Inkblot Paper

My father one day brought home  for me a heavy stack of what looked like rectangular note pads. He was all excited about it, and I was curious what it was he was holding. He said it was for my white writing desk and went upstairs with me, so I could put the stack in one of my desk drawers. He explained it was inkblot paper, but it struck me as more than that. These had a thick paper cover on them, with pictures and sayings each from all over the world. The pictures were beautiful and very well done, colored ink drawings at that , although they did not identify the artists. There were sayings from Russia, India, Hawaii, the Near East, Africa, Spain, Mexico. Looking at the pictures made me want to travel, know the people who were often dancing a native dance in the pictures. One saying , that to this day, stuck in my mind, was a saying from Hawaii. All the words on the ink blot papers' fronts were in Flemish, black words on white paper, and this saying from Hawaii, against the back ground of pretty Hula women, read: "Mooie vrouwen, vuile listen." That means: " Pretty women, ugly tricks." To read this at age 12, had an unsettling impact. My mother was said to be beautiful, and I already had some misgivings about her behaviour and methods, and I have often thought back on that particular ink blot paper and its seductive drawings of cavorting Hawaiian girls in grass skirts and my mother's disastrous handling of her marriage and her daughters. I treated my collection of illustrated ink blot papers like a treasure. When I left for the US in 1976, they were still in my desk's left bottom drawer. Whatever happened to it, I wonder, I wish now I had taken it with me, because as much as I moved in the years since 1976, up until the year I married in 1986, I was able to hang onto the few treasured child hood mementos I carried from place to place. My father had a real interest in philosophy and morality. It is really sad to think that, in the end he was not able to see through my mother's intentions with him, or to save himself in spite of his intelligence and keen insight. The collection of ink blot paper was a treasure to me, because of its exotic quality and because for many years it was something to hold onto, as my father became more and more emotionally distant from me. The desk and the ink blot paper were my inheritance, emotionally speaking, that my father was capable of love, when it came to his oldest daughter, he just was not very interested in pursuing it, or keeping it alive. In the end, both the desk and the collection of exotic ink blot paper were lost, and after my father lost his mind to dementia, all memory of me was erased. Like ink blot paper, that absorbs extra fountain pen ink, my memory retains him, and like the ink that is gone, the imprint on the paper still holds traces of the words and their meaning. Perhaps, in the end , that was all that his mind had left to him, impressions whose origin he no longer could trace.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen

The famous introduction as commentary on Julius Caesar's death by Mark Anthony in Act III, scene II, rings in my mind as I observe the antics of yet another American election in the works. We are all Romans still, 2000 years after Julius Caesar was murdered in 44 B.C. at age 58. The western world seems to hold its act together about as precariously as it did in Caesar's day, wielding rhetoric as a favorite weapon in the grab for power and all its entitlements. The Romans would be astonished to witness to what degree they still affect every aspect of our daily political and social lives. Our nations' capitol buildings in their architecture, the language and name of the institutions such as Congress and Senate, the way we vote, the language of science in all its aspects and branches from botany to medicine, even something as mundane as the months on our calendars ( January, Mars, June, August, September, October, November,December,...) are all daily reminders that we are descendants of the Roman Empire, for better or worse. I just hope that the outcome will be better than what befell the Romans in the end, as they allowed the Huns to set back civilization a thousand years. It seems human evolution is a tediously slow process, and arrogance, or hubris as the Greeks called it, still seems to be the vice of preference among those that rule. It always had disastrous results in the past, it looks like we are well on our way to make sure that does not change any time soon. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears. Two thousand years later, every one seems completely deaf. It 's going to be a hell of a ride.

Doves at the Feeding Table

At the back end of our garden, underneath the fruit trees, we have an old wooden table that became the place where I started to put the birdseed for the about eight or nine different  type of birds that come to feed from it. Of course, the squirrels are invited  and eagerly show up each day. My favorite birds are the mourning doves, who show up in quiet pairs, and eat silently , slowly. Our dog Yara, who just turned three in April, loves to watch the birds land and eat, and then decide, with great relish and anticipation, which of the birds she will chase up in to the trees again. It is a wonderful time in the morning for her and for me, before the white noise of the freeway in the distance kicks in and all the human made mechanical noises of cars and trucks and motor cycles in the neighborhood begin their daily grind. In the late afternoon, if some of the more greedy squirrels ate all the seeds before the rest of the smaller birds get a chance, Yara accompanies me to put out more seeds, also for the very young squirrels who have to wait their turn until the adults of more status are done. My husband made the astute and accurate observation that my feeding the birds and squirrels may also attract less desirable creatures. There is no denying that, and I am not talking about the opossums and the raccoons, some of which became friends of mine, but we are talking about rats. I have seen one, a rather nice looking one at that, with a rather pretty coat. Yara chased it back in to the forest last night. It got me to thinking how sometimes we choose not to do something good, because it might benefit someone we think does not deserve our good deed. Well, the way I see it, the good and the bad are intertwined in the human and animal experience. By feeding the doves, I attract the occasional rat. Seems about right, when I draw the line further and think about the people we deal with in our lives. It is hard to find good people without occasionally pulling in a rat. I find I sleep better if I don't worry about the rat, and just enjoy the doves in my life. There is plenty for every one, both in my garden , and in my heart.

Pajaro Lindo

Pajaro lindo
ven a mi ventana,
cantame tu cancion.

Pajaro, ven a verme,
cuentame de tu cielo,
lejos y azul.

Pajaro lindo,
quedate un rato,
ayudame a olvidar
la pena de mi corazon.

Pajaro lindo,
tu eres libre,
con tus alas bellas
que escapan el peso
que hacen prisioneros
a mis pies.

Pajaro lindo,
como me haces falta
quando te veo volando
detras de las nubes altas
lejos de mis suspiros
que solo el viento escucha.

Pajaro lindo,
llevame contigo,
llevate mi alma,
mientras que se queda aqui
mi cuerpo, para que no te estrane mas.


Trudi Ralston.
June 26th, 2012.

