Holiday Letter 1999

 

Can many more exciting and rewarding things happen in one year? We thought last year was great but this one has been even greater!

The best news, as many of you already know, is that Freddie and I plan to be married. Our wedding will be June 10, 2000 here at our home. And now the stories of our 1999. 

Last December and January we spent three weeks in Cuba. For most of our visit we stayed at the home our Cuban Flamenco dancer friend Anibal Diaz and his warm and wonderful family in Cotorro, a suburb about a half hour outside of Havana. We also stayed for a while with Pablo Menendez (Nina Menendez’ brother) and his wife Adria Santana in their beautiful place near the ocean in Havana. We now have a few photos from this trip on our web site. Just before returning home we received a phone call that my step father in Israel, Jack Alkow, had died at the age of 96. Although Jack had a wonderful and long life we were sad that we hadn’t been able to visit him one more time.

On our return from Cuba, instead of resting, we re-packed for cold weather and took off for Israel for two weeks to pack up my mother’s and grandmother’s furniture which my mother’s will said should be claimed at the death of her husband. In Israel we also visited relatives and friends and took an R&R trip to the Dead Sea and to Jerusalem. It was after this trip that Freddie and I began to realize that although we thought we already felt married, we wanted to be legally married and in this way acknowledge what was. 

Shortly before we left for Spain, Freddie’s former wife, Kathy Mejia, from whom he had been separated for 27 years, hosted our wonderful and loving divorce/engagement party where she ritually served Freddie divorce papers. This unusual event was immortalized on video.

About a week before we left, the furniture finally arrived from Israel. We were tempted to stay home at this point, instead of taking yet another trip, but of course we did go to Spain and were glad we did. But before we left we had the house looking like a fairy land with its gorgeous antique furniture and my grandmother’s and my mother’s energy very strongly in the house.

Then, on  April 27, we went to Spain for four and a half months of intense Flamenco study, returning home on Sept. 15 just in time to celebrate my father’s eightieth birthday. You can read about our magical voyage in Sevilla, Spain into the heart of Flamenco, on our web site in the Spain pages, http://www.flamencoromantico.com. We have our beautiful digital photos there which visually illustrate many of the exquisite and colorful places and the wonderful people described in over seventy pages of writings by Marianna. It’s the best way we can share our incredible and intense four and a half month experience living and studying Flamenco dance, guitar and cante in Sevilla, sleeping upstairs in the attic room on the third floor of La Carboneria, the major Flamenco gathering spot bar and club in Sevilla. (Or if you want, ask us to send you a “hard” copy on paper by snail mail.) We counted and are still counting our blessings as they were abundant; and we want to thank the warm hearted and loving people who generously opened so many doors for us and made this quality of experience possible. We are especially grateful to our wonderful and patient teachers Concha Vargas and Carlos Heredia and to our host for the entire time, Paco Lira, the owner of La Carboneria. Our Spanish lessons paid off and we were able to talk fairly easily with the many friends we had who did not speak any English. In our dance and music, I learned a beautiful Siguiriyas and some gypsy style Bulería and Freddie learned many beautiful falsetas as well as totally changing his guitar technique! Our study there was almost daily and was extremely intense and equally as rewarding. 

We never made it to the Philippines but will try to take that trip later. But of course we have to go back to Spain and learn some more!

Now we are home, though, and are joyously planning our wedding. 

In October, shortly after our return, Paco Lira, Luis Agujeta and Saturnino Jimenez came from Spain to visit us for two weeks. Then we had a few weeks by ourselves to finish unpacking until Thanksgiving.

Our wonderful and very moving Thanksgiving was celebrated with much of Freddie’s family, many of whom stayed until Sunday. Freddie’s son Manolo and his wife Alta flew in from Las Vegas. Freddie’s mother Bea, who turned eighty this year, drove her 1969 Plymouth, “the Bluebird of Happiness” up from Monterey. Freddie’s sister Dorothy and her husband John, their daughter Elizabeth, her husband Peter and their three children and one dog drove up from Los Angeles. Kathy Mejia came. We also fed a number of friends making twenty two of us at the table. Again we ate elegantly on the front deck, overlooking the ocean, with my mother’s china and lots of sun. Later, Maggie, Freddie’s daughter with Kathy, called and we all spoke with her. She has a husband and three children whom we will meet at the wedding, if not before. So this year Thanksgiving was a holiday filled with the coming together of family. Even with so many people this was still one of the easiest large Thanksgivings we have had. Maybe it is also because Freddie and I work so well together. 

This December we will be spending five days in Santa Fe, New Mexico with my father and his wife Peggy, and my sister and brother-in-law, Elaine and Ken. 

And I forgot last year to write about my miraculous eye operation. In June of 1998 I had laser eye surgery to correct the extreme nearsightedness I had lived with for most of my life. Now I have 20/20 vision without glasses or contact lenses although I still need reading glasses for up close, for my presbyopia. But no longer having a vision handicap, not having to deal with contact lenses and/or long distance glasses has been a great gift and certainly has made traveling a thousand times easier.

So in looking at this year Freddie and I both realize that it has been about being thankful for the many blessings in our lives. We still hold hands as we take out our garbage, as we sit by my mother’s tree, as we inspect and talk to the many plants we are nourishing. We still wake up smiling at each other and being thankful for what is as we look out the window at the growing and blooming vine on the arch, the ocean, the trees with their busy birds. The Moroccan curtain and mirrors we bought this summer frame the window, complementing the wine red velvet curtains and the thin gauzy flowered window covering. My grandmother’s gold embroidered manton hangs from our ceiling over the bed and the sun shines in brightly, as if smiling on our union. 

So Flamenco Romantico still fits us, as our lives get better and better. And every day our love grows, even when it seems as if it can’t get any better. We want to share our happiness with all of you.

We wish you all happy holidays filled with peace, beauty, and love.

Love,

Marianna and Freddie