Morsels of love

 

Auer salty butter caramel chocolates

Now admittedly I had to ruminate over the title for quite some time as my first

Pop-into-my-head title was Love Bites. That might not have played to well in some cultures. Then I thought of Love Bits. OK not to bad, but still not quite right. Then there was Bits of Love, but hey that could have been most anything.

Then, eureka, Morsels of love presented itself.

 

After all that just about a title you may be expecting a very erudite article: no.

 

Yesterday

1)   The door bell rang and I actually heard it

2)   I made it to the door just as the person was starting to walk off (I am rarely at home, very sporadic in my answering the door, etc.)

3)   A friend handed me a small gift bag and before I could even react was down the drive, back in the car and gone.

 

Ah ha, in the bag (from my favorite chocolate store, but that doesn’t always mean anything as I have been known to pack other presents in anything that comes to hand and my family and good friends know that the sack isn’t always, in fact is rarely, indicative of the present therein) was a delightful small package of my all-time-favorite chocolates!

 

Not sure what I have done to deserve them, but oh will they be (ok two already gone) greatly enjoyed!

 

Morsels of love from good friends.

Catching up, or

Finally having lunch with a friend of long date, but one with whom we seem to struggle these days to schedule anything. She comes and goes and I come and go and as Rudyard Kipling said about East and West “never twain shall meet”.

I don’t remember how many dates and hours we tried until today’s lunch worked – but that’s the beauty of friendship – one keeps at it until it works!

The time passed, as usual, in a flash. Lunch was delicious the talk more so.

Caught up? Not quite, but better than if we hadn’t taken those few hours.

Oops we neglected to plan the next coffee, sushi, Indian, or whatever else our tastebuds fall for, back to the e-mails, the WhatsApp “conversations”. 

Friendship is….

Many things to many people. I could write entire pages on what friendship is.

However, amongst all those others, one is currently very precious: the empathy and

Greetings I received from a friend across the ocean who read about our terrible heat.

For all of you in similar circumstances:

Just want to send you

some coolness! 🛫your friend in Silicon Valley! ⛄

 miracuously it is cooler today!

Where does the sun shine?

Certainly not anywhere that I have been recently.

Oh yes, we have had the odd hour, the even less seldom day, but in general gray reigns supreme throughout Europe. I took a 6-hour train ride from Geneva, Switzerland to Stuttgart, Germany Saturday and it rained the whole way! There was a 10-minute bit of blue sky early Sunday morning, then back to the gray.

To the point that even I am starting to miss the sun: if I say “even I” that is because the main reason that I returned to Europe way back when was because I was tired of seeing the sun every day! I know, I know, many of you find that hard to understand, but once I had known seasons I missed them. In Southern California there are many advantages weather-wise, but seasons aren’t one of them.

Still the lack of sunshine is starting to wear even on my nerves.

Two things alleviate that: the weekend trip to Stuttgart, Germany to celebrate the 80^th birthday of one of my husband’s university friends and the short movie I received this morning from a friend in California.

I had a moment of epiphany: where is the sun?

In the laughs of my friends; in their eyes when we share memories that go back 45 years; in their remembrance of my husband, their friend, who has been gone now for 18 years, but who lives on in their thoughts; the sun lives in the hearts of my friends whether those of long date or those recently met. The sun lives in love – that I have received, that I have given. The sun lives in the smiles of those I encounter every day.

Although I would like the physical sun to shine a tad more than it has been doing, I’ll take the friend’s sunshine any and every day to lighten the darker corners of my mind.

another year, another storm

The luxury of being elsewhere

There is nothing quite like a vacation. One chooses a city, a beach, a country, a mountain.

One studies up on whatever culture, subject or destination one has chosen and gets on the road having duly arranged for air or train fare or having decided to take the car.

There is the enjoyment of planning; the excitement of actually doing and finally the quieter pleasure in the memories and photos of any given trip.

I will never downplay vacations.

But there is better: there is – back when I was renting in the mountains – and with a very few select people - the luxury of being elsewhere.

Being at a friend’s where one follows one’s own schedule and desires (and those do take into account the host or hostess with many a pleasant hour simply chatting, cooking together etc.) knowing that one is allowed to be at home in a way that one never actually is in one’s own home.

No normal schedule: no cleaning a drawer, a cupboard, the refrigerator – so one happily enjoys doing the dishes or mopping the floor because one wants to, not because one needs to or “should”. Here it is simply “could if I feel like it”.  No tasks needing done, no niggling in one’s mind that one should call so and so; visit another; plan something with a child, etc.

Here one can be egotistical – walk to the beach? Hmmm think I will; lay in bed reading half a day, no problem; eat breakfast at 10 or lunch at 11, have dinner or not it’s all delightfully possible.

