Saturday, December 14, 2013

Metro Man

The year was 1981 and I was spending that season playing bass in the Mexico City Philharmonic.  This is an excellent Orchestra that is made up of about a third Mexican musicians, a third American, and a third eastern European.  My younger sister, Lynn had come to visit for a week.  She is fluent in Spanish and had spent a summer in Cali, Colombia.  Now she wanted to experience Mexico City.  The DF, as Mexico City is called, had a population at the time of at least 20 million and was considered the largest city n the world.  I was living in a beautiful colonia called Coyoacan, in the southern part of the city. But I decided to take Lynn to the city center, La Zona Rosa, where we would have lunch at La Fonda de Refugio, a favorite restaurant among my friends and me.  It served traditional Mexican cuisine, food from this more southern part of the country.  It was nothing like the Tex-Mex stuff you get in the United States.  Since the restaurant was in a very crowded part of town, the Metro (or subway) seemed the most expeditious way to get there.

It was 11 AM and rush over was supposedly over.  But the Metro was still packed.  Lynn and I crammed ourselves into one of the cars and were standing as close to our fellow passengers as jelly beans in a jar, unable to move.  Both my sister and I are 5 feet, 8 inches tall and she has yellow, blond hair.  Being taller than most of the other passengers, we could see all around us and stood out from the crowd like two geese in a flock of chickens.  After a while jostling and bumping, I felt a strange poking in my backside.  Not anything sharp, but a blunt instrument.  I managed to turn part way and look down.  To my horror, I saw an erect penis butting up against me.  Completely unable to move away, I yelled something unintelligible in Spanish OR English and started bonking the offender on the shoulder.  The people around me couldn't see what had transpired and thought I was the crazy one.  They backed away from me as fast as they could.  I still vividly remember the startled expressions of the other passengers, not to mention the look of consternation on the man in question.

After what seemed like hours, though it was probably just a minute or two, I grabbed my puzzled sister and promptly got off at the next stop.  "What the heck happened?" she wanted to know.  I filled her in and after I calmed down a bit, we went and had a delicious comida (lunch) of squash blossom tacos and huite la coche.  And I vowed that the next time I rode the Metro at rush hour, I would definitely take one of the cars for women and children.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Nutcracker

Back when our daughter Fiona, now 18, was 9 and in Ballet 2 at the San Francisco Ballet School, we found out that she had gotten two roles in the company's brand new production of the Nutcracker.  She was to be Daisy in the party scene and as a clown in Mother Ginger in the second act.  We were very excited as this was Fiona's first time  performing in the Nutcracker.  First row tickets were on reserve at the Opera House for parents, so I naturally bought two for Rich and me.  I also bought three more so my mother and sister could come to San Francisco to see the ballet.

On opening night, Rich and I sat in the darkness, listening to the Overture.  A thrill washed over us.  As the curtain went up, and Fiona came running down the stairs with the other party children, my heart nearly burst.  She absolutely glowed in her yellow dress, with her hair curled into shining ringlets. Rich and I turned to look at each other and we could see  tears in each other's eyes.  A swell of pride washed over us both.  This has to be one of the best moments of parenthood, I thought.  There are many triumphs, big and small, along the path of raising a child.  But something like this makes for pure, unadulterated love and joy!

As it turned out, Fiona danced beautifully and really put herself into the role of Daisy, the youngest girl at the party.  When all the guests were leaving, Daisy went to sit in a chair by the fire, all by herself.  It was a sight beautiful as any painting.  When her "mother" called, Daisy sleepily got up, hugged the teddy bear she had gotten as a gift, and ran to her mom.

In Act Two, Fiona was a clown who led the circus bear (an enlarged version of the one Daisy received at the party) back under the dress of Mother Ginger.  Fee was very cute in her black and white costume, complete with a pointed, European style clown hat.  When we picked her up after the performance, we told her how proud we were of her.  It seemed to us that she hadn't just played the role, but had actually become Daisy and the clown.  Seeing Fiona dance on stage has become one of my fondest memories, one that I can take out of the album of my mind and admire anytime.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Three Little Kittens

My eighteen-year-old daughter Fiona came home for Thanksgiving and brought with her three kittens that she had rescued.  They are about three months old and unbelievably cute.  They are all gray tabbies with varying degrees of white fur.  Each one has four white mittens for paws and beautiful hazel eyes.  My husband and I have a big orange tabby cat and a coon hound mix.  We weren't sure how they would react to the kittens, but I have to say that they were real troopers.  When the kitties first came in the house, Mona the dog lay down, as if to say that she was cool.  Zach, the orange tabby, hissed a little but soon got used to their rambunctious ways.  The kittens were little dickens, but the two older animals took it all in stride.

When they would sleep, the kittens piled all together in one big mass.  They loved to be held, and would purr like crazy while cuddling in a willing lap.  Their names seemed to suit them well: Harley is kind of an instigator and independent spirit; Bentley is very proper; and Rover is all over the place.  Meal time was a feeding frenzy, and they had to be sequestered in Fiona's room  to prevent Mona and Zach from eating their food.  They have no manners yet and constantly had to be removed by hand from the dining table and kitchen counters.  It felt like being a grandparent, just with four-legged grandkids.  Fiona drove back to Los Angeles yesterday so we were kittenless last night.  This morning, waking up without the kittens there to pester us and without Fiona to hug, felt kind of lonely.  Oh well, Christmas is just around the corner, and we'll be able to host Fiona and the kids again.