Holiday Letter 2001

December 2001 Holiday Letter From Marianna & Federico

I write on the tail end of jet lag. It is early morning and the sun is streaming onto our rebuilt deck and lighting up the trees outside. The ocean in the distance is already lit. The pink and red geraniums on the porch are blooming. We have returned this week to our Paradiso after three months of intensive Flamenco study in Sevilla, Spain. It has been another full year.

Aside from our day to day living, which includes seeing clients and doing shamanic work for me, practicing our dance and guitar, taking classes from visiting artists from the US and Spain, clipping our roses and training adding fences to keep out the deer, rebuilding our broken deck, redoing our water holding tanks, –aside from these many activities and more, we have also seriously begun our Flamenco Romántico Academy of Gypsy Flamenco Arts. 

In March, with the Flamenco Society of San Jose, we produced a house concert in our living room and dance classes in our studio featuring our long time friend and wonderful dancer, Teo Morca. The artists also included other old friends who are also top quality artists, Lourdes Rodriguez, Keni Parker, and Antonio de Jerez. We had a full house and the dance students loved Teo’s classes. We met Teo’s new and totally charming Costa Rican dancer wife, Lorena. Teo and Lorena spent two weeks with us and the four of us had a great time together, laughing, talking, cooking, eating, and dancing. Freddie’s son Manolo and his wife Alta came down from Las Vegas to help us prepare for the concert and we had some wonderful times with them and more laughter. That would have been enough.

But then in June my Gypsy Flamenco dance teacher from Sevilla, Concha Vargas, came to stay with us for two months. We arranged a house concert for her outside in the back of our home using the dance studio as our stage. Freddie played guitar and I danced and our friend Rubina, who accompanied Concha here from Spain, sang. That too was a sold out success. We also arranged dance classes, both group and private, for Concha and she kept busy almost every day for two months. Her visit was more of a success than any of us had dreamed possible. And when Concha left, we cried, although we would see her in Sevilla again within three weeks. She was a fabulous guest and the three of us grew to be closer and closer friends. Freddie’s mother Bea, who is now eighty two, spent a lot of time with us also. She and Concha giggled like two little girls and we all laughed together a lot. Concha learned a lot of English and our Spanish improved rapidly. 

The only thing that marred this amazing visit was our head on car collision at midnight on Highway 1, as the four of us were coming back from a wonderful sight seeing visit to San Francisco, which included lunch with my son Elun and his wife Donna. A drunk driver crossed over into our lane and hit us head on. My last thought was, “there is nothing we can do” and then we were sitting there, dazed in a white cloud of exploded airbag.  But Freddie had corrected slightly to the right and that might have lessened the impact a little bit. Fortunately we are alive and our injuries relatively minor, considering what they could have been. Our beautiful van was totaled. The worst injury turned out to be Freddie’s foot, which was broken but was not diagnosed for a month. It is still giving him major problems and kept him from walking great distances in Sevilla. Bea is still getting dizzy spells and Concha has a small scar on her face and knees that still hurt. The airbags and seatbelts saved our lives. Emotionally we are still traumatized and are still afraid of driving.

In spite of this setback, in late August we visited Freddie’s daughter Maggie and her beautiful family in San Diego and attended Basilio and Pilar’s three day Flamenco party there. Then on Labor Day we continued on to Sevilla, Spain where we had planned a two month visit. We had been there about a week when the September 11^th tragedy happened. We experienced it in Spanish. You can read the details of being in Spain during this time of crisis in my Chronicles of Spain 2001, which, along with many of this year’s photos, are on our web site: http://www.flamencoromantico.com/ in the Spain pages. If you don’t have a computer and want to see my writings ask me for them and I will send them. Partly because of our fear of flying and more because I was making phenomenal progress with my dance, Freddie and I decided to stay another month in Spain and so have just returned. And my dance improved beyond my wildest imagination. We did a show at La Carboneria on December 2 to showcase my new Solea. Concha’s husband Rafael sang the Solea and El Pola sang my Bulerías. Freddie played guitar with Concha’s son, Curro. Concha did palmas and Freddie’s guitar teacher Carlos Heredia videoed for us. Everyone loved it.

And now we are back. Elun and Donna plan to visit us for the Christmas Holidays. They are currently living in New York state where Donna secured a year’s teaching position, a coup considering that she just received her PhD. Elun has almost finished his dissertation and he too now has a teaching position at the small but excellent Colgate University. Next year they will both be looking for jobs teaching history at a University. They don’t know where they will be. 

Maggie and her husband Jason and our three precious grandchildren Kyle, Katie, and Kerra, took good care of us in San Diego when we stayed at their home. They are a wonderful and supportive family and Maggie and Jason are great parents. Jason is in the military and recently he has been away for two weeks doing training. His family misses him. This horrible war is destroying families and lives everywhere.   

Our holiday wishes this year include PEACE for the world and relief for the many who have suffered. While we have had a year filled with incredible events, we feel for the many all over the world whose lives have been rudely disrupted and will never be the same. And so when we dance and play guitar, when we take out our garbage and sit on Mama’s bench by Mama’s tree, when we walk down the cobblestone streets of Sevilla arm in arm, when we marvel at our love and luck, we also send our love and compassion to the people of the world.

Love to you all. May your holidays filled with peace, beauty, health, and love.

Marianna and Freddie Mejia, Flamenco Romántico