The White Desk

One of my fondest memories early on, of my father's love for me when I was a child, is the memory of visiting the house he was having built for our family when I was 5. I still can remember the sensation of slight dizziness as he and I were looking out of the big rectangular hole that would become my bedroom window for my own room on the second floor. He was so proud, and I remember how happy I was to have his attention lavished on me like this. As soon as the house was finished, he had a master carpenter built a personally designed built-in desk for me, looking out of the window that he and I had gazed out of when it was just a hole in an unfinished brick wall. He himself had never had his own desk, I knew that, and for him to pay such loving attention to a desk for me was truly touching. The desk was large, had a ton of drawers, and he also filled it with notebook paper for me, and pencils and a nice ruler, and a nice ink pen.He had it painted white, to match the glossy white top, and in the winter sitting at my desk was toasty warm, because of the heater right at my feet. The window above the desk looked out in to the bamboo garden that was always full of a host of twittering small birds in the spring and summer. The large window opened all the way, and I spent many a summer's eve gazing up at the stars before going to bed. I loved that desk, and I wonder if it is still at the house, if the next owners kept it intact. That desk was mine to enjoy until I left for the US in1976, when I was 19. My father and I were never closer as when he had that desk made for me, and I wonder to this day, what happened to him, that he lost track of me, lost interest, and never really let me know again that I was special to him. We respected each other intellectually, and he worked hard for all of us, but I never again felt that he personally loved me. We became polite acquaintances, perhaps as his life became more and more complex and stressful, and he became more and more slavishly devoted to our mother and her whims. I loved my handsome father very much, he had great charisma, charm and intelligence, he never told me once he loved me. But, I have to believe he did love me once, if only briefly, because of the wonderful memories and the wonderful story I can share now of the big, beautiful white desk he had made once upon a time, just for me.

Beyond The Gates

There is a very good movie with the great Jon Hurt, commemorating the atrocities of the 1994 Rwandan genocide when over 800,000 men, women and children lost their lives in horrific fashion in the deadly war between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. The movie deals with a single act of great courage in inhuman circumstances by a Catholic priest who gets executed for saving Tutsi children marked for execution. It is a sobering movie about man's inhumanity to his fellow man when pressed for resources and space, and it is also a movie about hope in the midst of hell. The movie made me think of the time I spent in Kinshasa in 1980, when Mobutu was still wielding his reign of terror. Apparently, Kabila has not improved the situation much, as there are now reports surfacing about rebel factions in the Congolese army getting support from Rwanda rogue military, attempting to further destabilize the powder keg that has been the eastern part of the Congo. After Mobutu was ousted in 1997, the illusion of peace under Kabila did not last long, and the most devastating war since World War II ensued in 1998, that killed between 2.7 and 5.4 million people, and was called the great African War. Most of these deaths were due to disease and starvation, a problem the war continues to inflict upon the Congolese people. This war, centered mostly in Eastern Congo involved 9 other African Nations and directly affected the lives of 50 million Congolese. I remember the precarious nature of daily life in Kinshasa on a good day. Hundreds of people eating and camping out daily by the rail road tracks, living from day to day. I remember the beggars and the slums. I remember the sad eyes of the family cook as he asked for a day off to bury his young son who had died because he had not been able to pay for the medical help and medicine   his son  needed. I still feel the ache of looking into his deeply sorrowed face. I remember the sweet young family masseuse, her incredibly peaceful smile, who had walked for two hours, from her village at 4:00 A.M. to get to the family's house by six to give the daughter a massage. The young masseuse was so quiet, she only spoke a few words and afterwards, she left just as quietly, to walk back the two hours to her village. I started thinking back to my friends in the Kinshasa area, good people just trying to make a living in a very complicated country. How did they fare during the genocide that was happening between 1998 and 2003, and the terrible aftermath that is still going on? What happened to the cook and his wife, and their children, and their children's children? What happened to the masseuse and her family? She was just a young girl in 1980, she may already have been a wife and mother in 1998. I shudder at the fate of countless women in her country who were brutally raped and slaughtered, and the rape at the hands of the RCD still continues to this day, at the rate of a 1,000 women and girls a day! I looked up some of my Belgian and Italian friends from the area. I found a couple, and they are all working in the Brussels area, with I am sure still plenty of ties and connections to the Congo. I wonder where they were when the first Congolese war erupted in 1997, and whether they left or braved it until the second deadlier wave hit in 1998. I remember how the militia had limitless power and how people feared them for it, as Mobutu once famously said he was not sure why they wanted a salary, as he gave them access to weapons. I witnessed first hand the mercenary quality of the underpaid, hungry and dangerous because of it militia. My Italian friend's mom had a shop that another merchant coveted because of its prime location. This man had a lot of money, so he paid some militia to show up at her shop, ransack it,which was a scary thing, as I was there when it happened, and they literally put her out of business. No one did anything. Money was the only rule of law, and since the other party had more of it, they won. His mom lost the shop and had to relocate to a part of town where there hardly was any commerce, and her shop was in constant threat of going bankrupt. The fabric of society was barely held together on a regular day, the chaos and madness caused by a civil war must be harrowing, at best. I was glad to find evidence that Jean-Pierre and Dany D. and Michel V.P. are all right, and I hope Solomon A. and his family and all their employees and their families made  it through also. Leonardo da Vinci once said,and he knew this well, as he was around it enough, that "War is the ultimate madness." It was true 500 years ago, and sadly, it is still true today.

Fata Morgana

The rain's giant water brush rhythmically sings the trees' green colors bright.
The night's shadows evaporating mist in the quiet new day's light.

I breathe, inhaling the wet earth's scent,
and laugh at the raindrops falling in my hair and neck.

The clouds are thick and gray, a heavy cloak hanging
on the forest's shivering shoulders.

I have been here before, pirouetting around my hopes and dreams
somewhere over those clouds the sun still reigns,

somewhere I will ride that rainbow in to the sea,
foam and laughter all around me,

And my soul and those I love will be there
with me, free..


Trudi Ralston.
June 23th, 2012.