I love my life at home and would probably be bored should I enjoy this state of affairs too long nevertheless I will return so mellow that it will take days to get back into a “normal” rhythm and life. Who cares? I highly suggest and hope that all my friends can experience, if not often, at least occasionally the luxury of being elsewhere.

Portal, scan and a pat down...

Home, sweet home

Portal, scan and a pat down: bye bye Edinburgh. Thursday and I was going home (some of the English languages best words). I was so tired the night before that I had a hard time going to sleep.

The Castle of Edinburgh as I left the city

The trip by foot down the hill to the bus stop was much easier than I had anticipated; the wait not long (maybe 5 minutes) and the bus fairly empty, the ride fine. At the airport EasyJet has it down to a science: you weigh your own luggage, scan the boarding card whereupon the machine issues a luggage tag, one then rolls one’s luggage to a portal and a real person checks the boarding card and ID. No receipt issued.

Ah, but security more than made up for that ease: I went through the portal, which promptly rang so in turn I got to go through the body scanner – also rang – and led to a pat down. Was it the bar in my arm? No one seemed much concerned – maybe my nails have lead in them.

Made my way to the departure zone, looked at all the stores – now mainly whisky so didn’t buy anything. Went out the East wing as well and finally settled on a Cappucino with an extra shot of espresso and a “Cheddar Cheese Ploughman with Branston Pickle on Malted Bloomer” (read a cheese sandwich on brown bread). Ate half before they announced a delay of almost an hour in the flight’s departure. Good thing that I was going home!

The time did finally roll around but there was a gate change – went there only to find a UA flight. The board posted “gate change awaiting” and although it also posted “go to the Easy Jet App” that wouldn’t load. Is this fun yet? Again though – I was going home so not much could dim my good spirits.

Scottish thistle - the country's "flower"

What a trip, what great travel companions so I'll leave you with the thought lettered on a pub in Inverness:

*Friendship is like Whiskey, the older the better. Too much of anything is bad, but too much of good Whisky is barely enough.*

A pot of tea

A gray day, light rain – all foreseen: a good excuse to make a pot of tea and, in the doing so, to reflect upon why this is such a comforting activity.

I am a coffee drinker as any of my family or friends know, but occasionally I “do” tea.

This has come from partaking in a “cuppa” with so many friends. To the point that just getting out a teapot brings fond memories of conversations and sharing.

If at home tea is usually something I drink if I awake too early and it then precedes breakfast coffee, in the mountains I have tea often as a welcome change from water -

making a pot almost as soon as I have finished with my coffee and breakfast.

Just this past week I had lunch with two very close friends, both of whom I have known for over 40 years. The one gave each of the other two of us the lovely small flowering balls of Jasmine tea – we were celebrating our common birthday. The container and tea had stayed in my car and was a wonderful reminder this morning of friendship and time shared with these two particular women.

Friendship’s tidbits

Love and friendship come in many forms, big things, little things and all things in between.

They come in gestures, in telephone calls, in trips, in meetings, in letters or e-mails; they are sometimes conversations, sometimes gifts, sometimes tasks and errands. They are always appreciated.

My former housemate went to Bern today – last leg of her cancer journey and things are looking good. Bern is a place where we have gone to visit museums, gone on adventures, where she renounced her citizenship and now where she will finish making sure that there is not even one cancer cell lurking anywhere in her body.

Her husband just popped in with a “treat” – ah… memories come flooding back – all the pretzels we have hauled back for each other anytime one of us went through the train station and had even 5 minutes.

This one though is beyond big – and I am sure beyond good. The opposite of a tidbit as witness to a friendship that is ongoing through thick and thin. Such memories it evokes – here we are with Proust’s madeleine -

I will eat it to your health D-L!

Will look for this bakery when next I'm in Bern!

That's my cell phone! Gives one an idea of the size of this pretzel!

Friendships and Culture

One can definitely lead to the other – and vice versa – but for the purposes of this blog they are more two separate entities.

Friendships: I have been blessed, I am blessed and I will be blessed in the future I hope with all my many friendships. Although there are only a few from “long, long ago”, those few are precious. There are those made in High School (also long, long ago) some of whom I have re-found thanks to FaceBook (I know – I too hate having to say something positive about a media that seems to have totally taken over our lives). Friendships often follow one’s status or job, never mind one’s various moves: single one tends to have more group friends or other singles; newly wed one tends to flock to other couples; have a child and there will be those met because of the children (one such group still meets 25 years after we first met in the car park of the local elementary school; another friend dates back just as far, but due to my younger child and another school – we still meet most Tuesdays for tea); those groups and friendships tend to change as the children grow older, allowing for new additions at another level; there are those based upon a common job or volunteer work; then there is the unfortunate friendships due to loss – the loss are unfortunate, the friendships some of the best; along the way there are the happenstance friendships, i.e. the renter who became my housemate; there are the truly random friendships – last year I literally picked up a woman who has since become a very dear friend (she was waiting at the bus stop – I was going past where I suspected she was headed, I stopped – another blessing in my life!); there are also those formed through the meeting of new people through other friends or acquaintances. It was one of these whom I visited for coffee yesterday. What a happy circumstance that I met her this winter through another friend and found out that she lives in Martigny.

