavasana relaxation.  

 

            “Thank you so much, for coming to class today,” Mary says just as my living room clock is striking eleven. She reminds us that our donations towards her Yoga Ministry go to causes like the California fires, Gulf Coast hurricanes,  and this month's  damage from the hurricane Eta in Honduras. 

            “Look forward to seeing you all next time…and stay well.”   We say our good byes and log off.

             As I move the furniture back in place in the dining room and gather up my block and strap and yoga mat to put away, I marvel at how well this Yoga class works on Zoom.  I put things away with a sense of well-being and purpose I did not have before I became one of Mary’s “yogis”. 

 

I often send a thank you via text after class.  I always get an up lifting reply which carries me through to our next meeting...

 

Oh Kristina, I am so grateful and happy that you enjoy the classes. I LOVE that you’ve joined and you and Art have a Fort Pierce family already waiting for you when you come and visit! These days are very stressful and difficult. It’s a tremendous boost for me to be with everyone and bring something positive and healthy into our lives, even just for an hour. I also love that through our donations we are making a difference in the lives of others. Thank you so much for your encouragement and support, Kristina! 

I look forward to seeing you Thursday!! ❤️🙏🤩

 Art and Mary on a hike in September...

            

Life as it is now...

     I sit on my front porch these last warm days of autumn.  The leaves are gone on the maple trees which remind me of Vermont. From my office window I look down on them… now with new bare branches.  The tall rhododendrons, and the hydrangeas by the side of the house that were beautiful during the long spring and into summer are now brown and ugly but the holly bushes and tall evergreens will stay green into winter. The front lawn is piled with leaves that blow everywhere including the porch where I sit daily to contemplate the changes I see around me. Today I have my windows open wide to the warm breezes knowing that by this weekend they will be closed and I will most likely be putting on the heat. 

                 A North Carolina Maple...                  

            I have always liked anticipating a new season, Letting go of fall this year, and facing winter when the Covid19 pandemic of nine months is still with us, does not feel hopeful.   This time last year we were leaving for a three week trip to Buenos Aires to enjoy the Argentine spring in the city where I grew up. This year as I stare at the blank pages on my engagement calendar, I try not allow myself to look ahead to the many unknowns. I am becoming more Buddhist, as I try to practice patience, gratitude, and acceptance each day.  

            Gratitude plays an important role in Buddhist teachings. Buddha said “A person of integrity is grateful and thankful.”  I’d like to think I am one of those people.

Here is my current list of what I am grateful for during these times…

            Husband…at the top of the list is, Art, who is my constant, patient, loving companion.  He is someone to go on hikes with, to sit and read with, to share everything with, to complain to if necessary.  He even cleans up the kitchen for me every single meal which makes that three times a day.. now that we eat only at home. He is my forever best friend so that I have no need of any other.

My best hiking buddy...

                                                   

            Family… is special and I love being included via Facetime in Hayden, Jessica and Austin’s lives in Washington D.C.  I am grateful that they have discovered Asheville as a “getaway” from their city life and have come for more extended visits than ever before. I love my dear niece Megan whom I get to chat with every Sunday afternoon for an hour from her home in Berkeley, Ca.  We have become closer and more connected these nine months with our weekly phone calls. We have not missed a single week since mid March.

                                                                My special niece, Megan...

            Friends…gathered throughout a lifetime have become more valuable as we have time now for frequent phone calls and texting and emailing, Facetime and Zoom.  Connecting with Jenny in London, Suzanne in Santiago, Sue U. in São Paulo, Mary K. in Tucson, Mary R. in Washington D.C., emailing all the time with Terrie in Ft. Collins, Susan in Vermont, Helga in Sarasota…I look forward to Zoom Yoga classes three mornings a week with Mary W. teaching from her living room in Vermont, me in Asheville, and her regular Yoga class in Florida           

         Biltmore Lake…I have grown to appreciate the nature all around me where I live. It has brought solace during these times when many feel ”locked up” indoors.  We have explored miles of new trails in the Pisgah National Forest behind where we live right from our front door.  I have learned the best remedy for feeling “down” is to head out the door and into the woods for a long walk while practicing mindfulness …being in this moment in nature.