Morning has Broken

Once in a great while you can hear a Cat Stevens song on an old rock station. Whenever they play "Morning has broken", it takes me back to the sweet room in my host sister's room in Chicago in 1973. She and I shared her beautiful bedroom that summer for six weeks, and she had a record player in it, and she often played her Cat Stevens album that played "Morning has broken ", as one of the featured songs. To me, that song continues to hold all the sweet promise of being excited about learning about living in the US, and anticipating maybe living there some day for good. Now that I am into my 36th year in the US. I certainly have had the chance to find out about living here, and becoming a citizen on September 29th, 1994. It is nostalgic to hear the song once in a while, and as it turns out, I am a morning person, who loves to enjoy a walk in the garden very early on with my gentle dog Yara. It was a beautiful, sunny morning just two days ago and the air was sweet and warm, and without any warning the song "Morning has broken" started playing in my mind, and I realized that some of those sweet dreams I had did come true. I have a good husband, a wonderful son, a cozy, safe home and sweet pets, and a garden my husband Michael built for us that is a slice of peace and poetry in a busy world. The green house, that with its floor to ceiling glass windows gives a great view of the garden, and fresh strawberries, cucumbers and tomatoes. Next to the green house is the vegetable garden, where we grow pumpkins and beets and green beans and snap peas, and at the end of the vegetable garden are our fruit bushes, the blueberries, and raspberries and red and black currants and even a vine that grows a sweet Muscat grape. Then you walk into the patio and the deck Michael and my father built in 1994, with all the 16 different kinds of pansies, which makes for a rainbow of color, even on the rainiest of summer days. Then there are the lilies and rhododendron bushes and  the ferns, and Nicholas' playhouse, a souvenir of his childhood, that Michael built when our son was three, complete with a shuttered little window, a second story and a slide. Then there is also the pool, from which the garden looks like a bit of a lush jungle. And last but not least, there are the 9 live Christmas trees that we have planted over the last 23 years , and that now tower over us. Morning has broken, indeed, ..."sing jubilation"..., for all is well. I am 55 now, but my heart still bursts with joy and pride and hope at the realization that these 36 years in America turned out just fine, and that the dreams we hold at 16 don't have to die.

Raul and the Carnivorous Plant

Every time I remember my Panamenan  friend Raul, a smile comes to my face. We were friends in graduate school, in Austin, where he was getting a master's degree in petroleum engineering. He had the best laugh, and always had me in stitches with his hilarious stories, especially the ones involving unfortunate dates. The last time I heard from him was many years ago, and he was smiling next to a pretty Panamenan wife, and two small children. From the surroundings of the picture and the elegant clothes, it looked like Raul had done very well for himself. I wonder how he is doing these days. He was such a fun friend, we never dated, and felt very comfortable with each other, it almost felt sometimes like dating would have been the logical next step. That never happened and was just fine with both of us. He invited me to come  and stay with his family who lived in Panama City, where his father was an architect. I spent a lovely time there and it was wonderful to be one of the family along side his parents, and younger brother and sister. It was the same summer I spent time in Costa Rica. Panama City was a very different experience, much more down to earth. Every one in Raul's family spoke fluent English and were socially casual and relaxed. My favorite foods were homemade ceviche, and I absolutely loved the fried plantains that were the equivalent in a meal as fried potatoes.I liked the combination of a very modern city with a very old historical part of Panama City. It was very interesting to see Cuna Indians in the old part of town, dressed in their bright and geometric patterned fabrics and designs. The countryside outside the city had an old Spanish flavor to it, that was nostalgic to me with the quiet villages and old churches and humbly dressed villagers. Time seemed like it had stood still there. The visit to the Panama canal was impressive. To be face to face with one of the engineering feats of the 20th century was exhilarating, especially finding out that some of the major challenges in the building of the canal were met by a Flemish engineer by the name of Goethals. I remember my time in Panama fondly, because of the ease of my friendship with Raul. He was a funny guy. He once asked me what my first name was in Flemish, as Trudi does indeed not sound Flemish. German maybe, or Austrian. I told him my first name was Geertrui. He tried to pronounce it, with little success. He gave up, saying: "Geertrui, that sounds like the name of a carnivorous plant!" He just roared, and I laughed too. To this day I cannot think of my name in Flemish, without remembering Raul's reaction to it. I had a nick name for him too. He once told me a very funny story involving a Dracula movie that was not scary , but funny, and he did the funniest imitation of the voice and character, that made him just laugh and laugh. So, I started calling him Dracula. It was a private joke, that was funny to us, but made every one wonder why he had that nickname with me. If I called him today and he answered the phone, and I said:"Dracula, is that you?" I can guarantee he would exclaim:" Geertrui! It's you, the carnivorous plant from Belgium!"

Beaulieu

The southern part of France , the French Riviera, holds a fascination that never seems to fade. It is one of the glamour spots of the planet, and I am very glad I got to spend an Easter Holiday there in the spring of 1975. My parents knew a number of wealthy friends, and one of them, a very successful businessman, who lived in a charming small castle in Brielen, just outside of Ieper, in the Flemish part of Belgium, let us use for free, his beautiful villa in Beaulieu, in the heart of the French Riviera. Just so you appreciate the excitement I felt, Roger Moore had a villa in Beaulieu at the time. It was a favorite of a number of wealthy stars and millionaires from around the globe. We left by car all six of us, also accompanied in a separate car, by our uncle Frans, and his wife Ina. The weather down was dreadful, cold, rainy. The dominant color being gray. To this day, I can recall the emotional excitement of coming around this one uphill turn as we approached Beaulieu, and exclaiming in surprise at the sight of the Mediterranean , sparkling like a bright blue jewel in the distance. It was the very first time for me to see a sea that was not gray, or a dark green, as I was used to the colder waters and colors of the Atlantic Ocean. Seeing the turquoise water remains in my memory one of the emotional and visual highlights of that trip. The next vivid memory, visually speaking, is the bright white villa of our friends, that almost blinded me, when its white walls met with the spectacular view it gave from the balcony onto the sea. It was a spot of paradise, the villa , perched on a hill, with its aromatic lemon trees that were in bloom, the lushness of the flowers all around, the roaring turquoise sea beneath, the large , cool  rooms of the villa, that spoke of the casual luxury and taste of the owners. It was so wonderful to eat outside in the garden, looking down at the beach, taking a walk down to the water, passing by the bakery that made fresh lemon tarts, my favorite dessert to this day. We visited some of the artsy villages, like Tourettes-sur-Loup, famous for its artisans, and I bought a hand crafted leather purse that I had up to a few years ago. There is a known saying that goes like this: "Dieu est francais". God is French. I must admit, that after visiting the glorious region of the French Riviera and also the surrounding Provence with its scent of lavender and sweet southern winds, I can see why God would want to be French, if it allowed Him to live in Southern France.

