Pretty girls tempt great tenors hiking up pregnant hills
“And where is Nopa?” Nazy asked.
“It’s a 15 minute walk from here. You need to get there by 5:00PM to get on the 6:00PM sitting.”
I looked at my watch. “It is 4:30 PM,” I thought as the philosophical discussion floated around me. We left at 4:59.
“We’re not going to be on time,” I said as we walked through central San Francisco.
“Do not be so negative,” Nazy replied. Instantly.
“It’s getting dark Nazy. “Are you sure this is a good area?”
“We will walk, Dan. We’re almost there.”
“We should have taken a taxi.” I thought.
We arrived at 5:59PM. The hostess was courteous, kind and clear. “You’ve missed the 6:00PM seating, but you’re first on the waiting list for the 8:00PM seating.”
I thought about saying “I told you so”, but marital experience (and prudence) prevailed. I settled for a quiet: “But I’m hungry now.”
“We will be seated before 7:00,” Nazy declared. Naturally Nazy was wrong. We were seated at 6:50.) The meal, by the way, was excellent and well-worth the wait. We took a cab back. “You walked here?, the incredulous taxi driver exclaimed.”You were crazy!”
“I told you so!” I remarked when a quiet smirk would have been sufficient.
On Sunday, Shahriar took us on the ferry from Tiburon to San Francisco. We passed by San Quentin Prison where it appeared that an escape was in progress:
We walked, well, shopped, through the center of the city before heading back to Shari’s beautiful home. We expected Mitra, who was teaching at a Tango festival in Ashland, Oregon to join us for dinner. But her ride left before her last class. Then her back-up ride delayed departure until after the final ball. Text messages indicated a 1:30AM departure. From Oregon. Given that it was a 7 hour drive, we decided not to delay dinner for Mitra - who didn’t arrive in time for breakfast.
“It was a dumb idea!” Mitra exclaimed when we got her.
“You don’t have to convince me,” I thought. “At least you weren’t on United Airlines.” I replied.
“But it was a wonderful festival.”
The drive to Santa Barbara took about six hours. (Mitra had already been on a 7 hour drive from Ashland and had another two hours from Santa Barbara to LA.) We stopped briefly at the house - where Nazy took something out of the freezer. Then we dropped Mitra at the Airbus to LA. When we got home..
“My feet are wet,” I said as I fumbled with the TV remote. “I hope that I didn’t leave the window open,” I thought incongruously. (It doesn’t rain here, so an open window wouldn’t cause a flood.) I splashed through the water which originated at the refrigerator.
Aside: Water leaks (a nice way of saying ‘flooded devastation&rsquo
have, eh, ‘sprung up’ with dismaying regularity. The Oxygen Tango School studio was flooded when a plumbing fixture failed. The water line to Mitra and Stefan’s dishwasher disintegrated (break ing in to pie ces). Now it was our turn. The Viking Refrigerator, which creates ship-wreck sized icebergs, unleashed a Tsunami at Casa Confusion, The Martin Family residence in Santa Barbara.
“Three Makes it Complete’, Dan.” Nazy claimed as we swam past the floating dining room table.
“Don’t open the door until I’ve anchored myself.” I shouted.
Flashback: I was in High School. My parents were bravely driving, with five children, from New Jersey to Eliot, Iowa to visit Aunt Erna, Uncle Marion and cousins Judy and Janet. We were driving through heavy thunderstorms and whenever lightening struck, tornados were illuminated on both sides of the car. We got in very late, but just in time to help place valuables on top of the piano before driving to the edge of town to fill and place sandbags.
“I know about floods, Nazy. I explained. “But you left the piano in Switzerland and I can’t find the sandbags. We’re doomed.”
In the end, the Persian carpets soaked up a lot of the flood, Nazy while a combination of mopping and sweeping removed the remainder. The failed value has been back ordered so we are currently living in an ice-maker-free zone. Although we’re lucky that the leak didn’t start until we were home, we would have been luckier if it hadn’t started at all.
In last week’s letter I described a forthcoming family addition. It was, as I explained to Nazy, bittersweet.
“Before Melika got pregnant,” I said, “Mitra said we were great parents. But now we’re being demoted to merely ‘Grand’. Don’t you think that ‘Great’ is better than ‘Grand’?”
“You’re being a Grand Fool, Dan.”
“My cousin Gloria is a Great Grandparent. That’s really cool Maybe I could just be Wonderful - like the Wizard of Oz.”
“The Wizard of Oz was a fake, Dan.”
“I can do that!”
More seriously, Melika is doing very well and Tom is very excited. I’m reminded of the time when I was adding ‘parent’ to my ‘husband’ title. Nazy was in labor and the medical staff wasn’t keeping me updated. Annoyed, I moved to the foot of the bed, grabbed the clipboard and read the unvarnished statement from the physician in charge.
“Wife doing fine, husband extremely nervous.”
I don’t think Tom is nervous, but he is enthusiastic. Later in the week, there was time to chat with Darius.
“... and I’m in four choirs, Dad. Performances almost every night.”
“Do you like being in so many?” I asked.
“Well..”
“Let me put it another way. Why are you in so many choirs?”
“I find it very hard to say ‘No’ when a pretty young lady asks me...”
“How shocking.”
“.. and there are only 5 tenors in all of Lebanon. I’m in demand.”
“You are ‘de man’, Dar.” I replied.
At this time last year, Nazy and I had just about to board our departure flight from Switzerland. We had seen Darius in Lebanon and used up the last of the frequent flyer and hotel points visiting Cairo and Istanbul. There was six inches of snow on the ground in Zurich and we weren’t sure how things were going to work out with the move. In fact, leaving after 12 years was, well, not easy. But America called. (And tax authorities amplified the $ignal.)
The move turned out better than we could have possibly imagined. Although we miss Switzerland (and our friends), we have (thanks to Nazy’s skills) settled into our new home. We enjoy being closer to Mitra and Melika (and Stefan and Tom). Nazy has hopes that Darius will realize that California is almost as dangerous and ‘third-world’ as Lebanon. All in all, all is well.
Nazy with a typical San Francisco citizen