            Health…I am more grateful than ever for our continuing good health as we hear about and interact with neighbors around us who are not so fortunate facing serious illnesses and accidents.

            I will savor these last days of autumn knowing I will soon be moving indoors to pick up reading those unread books, tackling the sorting of the old photos we have vowed to do for years, moving ahead on my memoir writing pieces, exploring new soup and stew recipes, and staying with the Zoom Yoga classes.  Art and I will bundle up and embrace the winter nature walks all around us. I'll look forward to staying close to friends via phone and FaceTime. It’s not a bad life taking one day at a time..

The best of fall at Biltmore Lake...    

 

    

            

 

 

    

            

A Sample Piece - Speculation and Invention in Nonfiction Writing

         I recently took a writing class offered by the Flat Iron Writer’s Room in Asheville.  (Classes during the pandemic are now offered on Zoom and even attended by aspiring writers outside of Asheville.)  “Speculation and Invention  in Nonfiction Writing” is a way of using techniques of guessing or wondering, to enhance larger truths in a memoir.  Imagining what might have happened if you weren’t actually present or if something occurred long ago, is a an effective technique in nonfiction writing.  It should be used as a means of understanding a character more fully or perhaps a situation that you might not know all the details about.

            Tessa Fontaine, who taught the class, had us practice various ways of doing this in short writing prompts during our online classes. Then, we were assigned to write a longer piece. I wrote about an incident that I remember vividly that happened when I was a teenager living with my family on Rua Terra Nova in São Paulo, Brazil.  It was disturbing and since I have had many questions about what I remember,  it was a good way to practice the “art of speculating” in memoir.

 

**

 

            A Casa em Rua Terra Nova….

São Paulo, Brazil - 1960

 

            A black taxi drove into the cul de sac and stopped at #31. I watched from an upstairs window, as the driver unloaded a battered cardboard suitcase and a birdcage on the cobblestone sidewalk.  A gray haired, heavy woman in a black skirt and frayed bedroom slippers got out. The doorbell shrilled. I heard Feli, the Spanish house maid, open the glass front door that echoed in the marble hallway and then unlock the outside gate. The new cook walked in.

 

            Anna, was unlike any maid we had ever known.  To us children, she was old with limp gray hair pulled into a tight pony tail as she shuffled along the tile kitchen floors.  She didn’t speak much and when she did, her Portuguese had a foreign accent.  Possibly she was from Eastern Europe or Russia and might have immigrated to Brazil after the World War II. Perhaps she had had a family of her own, though now she only had a parrot in a cage, as far as we could tell. My little brothers were delighted and ready to adopt the parrot as a pet.  Anna was not pleased and kept them away from her bird whom she treated as her child. There was something sad about her that frightened me. It could very well be, that Mother hired her not knowing about the bird. She told Anna the parrot could stay but he’d have be in his cage in the laundry room on the shelf above the wash tubs. At night when she went to bed she covered the parrot’s cage with a cloth and all was quiet.

            Anna and the parrot may have lived with us a few weeks or perhaps a month or two. Mother must have known that she would have to be let go when she found another cook. Bringing a pet parrot into our house was not ideal.  Feli, who lived in the tiny maids’ quarters with Anna might have objected. Perhaps Anna wasn’t a very good cook, although Mother did the food shopping and made up the menus. She ordered dishes that we would eat and taught Anna how we liked things cooked “the American way”. 

            While Anna worked for us, she took the parrot outdoors in the garden occasionally. She hung the cage by the back door while pinning the wet laundry on clothes lines.  She sang to the parrot and was kind to him in a way that she wasn’t with me or my brothers. My brothers were impatient wanting to touch the parrot and begged Anna to let him out of the cage.  She wouldn’t.

            The boys spent time coaxing the parrot to speak.  Como vai?  Alo!  Obrigado…were a few of the parrot’s greetings – “How are you?  Hello…Thanks.  

            Anna told my brothers he didn’t talk much because he was old.  “Éle e velho.”  

            Thinking back, she might have trained him not to talk so she could take him with her wherever she worked and lived. Perhaps he was really old, as Amazon birds do live from 25 to 75 years depending on their species. But age does not limit them from talking.