Cozumel

A well to do American friend of ours arranged for my mother, brother and I to spend spring   break in Cozumel. I was delighted, to catch a glimpse of tropical Mexico, and also have a chance to visit some very famous Mayan ruins, what a treat. We ended up staying at a very classy resort, and the best thing about it, other than the delicious food, was the outdoor covered breakfast room, with access to the gorgeous private beach. Th most vivid exotic memory I have from the hotel is waiting for the elevator in the upper level corridor, outside our room, and see above the tropical forest canopy, as the corridors were windowless to give a better view and feel of the environment, a gorgeous brightly colored macaw silently swoop over the dense foliage to disappear from view slowly into the seemingly endless jungle. It is a visual memory that is seared into my mind. The visit to the Mayan ruins of Chitzen Itza were memorable because of the long bus ride required to reach the site through dense forest, and that was after taking a boat ride on very choppy waters to get to the main land ,as Cozumel is an island. The boat ride holds a memory of magical quality for me. As we were trying to hang on to our stomachs because of the lethal combination of heat and choppy waters, early in the morning, I saw a flying fish, and then another,and another. It seemed surreal to me,even though I knew of course that such things existed, it was really astounding to actually see them with my own eyes, and not in a National Geographic magazine photograph. For a brief moment, I felt like a child in a fairy tale. The long bus ride was merciful, as the heat was quite tolerable because we were mostly in the shade of huge trees. The ruins of Chitzen Itza were wondrous, it really felt like stepping into a completely different and sacred world from the past. El Cenote Sagrado, the sacred religious deep cave pond where ritual human sacrifices were made, was a very quiet place, and very spiritual, in spite of the horrific memories it must hold for all the victims of the practice. It was a place surrounded by deep mystery, a very alien place, emotionally and culturally, but I liked it, found it very intriguing. On the surface, Cozumel was just a very pleasant resort town with wonderful beaches and great tourist accommodations, but the visit to the Mayan ruins added a different dimension, a different perspective, of a world that was there before the aggression of the West  decimated a beautiful and peaceful civilization. There was a kindness and openness in the local Mayan population I found very disarming and pleasant, and I was really glad how willing they were to put up with my at the time poor Spanish, as I had only had 3 years of it in college. I understood quite a bit by then, but was still working on my fluency. I received nothing but respect and kindness for my attempts at communication. It was a very encouraging experience, and I still remember the very kind, patient smiles from these gentle people.

In the Summertime

Mungo Jerry wrote a memorable tune that to this day, forty years later, remains exceedingly popular. I imagine just about every oldies but goodies rock radio station will be playing his upbeat, happy song again, on this first day of summer. To me, Mungo Jerry's song is associated with one of the happiest summers I can recall. The summer of 1969, when my parents, two sisters and my brother and I , and our new boxer puppy, Gorki, spent two months at a wonderful  large seaside apartment in Oostende, Belgium. I was 12, and as it turned out, the weather, with a few exceptions was wonderful all summer long. The apartment was given to us for free for the duration of the summer, by the mother of my dad's boss, one of the perks in his climbing business career. I have always felt most alive when I can be near the ocean. That was one thing about living in the heart of Texas that made me feel trapped, it was hours and hours away from any ocean. That is why I am happy to live in Western Washington, because I can get to the ocean in one and a half hours, and our favorite vacation spot for many years now, is Cannon Beach in Oregon, which is also just hours away and well worth the 4 hour drive if you get to stay a week. The ocean replenishes my soul, recharges my body's energy, lifts my heart, my spirit, just makes me feel good about life. My father's mother lived by the sea, and my dad's youngest sister still does and has so now for more than 40 years. It is only a ten minute walk from her apartment to the ocean, how I wish I could say that about my house. On the plus side, it is only a 3 minute walk to the lake from my house, so, I can not complain too hard. Lakes are peaceful, but also static. I love the ocean because of its energy, its sounds, its scents, its wet sand and sea creatures, the wind, the way the sun burns stronger because of the ocean breeze, and the whole relaxed atmosphere, year round , regardless of the weather, of the mere presence of the water. The summer homes, the shops with ice cream treats and all sorts of ridiculous and unnecessary souvenirs, that we drag home in an attempt to take part of the ocean's joy and energy with us, the seafood restaurants, and the casual way people dress, the kids, the pets, and every one looks pretty happy. My ideal place to grow old would be by the ocean, and my ideal place to die, also by the ocean, inhaling with my last stubborn breath  the salt and wind of its timeless mystery and fascination.

Titanic

There is an article in one of the recent  2012 National Geographic Magazines about the Titanic that has very graphic pictures of the destruction the massive cruise ship suffered  when it collided with an iceberg a hundred years ago. The pictures had a strange effect on me, one that made me want to put the article and the magazine away, where I would forget where it was. I succeeded, because now I really can't find it. When I was in therapy after my family imploded, one of the most annoying and disconcerting physical symptoms of the induced emotional trauma,  was  the nausea, when remembering certain things. That nausea has disappeared for 99% of the time, but when it overtakes me, it is still very upsetting and unnerving. I am never sure what will bring it back briefly, and I certainly was surprised that the last time it happened, it was brought on by the pictures in a National Geographic Magazine. I was not even sure what it was I was reacting to. Why would pictures of a huge, supposedly indestructible ship bother me? I tried to forget about it, but it sure stayed in the back of my mind. About four months later, I remembered the incident again. This time around, I felt I had some idea at least as to why I had experienced such a physical aversion to the huge motor parts and huge pieces of the hull photographed at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. My family had seemed indestructible to me , when I was growing up. The gradual, ruthless, searing disintegration of my parents' marriage and the acid rain like fall out for my siblings and I, had left me incapable of any emotions for quite some time. There was no rage, no sorrow. There were no words, no tears. Only emptiness and disbelief. When I finally got the benefits of therapy, and I started to understand what happened, I was able to slowly unravel the protective cocoon  of indifference. The result was a deep nausea, a feeling of being pulled into an abyss, that took all my will to resist being swallowed by. Now, I understand the revulsion I feel whenever I think of the pictures showing very detailed pictures of the horrific destruction of the unsinkable Titanic. The Titanic was not supposed to break, or sink, or kill anyone. But it did, in a most horrible, nightmarish way. My family was not supposed to fall apart, but it did. In a most horrific, nightmarish way. Some day I may be able to look at the magazine article again, without feeling like I am drawn in to the maw of a very ugly, merciless monster. It will be a while, I know, so for now, the National Geographic that has the article and pictures on the Titanic, remains blissfully lost.

