Chile
“It must be at least 40 years since we last saw each other,” my friend Suzanne Gordon says. “I was visiting in California and so were you….”
I think back trying to remember when that might have been. I remember more vividly our friendship in Santiago, Chile over 45 years ago. We were both newly married. Suzanne met her Chilean husband Santiago, when he was a student at the University of California. Having moved to Chile she was adjusting to Latin culture and Santiago’s large family. Art and I were working at the International School Nido de Aguilas, Suzanne and I met at the school where she was a teacher and I was the Librarian. In those days she craved meeting other Americans.
We are chatting on Face Time on warm spring day in Asheville and a cold wintry one in Santiago , but we are in the same time zone . Ah...the wonders of modern technology! Suzanne speaks with the same soft lilt to her voice. We are grandmothers now with gray hair now but sharp minds. The memories of long ago come back. We have kept in touch through Christmas letters. More recently I have wished for a friend like her.
“You have become an impressive writer with two published books,” I tell her. “I am a big fan and your writing has inspired me. Your blog, Tarweed Spirit, helped me start mine."
“We always had things in common,” Suzanne says. We did but I had not thought of that in years as I moved away to live in many other places. Suzanne and Santiago live in the same neighborhood where they began married life. She has made a life in Chile but to me she was always very American.. Now I think of her as my “writer” friend who has succeded in ways I envy.
She tells me she is researching a great-aunt who came from Scotland to California. She plans to write an historical novel based on her life.
“I am loving it,” she says, “because it gives me something to do while we are ordered to stay home.” The lockdown is strict in Santiago especially for those over 75. The center of the pandemic has moved to South America and they’re waiting it out.
“I struggle with having the discipline to write every day,” I confide. She assures me she does too. “ I think a lot about my next piece while I’m not at my computer,” she tells me. “When it comes to me, that is when I sit down to write it.”
We talk of our children and grandchildren and she tells me about her international English speaking writers’ group. It reminds me of the aspiring writers I met with when I lived in Dubai when I was part of such a group.
Santiago, Suzanne’s husband, comes in to say hello. He is an older version of his handsome younger self….a grandfather now and a physically fit one.
Suzanne and I talk on as if reluctant to let go of each other after so many years. I assure her we can do this again.
I think about a quote from her recent post on her blog “It is important these days to have things to look forward to.” What better thing to do than to reconnect with a friend from the past and of whom I am now an admirer.
Suzanne and Santiago in Chile in 1976
Art holding Hayden, Santiago, and Suzanne in 1977
***
Brazil
“So good to hear from you. Yes, this is a crazy time and believe it will get worse before it gets better… yes, we are in Brazil.”
When we heard the news of the surge of Covid-19 cases in Brazil this spring, I emailed our friends Sue and Jim Udsen who live in São Paulo. They own a large seed company, travel internationally, keep a home in California, but live permanently in São Paulo near their son Steve who works in the business, and daughter Nikki, a pediatrician in a public health hospital in the city.
Sue had much news of her grandsons, her children, about the business staying open, and the ineptness of the Bolsonaro government which “makes Trump look like a champ.” Unable sometimes to reach her elderly Mother in California she wrote, “I know she’s fine.” She even wrote about daughter Nikki who is in the middle of treating Covid-19 babies and delivering newborns with mothers who have the virus, without a note of worry. That’s Sue....she has not changed.
Sue and Jim are our most adventuresome friends who easily left their American culture behind to start a life in Brazil. We met them in Chile and Sue worked for me in the library at Nido de Aguilas. We have kept in touch for over 45 years. They visited once in Vermont. At times we have considered visiting them and now that we can’t, I wish we could. When Brazil is mentioned on the news or special reports come from São Paulo, I think of them. They never talk of abandoning their life in Brazil for something else despite the bad governments, fluctuating economic situation, and often the natural disasters that have struck where they live.
*****
Argentina
“Brian no entiende lo que esta pasando…solo quiere salir para tomar su café…Eva wrote me. Not understanding the lockdown, her husband Brian has been difficult because he’s used to his routine. Like most Argentines he can’t adjust to the morning without a coffee at the local Café. When I hear from Eva I remember our trips to Argentina, and visiting Eva & Brian’s apartment on the 9th floor overlooking the Rio de la Plata in suburban La Lucila. The apartment looks down on the American School where she and I were classmates in the 1950’s. Eva’s parents were Hungarian Jewish refugees in Buenos Aires and they sent her to the American school to escape the antisemitism in Argentina. Eva is lively, fun, and fast talking like many Argentines. Now she cares for her husband Brian who has serious dementia at home with help from her adult children and grandchildren who live nearby.