            Like most large Brazilian houses, ours had a high stucco wall around the garden with broken pieces of glass on top for security.  We heard conversations, noise and barking dogs from surrounding houses but never saw anyone.  João, the gardener, tended the dense tropical plants. There were banana trees that regularly produced green fruit.  A giant fig tree took over half of the yard.  We didn’t eat the figs as the gardener told us they were poisonous.  It was the fig tree that was my brothers’ favorite hangout.  With branches that were low enough to climb up on, they picked the gooey fruits and threw them at each other as boys do.  Stray cats sometimes came over the wall into the garden but Anna was careful to keep an eye on the cage while she allowed the parrot some fresh air… um pouco de ar fresco.

 

            I heard the scream from downstairs early one morning.  Then there was silence.  I listened again as I crept downstairs and went towards the kitchen and laundry room where I heard loud moaning and weeping.  Mother was there murmuring kind phrases in broken Portuguese.

            Sinto muito…tudo ficará bem.. she said to Anna.  “I am so sorry…everything will be alright.”

            Anna was weeping inconsolably as she clung to the bird cage. The parrot was not on his perch but lying on the bottom dead.  Mother gave me a look that said I should leave.

            As I backed out of the room, my little brothers were pushing behind me to see what had happened. I heard Anna shriek, as she saw them. 

            “Foram eles”, she said pointing in a menacing way accusing my brothers.  “They did it!” She broke into heaving sobs again. 

            Mother fixed us breakfast that morning which none of us ate.  The driver took us to school and as we drove away from 31 Rua Terra Nova, I wondered what would happen to Anna now.  I was scared.

            In the afternoon when we were back from school.  The house was quiet still holding on to death.  Mother had afternoon tea ready. She sat down with us and said that Anna had packed up her things and left.

            “Anna is going to be alright,” she assured us, “and I’ll be looking for a new cook.”

 

            No one ever talked about what killed the parrot.  Had he died of old age?  Perhaps he had picked up one of the poisonous figs that were all over the garden.  Could one of my brothers have fed him something behind Anna’s back and made the parrot sick? Maybe one or both of them was too scared to confess their guilt. Could this be a secret they still carried with them?  I had never asked.

            Mother never said what happened to the dead bird.  João, the gardener, could have been at the house that day and dug a hole to bury the parrot in the back garden.  Or, Anna, who treated the parrot as her child, could have taken him with her to bury somewhere else.  Perhaps she had a friend or even a distant relative in the big city of São Paulo who would help her. I comforted myself imagining she did have a place to go beyond our house…but I didn’t know for sure.

            We never talked about Anna and the parrot again. But when I think back to our lives at 31 Rua Terra Nova in São Paulo, Brazil I have never forgotten Anna and the parrot.  For me, they remain one of the most vivid memories of that house and a mystery that has never been solved.

                                        Back garden of our house with fig tree in the background...

 

            

             

  

 

Vermont Vignettes

Bingo Road

                                                                                

                                                             

            “Remember when we could barely make it up this hill on bikes?”  Art says to me.

            “It seemed much steeper then, “ I reply

            This was where we came to bike because it was flat, except for this slight incline.

            “How come we had to walk up this hill? “ I ask as we easily ascend without being winded.

 

            Art and I are on Bingo Road on an early morning walk.  We drove down from Great Hawk above the clouds into the early morning fog.  We parked at the first Green Mountain Forest sign where we have stopped many times. Today will be be one of the last warm days of summer. It’s cool and fresh under the cover of the tall maples and pines that have grown together forming a canopy over the road.  We start our familiar walk along  Bingo Brook, recognizing each familiar landmark along the way.  

Bingo Road

 

            Bingo Brook has changed since Hurricane Irene barreled through central Vermont nine years ago this summer.  Much of Bingo Road was torn away and has been rebuilt.  The brook now has more big rocks and boulders than it ever did. What used to be a gushing stream has 

turned into a trickle of water meandering by rocks waiting for rain and snow melt.  There is a drought in Vermont right now and the mini water falls are dried up.