Costa Rica

In the summer of 1982, I spent two weeks in Costa Rica, courtesy of a very hospitable friend, Ricardo R. de la C. I had become friends with him at TCU through a mutual friend from Puerto Rico, Evita V. Ricardo was the son of a wealthy coffee plantation owner, and you would think that might have given him a snobby attitude, but he was the most democratic, generous person  around. He also had a great sense of humour and was an extremely relaxed person with a great respect for people's individuality, he was a very non judgmental guy. I was really happy when he invited me to come visit him in his home country, as we were friends, but very casual friends. I was treated like royalty at his parent's lavish house. That alone was quite the experience. Because his family was part of the social elite, even breakfast was a ritualized event. I had never experienced etiquette to that degree. There was a separate breakfast room in the house, complete with a small natural waterfall, I kid you not. All the meals were served by housekeepers, and I will always remember his youngest sister, already dressed like a queen before 7:30 A.M., ringing a small exquisitely made silver bell to ring for more toast, fruit, or tea or coffee, which was all served in silver sets. It was like something out of a dream to me, the sound of the waterfall, the sunlight filtering in through the natural stone wall behind the waterfall, the elegant brocaded table cloth on the fancy breakfast table, the silver tea and coffee set, the butler waiting on us in uniform, the elegant dress and make-up of Ricardo's sister, Rosario, the silence as I was too nervous to say much. Lunch and dinner were equally ritualized, with Ricardo's imposing father sternly presiding at the head of the table as each delicious dish was brought in quietly by the head cook who ruled the younger housekeepers. This happened every night. There was a social ball Rosario was invited to,and I remember her waiting in the heavily rococo drawing room for her date. She was dressed like a  movie star, in a glittering white gown, with scarlet red lipstick to bring out the gold of her jewels and the raven black of her long elegantly coiffed hair. She looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor, completely intimidating to me. The family also had a stable of fine Arabian horses, and we all went to a horse parade in honour of the family's contributions to the community at a nearby village. Ricardo also showed me his father's land, the plantations, his father's office from which his father ruled their financial empire. I also got to visit the mountain villages, which reminded me, with their cooler climate and chalet style restaurants, of Germany , Austria and Switzerland. The beaches in Costa Rica are wonderful, and I got to spend time, with a privately chartered pilot and plane, just for me, on a private beach owned by one of Ricardo's family friends. It was amazing, to spend a whole day on a private beach, by myself. The only other person around was a handsome young pilot, whom I painstakingly avoided, as  I knew nothing about him, and did not know what was expected of him when it came to me. He respected that decision of discretion without question, and I felt mostly safe sunbathing with him close at hand as the only other human around for hundreds of miles. What did James Bond have that I didn't at that moment in time? I know what he didn't have: scruples, of which I chose to have plenty. To be part of Ricardo's wealthy surroundings for two weeks, and not make any faux pas, as a single girl with no strings attached and sometimes very attractive men around, is a mark of pride to this day. I wonder how Ricardo is doing these days, whether he married the wealthy and beautiful fiancee his father had picked for him. He was a great friend, I hope he is happy. He was always a bit more free form than his very classy surroundings. I hope that bit of mischief in his personality served him well to find his own groove in his very sophisticated and regulated world.

A Good Neighbor is a Blessing

For the past 23 years, Karen and Mark W. and their family have been our neighbors. That is the longest time to be living right next door to the same family for me. Their presence is a fixture of our reality, and we have been blessed by their presence. Having very few family to begin with, and even more so 23 years and a lot of tragedies later, and having a husband who has very little family and very little contact with them, only added to the charm of having a very stable and loving family next door. We saw their four children grow up, get married and now Karen and Mark have ten grandchildren so far. Especially their youngest son, Brent, who just had a beautiful baby boy, was very special to us when we first moved into the neighborhood. We were still trying to have a baby, and when we moved next door, Brent had just turned five. So Karen in her wisdom thought it might be nice for us to have Brent come over and visit with us. He was a delight and kept the hope alive that someday I would get pregnant and have a child of my own. That did happen about 3 years later, and I had Nicholas at age 35. Brent was so much fun to have around. He would have dinner with us, bring over his favorite movies, spend the night with his favorite stuffed animals who all had their own stories and names. He was very comfortable with himself and a great story teller, who really had the gift of gab.He filled an aching part in my heart with his easy and disarming ways, his very sincere personality and clever observations. Once our son Nicholas was born, Brent became Nicholas' first friend, and our son still has a picture in his room of him and Brent together. Brent was in a way Nicholas 's big brother next door. It was so much fun to go to Brent' s wedding reception and later on to receive darling videos of his baby boy. Karen and Mark filled what would have been a void for us, with their presence, their commitment to their family, their kind way of including us whenever they could. It is so wonderful to see how rewarding it is to stick together as a family, on good days and bad, and to see how this family now has four great adult children all with families of their own. It warms my heart to hear their grandchildren play next door when they come over, to hear their laughter, their energy, and it must be so satisfying for Karen and Mark to see the love they have for each other passed on through their sons and daughters and now a whole group of grandchildren. It gives me hope for the future. The great Nobel Prize winning Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, wrote: "Every child that is born is proof that God has not yet given up on the world."  A good neighbor is a blessing, and Karen an Mark and their children certainly have been a blessing as our steadfast neighbors all these years, giving living proof to the poet Tagore's words and sustenance to my hope.