I have surely missed some ways of meeting people and making friends, but in my own life I have had the rare privilege of meeting so many unique and interesting people, keeping many as friends and whether I see them once a year, once a month, once a week or only by e-mail and telephone, they are part of me and without them my life would be so much poorer.

Then there’s the culture. As I had wanted to go to the Giannada Museum (http://www.gianadda.ch/wq_pages/en/informations/) on this trip I blended the two, friendship and culture, first having coffee with S then going on to take in the current exhibition dedicated to Swiss artists Anker, Hodler and Vallotton. This collection belongs to the Foundation for Art, Culture and History, a foundation established by Bruno Stefanini, who over a half a century has collected more than 8’000 pieces of art (paintings, sketches, rare books, sculptures, furniture and other decorative arts) pertaining to the history, art and culture of the Swiss in between the end of the 18^th century and the beginning of the 20^th. 

Ferdinand Hodler:1904_ view of Lac Léman from Chexbres

Rudolf Koller: "lost in the snow", 1853

Albert Anker, 1887, Young girl doing her hair

Félis Vallotton, the River Risle near Berville, 1924

 Outside in the large park surrounding the museum are many sculptures, just a few of which I have chosen to show here.

Niki de Saint-Phalle "The Bathers",1984

George Segal "Woman on a Park bench with sunglasses" 1983

Jean Arp, Oriflamme wheel, 1962

Willem de Kooning, "Reclining Figure" 1969-1983

Nature's new growth - art in itself

one of the many exotic plants in the garden

along with a few unusual ducks

Reflection in the duck pond behind the "Bathers"

Same pond from a different angle

Then there was the side trip to the Protestant Chapel where all the stained glass windows were designed by Hans Erni, one of the longest-lived (he just passed away in his 106^th year) and my favorite of Swiss artists. Originally, in place of the requested stained glass window, he offered a choice in between three: Léonard couldn’t decide so had all three done by the Simon Marq workshop in Reims, France. The project grew from there and soon there were another 4. Eventually ending with all 17 openings in the temple being Hans Erni stained glass windows. Hans Erni offered the designs (at age 103) to Léonard Gianadda in honor of his friendship with Léonard’s wife Annette and Léonard had them executed.

One of the 17 stained glass windows in the Protestant Chapel in Martigny

Its reflection in a piano

Hans Erni's signature

The story goes that the local city authorities then said “why only the Protestant Temple” so Léonard Giannada also hired another artist, Father Kim En Joong, to realize a stained glass window for the Catholic Chapel of La Bâtiaz (that will necessitate another trip).

I returned up my mountain with a heart and mind full of the beauties of friendship and culture.

Affinities or …

The alchemy of humans.

Over the years (or “back when I was young” as one of the participants kept repeating last night: mind you she was the youngest of us five) I have attended many cocktail parties, been to many a conference, enjoyed my share of dinner parties, been bored to tears by other gatherings and in short have been sociable under many conditions and with a wide variety of professions, social strata, cultures and disparate lots of persons.

I can count on the fingers of one hand however those events that had all the participants laughing till they cried. What is it that allows us sometimes to connect? What strange alchemy hits? Why do some very compatible-seeming groups only enjoy “normal” whereas others, seemingly with not much at all in common, suddenly gel and produce one of those events forever remembered?

Such was the case last night: two persons retired from the same company, two others having served on a committee with them during their professional life with the fifth currently working at that company. The catalyst? In retrospect our human experiences. We touched on two of the “forbidden” topics (i.e. politics, religion), but it was the exploration of learning where each grew up, more of their family circumstances and recent losses that lead to laughing fits and tears in our eyes.

It’s a good thing that we had a round, corner table: we actually closed down the restaurant, never mind that in Calvinistic Geneva that happens at midnight on a week night.

The glow of the laughter will carry me through yet another gray day – weather wise that is.

120 years of friendship, Independence Day and trees

So, yesterday on my birthday I actually did leave shortly after writing the blog, heading to the other side of the city (and having to go around the long way as, of course, it was SlowUp Sunday… and access on my side of the lake was totally blocked off) to pick up a dear friend who shares my birthday and continue up the lake to a lovely meal in the ever-so-Swiss village of St.Prex.