 

            There are no other walkers and no cars have come by.  We are alone on Bingo Road where we have walked for thirty years.  I pass another Green Mountain Forest sign and I think about Mother who came often for picnics down here.   That was fifty years ago  when she spent summers at the house they built on Gt. Hawk.  She was not a hiker and could only walk on the flat but nothing deterred her from dropping everything to announce , “I’m going on a picnic down to Bingo...”

 

            Three quarters of a mile up the road I see the edge of Harlan’s property as we come out of the tree cover into a wide open sunny space.  Harlan, lives “off the grid” in a handsome brown farmhouse with green shutters.  His long and narrow property in this valley is neatly mowed up to the extensive vegetable garden.  As we get closer to the house we see a man sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch.

            “Could that be Harlan?”  I ask Art.

            “Harlan,” Art calls out.  “It’s us, the Aaronson’s .”  in a loud voice.  “We are back ...”

            A white haired man starts to get up but then sits back down with his cup of coffee in hand and asks us how we are doing.  He looks the same with his snow white hair, cut shorter now.

            Harlan delivered mail in his truck for twenty years when we lived here.  He is now retired with time to sit on the front porch.  We comment on the beauty of his spot.

            “Best decision, I ever made,” Harlan says to us, referring to his idyllic private piece of Vermont.

            In his years as a mailman Harlan knew every person in the town of Rochester (population 1200) by name.  He probably knew a lot more about all of us than we ever guessed simply by the mail we got  He’d come up our steep Sparrow Hawk Road, winter or summer, snow or rain, mud season or not , stop at the bottom of our long driveway to bring us mail.  In those days he wore his graying hair long, pulled back in a pony tail.  He was a slight man with a fair complexion and a healthy, ruddy look from the long days he spent outdoors.  Rumors spread around town about Harlan...mostly about the women in his life and/or his drinking habits.  We never knew Harlan’s real story but a few years ago on a  walk down Bingo we encountered him in his garden with several grandchildren. “He must have had a wife at some point in his life,” I said to Art.

 

            We walk past Harlan’s house to where there is a concrete bridge that crosses Bingo Brook and a turnaround with a sign indicating this is as far as emergency vehicles will go.  I remember how in the winter the road beyond Harlan’s is never plowed as it continues up the valley. This is a popular cross country ski and snowshoe track in the winter.

 

            Today the wildflowers abound amongst the golden rod, paint brush, black eyed Susan’s and Queen Anne’s lace. There is complete silence and we still have not encountered another person nor a car.  We head up to the Pine Gap Trail but decide we’ll save it for another day as it is a five mile loop on a narrow path and we don’t have our hiking poles.

 

            There are campsites available from the National Forest Service on down Bingo Road but perhaps due to Covid, the middle of the week and after Labor Day there are no campers around.  We turn around and head back the way we came the mile or more to our car.  A girl on a racing bike zips past us and a Jeep with New York license plates goes by with a duffle bag on the roof as if it’s headed to one of those deserted camps that seem impossible to get to.

            I have begun to notice the turning of the leaves in just the 10 days we have been in Vermont.  Today I see yellow and reds coming out on the maples.  It’s a reminder of how quickly the fall comes to this part of the world...

            As we get back to the car we don’t have time to go up the road to the old cemetery to walk around as we always  do.  There are many Civil War gravestones in this cemetery that is one of four in and around the town of Rochester.

            “Let’s come back this weekend to visit the cemetery,” I say to Art.

 

            Nothing ever changes on Bingo Road.  We have been walking it, biking it, and even snowshoeing on it for the past 30 years.  It is comforting to know that there are still  places in the world where the landscape stays the same. It feels secure in a world that is transformed daily by development, climate change, and natural disasters. Mom and Dad walked Bingo Road fifty years ago and Art and I have walked it today....I know it will be here just as we remember it  whether we return or not.

 

**********

            

                                                         Sandy’s Books and Bakery 

 

            We park on the Rochester Town Park and walk the half block past the Irving gas station to Sandy’s Books and Bakery in Rochester.  Sandy’s used to be housed in one small two story house but now has expanded into a second house next door called The Bookery.