Mick Jagger

The iconic lead singer of The Rolling Stones rock band, Mick Jagger, is famous for many reasons, not the least of which is continued sexual charisma. To me, Mick Jagger always brings to mind the well known song that has been around for a lifetime now: " You can't always get what you want, but , you might find, if you try real hard, you get what you need." The lines seem simple and straight forward enough, but I find myself thinking of that song quite often when I go through doubts as to my life's path. That song has always managed to get my perspective back, to shift gears emotionally, and get right back in to the journey of what is my life and it' s story, for better or worse. The latest challenge came in the form of thinking about a friend whom I knew in graduate school. This person had a natural charisma, still does, especially with the female gender. He was also highly intelligent, patient, kind, good looking, and exotic, being from Africa. He was not arrogant about his charms, he was easy to be around, caring, an all around wonderful person. He met an equally intelligent, equally highly educated and motivated woman, who was very familiar with his culture, language, and they have been together ever since. That was almost twenty-eight years ago. His life has turned out exceedingly well, as I recently learned and when I spoke with him recently, he is just as kind, energetic and charming as ever. And I started thinking about how our lives each seem to follow certain paths, or at least , possibilities of paths and options. I smiled at the vanity of the thought, but, I wondered, if perhaps I had been more mature, intellectually and emotionally, perhaps if I had pursued the initial interest I had in Spanish-Arabic literature and had in the course learned  to speak Arabic, as I already spoke Spanish and French, maybe I might have been more interesting to my friend and my life might have unfolded in a different part of the world, pursuing a long held dream to learn about and understand an area of our planet that had long held a deep fascination for me. But, I think it may not have been such a good deal for him. My family suffered a nuclear melt down, which for my husband and son, not only for me, was very painful to recover from, and I had a lot of growing up to do, as my mother was way too busy and distracted with her string of lovers to be focused on her daughters' emotional and social needs or concern herself with how to foster in us the knowledge of building a good relationship with the opposite sex. If anything, she wanted minions and had every interest to seduce us into promiscuity to justify her choices and life style. Anyway, I was quite immature emotionally when Michael married me, and I consider myself  almost grown up. Now, many years later, I might be considered a true and valued friend, and given the advantage of the opportunity to study again , I would have the fortitude to pursue my interests intellectually and culturally. So, just like Mick Jagger proclaimed in the song, I tried really hard, and found I got what I need. I needed to grow up, to heal, be strong, move forward. My marriage allowed me to do that, as did the rewards of raising my wonderful son, who has been such a joy. So, as sentimental as I might have initially felt to revisiting the possibilities of the past, I am where I need to be and I am truly happy. And my wonderful, kind friend, whom my heart continues to treasure, is where he needs to be, with a wife that has allowed him to blossom in to the outstanding person that he is, successful, caring and important to his community and his country.

Parfum D'Ami

Toutes ses annees, comme un refrain lontain
mais persistent,
tu as suivi mes reves .
Discret, silencieux
un soupire doux, insistent.

Je t'ai cherche dans tous les coins
au pays de mon sommeil  la nuit.
J'etais toujours presque sure
ou tu  passsait le temps.
Il etait juste ici, on me disait chacque fois.

Comme un parfum favori,
qui nous suit l'haleine,
l'eclat de rire, la larme,
tu as reste tout pres,
invisible mais de gout sucre.

Parfum d'ami, bonjour, c'est si bon,
apres tout ce temps, d'entendre
sonner le telephone, et de sourire
au timbre si manque de ta voix connue
finalement retrouvee.

Trudi Ralston.
June 14th, 2012.

I am very much aware that the accents required in many of the French words are not available on my English tablet computer, but I wanted to write this poem in French, as it speaks closer to my emotional response of having reconnected to a long lost friend, whom I thought time and space had swallowed up.

Closing Argument

Two years ago, I wrote a poem about a severely neglected dog who howls pitifully at his 24/7 confinement in a kennel cage. Whenever I have called animal Services here in town, the response was always the same: "there is nothing we can do as long as the animal is housed and fed adequately.Sorry." So, two years into this torment, I tried again, and this time I actually convinced Animal Services to look into the case. I told them I thought it illogical to require animal shelters to exercise their animals an hour every 24 hours, but yet citizens owning dogs are not required to provide the same basic decency to another sentient being. They finally agreed to look into it and sure enough ,the same day, I got a call from one of their field officers that he had found the house in question, but that a neighbor had said they took good care of the dogs as far as feeding and shelter goes, so, again by law there was nothing he could do. But, on a small ray of hope, he would leave a tag saying he had responded to a call about concerns for the animal's welfare due to repeated and excessive barking and howling. It at least  opens the possibility that the owners might consider spending some time with their very lonely, confined animal. The concern and law in the world of animal rights seem very bogus to me in this regard. Animal Legal Defense had a successful campaign to free Tony, the tiger from a years long confinement in a cage at a truck stop. Leonardo Di Caprio even got involved, it was a wonderful thing, I sent a donation, signed the petition, and the tiger now can look forward to an eventual decent life at a wildlife reserve. But what about the dog on Mazama? Sometimes I can hear two dogs howling in there, what a pitiful thing. What about the thousands and thousands of dogs confined like the hapless creatures just a few houses away from my house? I sent a letter to the Executive Director of Animal Legal Defense Fund, Stephen Wells, asking for a response about this concern, but I never got an answer. If a well known animal rights group put their shoulders against this issue, maybe something eventually could be moved forward towards a change in legislation. It  might mean the end of a living death for thousands of animals in this country alone.