Looking around at my old friends, oops I mean my friends of long date I realized that I had met three of them the summer I returned to Europe, 41 years ago now.

The blessing of a total of over 120 years of friendship is inestimable.  They have been there as I married; as I had my two sons (one is the godmother of both sons… having been raised a Protestant, but needing a godmother for the baptisms we decided that one and the same was great); through my husband’s illness, through his death; still traveling alongside me as they too have had their ups and downs. The only thing that comes close to equalling this type of friendship is that of close family where the memory bank reaches back even further to one’s childhood, but the support and love are the same in both cases. The tears, the laughter, the flipping from one to the other in a space of hours or days: the best of all sisters!

Upon my return (again via the torturous route of all-the-way-around-the-mulberry-bush), I had several telephone conversations and skyped with son #1 as well.

He is currently in Niamey, Niger and guess what? They take my birthday as being very important: it is their Independence Day!  But not only is it their Independence Day (from France in 1960), it is also Arbor Day where they plant trees across the nation to fight against desertification.

I come a full circle – on my birthday they plant trees, some of which may end up being used for paper to create the books that I love so much. Not quite sure who to thank yet for the Kindle, but Niger just went up in my esteem.

Friends

The long and short of it.

And, by that I don't mean physical size, although at times I have wondered why some of my best friends tend to be about half my size... 

I mean rather the length and breadth of friendship.  What determines who becomes our friend? How long they stay our friends? How close we become?

I have no pat answers: 

I have friends whom I have known for all the life I remember (we met in church as toddlers, went through grade school together before I changed states at the age of 14, then we wrote, then we lost track of each other for many of our adult years, re-found one whilst visiting my mother during the last years of her life - and now am in touch with the other two as well).

Another whom,  although I know that we only met when she was five and I six, yet still we make the effort to see each other as travels allow - this takes some doing as we don't even live on the same continent! In those two particular cases it was parents, which still lived in similar neighborhoods that allowed the connection not to get lost over the years.

I have lost friends from high school - and not only to death - some simply to lack of maintenance of said friendships, although recently (one of the positive aspects of today's social media) have "found" some again.  It is interesting to see how we have changed - or not.

Then there are the friends I met through my-husband-to-be, the summer of 1973 - two of whom are still amongst my very best friends. Although we met through someone else (but then again, don't we always meet someone new through someone else?) these are friendships that clicked then and never grew old. Whether we see each other once a year, once a month, or even (if we are extremely lucky) once a week - there is always something to say, something new to discuss, old topics to revive, information about our current lives to be shared. There were the early years of children, work and family involvement that meant sometimes not meeting at all for a couple of years, yet any time we re-connect, it is as it was yesterday.

There are the friends made when first my oldest went to school (we still have a group who car-pooled that meet 6 or 7 times a year over tea, coffee or a meal - for the past 25 years!)

There are the ones made when my younger son started school 23 years ago, one of whom I still meet most Tuesdays for tea and the latest updates in our lives.

There are the "new" friends - it shocks me that today some of my best friends never met my husband: these too share something too precious to measure.

Some came from business relationships that grew into friendship; others were friends of friends. And yet others friends of family who stayed with me at some point during their European trips. There are no age criteria as many are older and just as many younger; no religious criteria either as amongst my friends I count protestants, catholics, atheists and agnostics (not to split it down any further); nor are there racial barriers although, due to my upbringing and cultural background, most are distinguished by nationality and not skin color.

Having written all this, I realize that there is a common thread: all my friends are people with whom I feel at home, at ease, never needing to "put on a face" (sometimes literally, as my use of makeup is usually restricted to mascara). People whom I find interesting, who are forgiving of my need sometimes to go on and on as I am of theirs (I was once asked why I hadn't consulted a psychiatrist upon the death of my husband. I replied in all honesty: "I don't need one as I have friends who patiently listen to me explain once, twice, three times, four times, ad nauseum what happened"...); individuals who are patient with my foibles as I am with theirs - both knowing that neither is perfect, but accepting the fact.  These friends are there to celebrate the good events (weddings, births, job promotions) but are also on stand-by during the bad times (loss of a spouse, retirement, illness). They only ask that I afford them the same respect and care as they offer me.

I had lunch today with one such person: she drove down from her mountains, I took the train from mine – another trait of true friends: when meetings have to be cancelled, sometimes several times in a row, there is still the energy to try again until it happens.

So how it happens, how many times, how long: it all becomes immaterial as long as it exists.
 
As C.S. Lewis put it: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

Under those terms, I am surviving quite well indeed - thank you, my friends !