            

            Heading up to the front porch of the Bookery we go through what could be an English cottage garden.  Sandy has planted sunflowers, now in full bloom, Black Eyed Susans and an array casual perennials that abound in the early September sunlight.

 

            Entering the Bookery I spot Sandy sitting at a desk in the corner.  She glances up and without skipping a beat says , “Hi Art, hi Kristina...nice to see you back”.

              We have not seen her since last summer.  She has a way of greeting us that makes me feel like we never moved away. It has been nine years since we have been residents here.

 

            I can see she is busy and yet she stops to talk for a minute.  Actually, no one in Rochester, Vermont is ever too preoccupied to talk. It is what you do.  I learned this years ago when we bought a house in Rochester and then lived here full time.  You never walked by anyone without inquiring about them and exchanging news or weather before going your separate ways.

 

            “How has business, been during the pandemic?”  Art asks her.

 

            “It’s OK,” she answers.  “We opened in mid -June  but as you can see we are not open all the hours and days we used to be. Business is OK and I’ve been lucky to have dedicated workers who wanted to come back.”

            Then she adds with some pride, ”and we offer the ONLY public rest room in town that is open.”   I know the gas station has closed their public rest room as has the Rochester Cafe which is now only open for takeout food, and the library is closed to the public. There are no other restrooms town.  

 

            Rochester, may be small with a “downtown” that is barely two blocks long. It is on Route #100 which is the main highway going north and south up the spine of Vermont.  It’s a busy route for people heading to Sugarbush and Stowe ski resorts and to Burlington and  South to Killington ski area and further to Londonderry and Mt. Snow and the southern part of the state.  Tourists stop frequently in Rochester to walk around the picturesque Vermont town with a Town Park,  a gazebo for summer concerts, a white church and steeple, a public library with stain glassed windows, one gas station, and several restaurants and one or two Bed and Breakfast places.

 

            Sandy’s Books and Bakery has become a mainstay of Rochester not only because she is on Main Street but because she has so perfectly combined an eclectic bookstore, and gift shop with an eat-in and take out Cafe of homemade food.  Mismatched tables and chairs are tucked here and there amongst packed bookshelves and spill out onto the side porch which faces the gas station. There is a second floor accessed by a narrow staircase with three rooms with book shelves full of used and new books shelved together.  Surrounding the house she has planted a splendor of flowering bushes and plants which brighten the downtown area.  Coming to her store is like discovering an English cottage  and wandering in to be enthralled with much to look at.  She is an experienced book person, a creative cook, and a natural gardener.

            I’ve know Sandy Lincoln for 25 years, ever since she came to Rochester.  She has a lifetime of experience working in bookstores including 15 years at the well-known Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vt.  She opened a bookstore in Brandon and then applied and was appointed town librarian in Rochester.  She had no library training but she could tell you about every book on the shelf, recommend one or more, and  had wonderful contacts for planning library programs.  She did not stay long as the “librarian”.  Instead, she helped her partner, Larry research and begin his business which is now the Vermont Soap Company in Middlebury.  She and Larry bought land in Rochester and built a home in the North Hollow while she started her own books and bakery business in Rochester.  They are the quintessential small town entrepreneurs.  

 

            I look forward to spending time at the bookstore every summer when I return to Rochester .  I look forward to buying the unusual, artistic, and affordable greeting cards to take home and use throughout the year.  I find books that are classic “gems”, used and affordable Interspersed among the books are used and new artworks, paintings by local artists with a Vermont theme, gift items like Vermont Soap Products, jewelry made by artisans who live in the community.  I recognize the names ...people that I know who still live in and around Rochester.  All is displayed with an air of disarray that makes you want to just stay and look more in case you might have missed a treasure of some kind.

 

            Art and I finally choose our cards and books and head to the back of the main store where the coffee and bakery items are sold to make our purchases.  Sandy walks by in the kitchen, sees us again, and sticking her head out says, “Thanks so much for coming in...it’s great to see you both.”  

            Sandy’s Books and Bakery is where I look forward to going more than anywhere else in town.  I know Sandy and her history, but she is unique in her knowledge of books and her maintaining a thriving business in a town of 1200 in central Vermont.