Kinshasa 1980

There is a song that was popular in the early eighties called "I bless the rains down in Africa"... I do not know, to this day who sang that upbeat tune, but I heard it after my first introduction to that continent. When I was still an undergraduate student at TCU, I met a young woman from Algeria, Yasmina, who was married to one of the younger history professors there. One day, as she and I were taking a study break, someone overheard us speaking French. And that is how I met three young pilots from Kinshasa who were just exploring the university library. One of them was a handsome young Jewish Italian guy and we ended up going out together. About four months later, he finished his pilot training and returned home, to Kinshasa, where he was living with his parents, older sister and younger brother. I was very much intrigued with the idea of visiting him, as one of my uncles, Frederick Minne, the son of Baron George Minne, who was married to my mother's sister Agnes De Cauter, had spent ten years in the then Belgian Congo near the Kivu Lake. I ended up going right around Christmas time, and remember all the vaccinations required, among them the quinine pills against malaria. I flew home to Brussels, spent a few days with my parents in my hometown, then took the flight from Brussels with a stopover in Lagos, Nigeria before flying on to Kinshasa. Nothing could have prepared me for the experience of the Kinshasa airport, which was loud, crowded, confusing. I was inundated in the local African language of Lingala, in the very bright pagne fabric of the local women, in the seemingly endless crowds of people, the foot traffic that was as busy as the car traffic, the overcrowded old army trucks, that served as very dangerously over capacity filled city buses, the relentless heat, the humidity, and young soldiers in green uniforms with shoulder guns everywhere I looked. It was 1980, still the hay day of the ruthless dictator Mobutu. The house my friend Salomon lived in with his family was big, very welcoming, very comfortable. His father had been the owner of a small and successful textile plant, that he now ran as a manager, since the government now owned all privately pre- 1964 revolution  owned businesses. His mother ran a successful deli-shop. Their cook was a local man, who cooked the best poached local fish I have ever tasted. There was also a small pine apple orchard on the family's estate, that had the sweetest fruit I ever ate. The first day I was there, I was in for a big surprise. I walked outside right after six, and it was pitch black dark. I was in shock, I had not realized the impact of being at the equator, where the days and nights are equal in length. It was very weird, and hard to get used to. Apparently, from what I was explained, it gave cause to a lot of excessive drinking to pass the constant very long, dark evenings and nights. Because of the heat, every one came home for lunch for two hours, and that always included a nap after the lunch. One of the first showers I took surprised me with the presence of a large flying cockroach. It was a good thing I was familiar with the non flying variety having spent already five years in Texas. That big,brown buzzing thing flying up at me in the shower is definitely something I remember. Another thing, visually, that stands out, is seeing rows of roasted monkeys for sale at one of the many local markets. A very pleasant memory is a picnic by the banks of the famous Congo River, seeing papyrus plants swaying in the breeze of the river's edges. It was a magical moment for me, because of the historical significance of the fabled papyrus plant. I also got my picture taken by one of the wondrous looking baobab trees, which Antoine de Saint-Exupery made famous in his story Le Petit Prince. I felt like some of the wishes I had made as a child werecoming true, just touching the edge of the marvels that Africa seemed to hold. I also saw despair, anger and poverty in the local African population, and I later learned that our King Leopold II was a genocidal monster with these people. My friend Salomon and I did not stay together , we were both way too young, but I will always be grateful for his father's gracious invitation to come spend a Christmas Holiday in the heart of Africa.

Dog Howling on Mazama

Your sorrow cuts through me
Like a freshly sharpened butcher knife,
Precise, deadly, permanent.

The echo of your howl bounces
metallic off the confinement
Of your kennel-cage.

I send love and prayers, music 
Your way,
Damn the neighbors
As the sun is blue in the sky,
Or the stars shine mute on high.

You howl in your prison
And surrender to the despair
That cruelty tears in helpless souls.

Trudi Ralston
May 13th, 2010.

What is so heartbreaking about this poem is that I wrote it about a neighbor's dog two years ago. I even sent a copy of the poem to the abusive family in question, asking if there was anything we could do, like walk their dog if they were too busy themselves. I called Animal Services several times, and the answer is always the same, there is nothing anyone can do. By law, you cannot comply owners to pay attention to their dog, even if it results in misery, and evidence of it in agonizing barking and howling. As a member of the Humane Society, the Doris Day Animal League, the Humane Activist, who signs every petition for Congress for improvement of animal rights and protection, this has been very painful. I was able to successfully turn in a neighbor for cruelty, and not only did Animal Services get involved, the officer in charge of the case got so disgusted with the owner's aggressive and uncooperative nature, it was turned over to the Sheriff''s Department and the guy got three months in jail and a 500 dollar fine for documented cruelty, as I had been more than willing to provide a detailed log of the abuse including pictures. But this situation is different, as the animal is fed, in a covered kennel, so the emotional abuse and suffering caused by 24/7 confinement apparently is not an issue for Animal Services. So, each time I hear the dog, as he is only two houses away, I talk to him, soothe him,.and it seems to help. I feel helpless in this particular case and this poem is my way of making sure someone, somewhere remembers his seemingly endless solitary confinement a the hands of brutes.

Mexico City 1978

After I finished my year as a high school foreign exchange student in Dallas, Texas in 1977, I was accepted at TCU in Fort Worth, and started there as a freshman in the fall of that year. The following year, I met a girl  outside the student cafeteria, who became a good friend,and she invited me and my brother, who had started classes at TCU in 1978, to spend the month long Christmas break with her and her family in her native Mexico. As luck would have it, she and her family lived in Mexico City. It is one of my most favorite trips I can recall, because it exposed me for the very first time to a culture so very different from the US, even though it was, so to speak, right next door. Being a college student in Texas was the main reason that I decided to become a double major: History and Spanish. I wanted to learn all I could about the world next to Texas, and felt that knowing the main language of the culture was a great way to truly appreciate and understand it. I fell in love with Mexico City. The people were very friendly to me, considering the huge metropolis they lived in. It did not come across as a cold, rude city, on the contrary, I always looked forward to go into downtown and be submerged in the crowds. I tried every food available sold by the street vendors, delighted in the big outdoor markets, the musicality of the language, even the hectic traffic and honking of horns, the music of the many outdoor cafes, the fashion of the women, the flirting men, who mad me feel like my blond hair and clear eyes was something special, the bright colors everywhere, the upbeat rhythm of a city pulsating with energy,life. The weather was hot, humid, and because of the altitude we felt light headed the first few days we were there, but that all added to the excitement of being in one of the largest metropolises on the planet. The family of my friend was wonderful, the mother was a great cook, and I found out I absolutely loved Mexican cuisine. It was truly the first time I felt like I could have stayed a lifetime, it felt like home. I saw, of course some of the wonders of Mecixo City, like the Museo Nacional, and the Zocalo. We missed visiting the Aztec pyramids, I still do not know why, but I got to see Chitzen Itza in Cozumel with my brother and mother in 1980, so I do not feel completely cheated, and of course the temples in Chitzen Itza are Mayan. I saw of course, and this for the first time in my life, the big problems of a huge city. I saw slums perched on the hill tops next to the huge villas of the wealthy, I saw smog on the freeways surrounding the giant sprawling metropolis, but that did not diminish my fascination with the place or the feeling I had just been introduced to one of the major cities of a major culture on our planet and that the experience had just increased by a tenfold my life experience.