Me and Eva on a visit to Buenos Aires in 2011
Argentina
My childhood is full of memories of the Harris Smith family who lived across the street from us in Acasuso. Anglo-Argentines, they sent their three children to British Schools. My brothers and I went to the American School. For seven years we were in and out of each other’s houses and played together. Teeny (short for Christine) and I reconnected as adults and she took me to find the street and the houses where we had grown up in suburban Buenos Aires. Now she cares for Jaime, her Argentine husband who has terminal cancer. She wrote me in April to tell me Jaime is alive…no cure…but they are surrounded by four adult children and at least 15 grandchildren. She is a survivor. I knew her parents and I know her life story just as she knows mine.
Me and Teeny visiting the house I grew up in in 2011...
***
Manila, Philippines
My friendship with Rose Villamor began the day in 1993 when I walked into my classroom at the International School Manila Elementary School building to begin teaching Spanish to 3rd and 4th graders. Rose’s classroom was next door to mine. She saved my life on my first day by asking, “Si necesitas ayuda…I am here.”
“Help? Oh, yes,” I told her. as I hadn’t a clue how to teach a foreign language to children. We became instant friends and have been for nearly 30 years now.
She lived the expat life as Tony, her husband was in the Philippine Foreign Service. She understood my situation right away. I had arrived in a foreign country accompanying my husband who had “the job” while I had to find something to keep me busy. Teaching in the elementary school would give me something to do but it was not something I would have chosen.
Rose was like me in that she knew how to hang on to a friendship… especially when I moved away from the Philippines as she had done many times in her life. We saw each other again when she came to visit us in Vermont, in Dubai, and most recently two years ago in Asheville.
Now that we are half a world away from each other, I think of her managing a household of caregivers for husband Tony who has Alzheimer’s disease. She just retired from teaching at 80 and wrote, school has kept me busy which I welcomed (at times) but I guess with online and virtual learning, its time for me to exit as I am not tech savvy.
Although quarantine regulations have been eased, I don’t intend to go out. I need to keep safe at home…I have rearranged some furniture for a change…new look, new life. I will tell her how familiar that sounds. How often have I felt restless and stuck at home and simply rearranged furniture and rehung paintings all over the house for that “new look”.
She and I view the world similarly even though we come from opposite backgrounds and cultures. She is strongly Catholic and was raised in a well-to-do family in Manila who were descendants of Spaniards. She has a global perspective of the world as do I. No wonder we connected instantly so many years ago.
Rose visiting Asheville in 2018
Rose visiting in Dubai in 2008
London, U.K.
My English sister, Jenny, and I met in 1966 when I was an exchange student living with her and her mother. We were 20 years old which translates to a 55 year friendship. We have checked up on each other during the months of the pandemic as we would family…describing what we are doing and how we are staying well and what we miss the most.
In Jenny’s words, life has felt very strange these days. We are so thankful for our garden and our daily long walks…The garden of the house they have lived in over 40 years, the British custom of getting out to walk…rain or shine…and the importance of family sum up her life. We are both grandmother’s now exchanging all the news of our children and grandchildren. I am “Aunty Kris” to hers.
Jenny & I in Catford flat - February 1966
Visiting Jenny on a trip to England
Marilyn Mann, my other British friend and I have kept in touch since we were young and single and living in faraway Asunción, Paraguay in 1974-75.. Marilyn worked at the British Embassy and I was the Librarian at the American School in Asuncíon. The expat community was small and single expats were few. We played tennis and travelled to La Paz, Lake Titicaca, and Machu Pichu together on holiday.
When Art and I and Hayden were living in Manila we visited Marilyn and Mike and their three children in Hong Kong where they were settled as expat Brits. It was an hour flight for us and a welcome change from life in the third world. We loved those escapes. When we packed up to leave the Philippines and return to the US we could not bring our loved maid Josephine. I arranged to send her to Marilyn in Hong Kong which changed the course of her life forever....another story. Today Josephine is married, has two boys and lives in Devon in the UK.
Now Marilyn and Mike are retired in London with three married children and grandchildren living near them. Marilyn and I check up on each other often via email. We share thoughts on international trips we had planned but are NOT taking, exchange views of a Prime Minister she can’t stand and a President I don’t tolerate. We talk of our children whom we know well and promise we’ll get together when we can travel again. Then, we can pick up just where we left off…no matter where and no matter how long it’s been since we last saw each other.
Visiting Marilyn in 2015 in London
***
Home in Asheville, N.C.
The Covid-19 pandemic is not over and we continue to stay home. My “silver lining” (a coined phrase with new meaning in 2020) has become connecting with friends around the world. I have pulled together different “threads” of my nomadic life as I have managed to stay in touch with through the peopleI cared most about and whom I have known for a long time.
As I grow older I think often about friends from the past, with whom I’ve shared many life experiences. People like Suzanne in Santiago, Rose in Manila, Sue in São Paulo and Jenny and Marilyn in London, have become more valuable than ever. It is these long friendships that stand out, that I miss, and that I am grateful I still have. They are the friendships where we know much about each other’s lives over many years.
“Un abrazo grande,” my friend Suzanne said to me in her Chilean Spanish, as we began to say our good byes on Face Time last week. It was reassuring for both of us to know that we are in touch after all these years.
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