De bello Gallorum

The name Julius Caesar evokes different ideas to different people. To me , he is not only a brilliant strategist, emperor, and one of the most famous lovers of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, he is foremost the general whose war diaries we read as required reading, in the original Latin, in my years in Catholic high school in Belgium. Julius Caesar holds a prominent place in my memory because he said one thing that makes me exceedingly proud to this day: "Belgae fortissimi sunt omnae Gallorum". For those of you who do not speak Latin, it means: " the Belgian tribes are the strongest of all the Gaelic tribes".There you have it. As a native Belgian, how could I not be proud. To read this at age 14, at a time when a lot of Belgians continued to feel their dignity challenged because of language squabbles between the Wallons, who claim loyalty to the French language and culture, and the Flemish, who are all too proud to be Belgian, it was an impressive sentence,as a young Flemish girl, to read. It became engraved in my brain. My husband and I became first degree black belts in the martial art of Tae Kwon Do, and I remember our 9th degree Grand Master, under whom we trained, telling one of the black belt men I was sparring with one day, when referring to me in the all black belt evening class:"Don't make her mad!" It was music to my ears, I was so surprised and well, flattered, as this fellow black belt male towered over me at six foot four, and I am five foot eight. Some of that good old warrior blood Julius Caesar had talked about must have been noticeable to our South Korean Grand Master, because he was not prone to give complements to the women in his classes. I always felt that the women, who were outnumbered four to one, had to try at least twice at hard to get any respect and appreciation. I was also told  by a young master that I had a very powerful round house kick. I think some of that Gaelic blood must have lived on in my ancestors, because I sure enjoyed being a martial warrior as it allowed me to overcome a basic insecurity as to my value because of a highly critical mother and a very busy father. So, to me , all the splendor and historical musings Julius Caesar evokes and continues to spark in biography after biography, pales and becomes less important, because he will always be the general who knew first hand that among the Gaelic tribes the Belgae , of which I am a proud descendant, are the strongest.

Daisies

For all the years Michael and I have been married, he has always brought me flowers. Beautiful bouquets of roses in the most delicate hues of pink, red roses for Valentine's Day, sometimes white roses ,just because. He is very considerate this way. When we were first married, and still in graduate school, living in a small one bedroom apartment in Austin, he would bring me daisies he 'd pick on the side of the road. I absolutely loved that. We were on a tight budget, but his heart never failed to find charming ways to surprise me. Just the other day, he came home once more with a bouquet of daisies he'd picked by the side of the road on his way home. I am looking at them now, sitting cheerfully in their pretty blue vase. And I think back on the very first time Michael brought me daisies, and the sweet smile and kindness in his clear blue eyes. For a strong, stoic man like my husband to be tender enough to bring me daisies still after 26 years of marriage, it truly is a wonderful feeling. A dear friend of mine still brings a chuckle to my smile whenever I recall a conversation I had with him 27 years ago before I met Michael and before he met his now wife. We were talking, both of us hypothetically, about what it would be like to be in a long term relationship like marriage. My friend thought for a minute, then said very seriously, but it sent me in a roarous laughter: "Nose to nose with the same person ..."  I always remembered that. Something about the way he said it, he seemed quite concerned. It is a challenge to keep a long term relationship happy, and there are certainly times when the nose to nose has proven and is proving to be quite real in its concerns. But I see those daisies on my writing table, and my heart just melts. Marriage is not for those with queasy stomachs, that is for sure, but love and the rewards over time to be a family and hang in there on good days and bad days make up for the times that our other half drives us temporarily around the bend.

Chicago 1973

Because of my father's connections in the business world, we started meeting American families that were working in Europe for Caterpillar tractors. The company were my father was head CEO landed a major contract with them and so my father started traveling to the Midwest in the early seventies. As is usual in European culture, business deals are often sealed over a good meal, and my mother who was a good cook provided many a successful dinner for my father and his business connections. So, over time, the wives also came to dinner, the children sometimes met if they were our age, and so friendships were forged. Out of such an arrangement grew a friendship that lasted many years with an American couple from Joliet, Illinois. The husband was a high ranked Caterpillar engineer, and the wife and my mother became good friends. They had some friends in Illinois they thought would make a good match for me for a six week summer visit to introduce me to American culture first hand. The family had a daughter my age, sixteen, and a son about twelve. I was already intrigued from a young age by the possibility to study and live in the US, so I was happy with the idea. The first exposure to a big American city was Toronto, as my father had to meet some business people there and then I would spend time with my new family for six weeks, while my parents went on to take a trip down the Grand Canyon with Flemish-American friends of theirs from Detroit. The family I stayed with for six weeks was kind, very easy going, welcoming. I was a shy person at that age, and they accepted this gracefully. The biggest impact on me was visiting downtown Chicago with its huge skyscrapers and endless freeways system. The sheer abundance of cars, of people, the traffic, the towering buildings, was unlike anything I had experienced. I was of course familiar with Brussels, had traveled to London and Paris, but I could not have imagined a city like Chicago. Looking down from the hugely tall Sears Towers was a far different experience emotionally and intellectually than looking down from the top deck of Notre Dame in Paris. These were two completely different worlds, on steeped in the future, the other in the past. To experience this as a young girl, and comprehend the significance, only added to my fascination with history and man's drive to control his surroundings. My father once pointed out that you can tell what a civilization values most by which buildings are the tallest. In Europe for a very long time, the tallest buildings in town were the churches and cathedrals. These days that is no longer the case. Now the tallest buildings, like it was already so in Chicago forty years ago, are also tall business buildings, and it seems to be the norm in most big modern cities world wide. The experience atop the Sears Towers made me realize that as a young European, I was standing at a crossroads in my life story as I was considering leaving a spiritually oriented world for one that was business minded. The rapid and continued growth of America's big cities and the challenges and dilemmas and questions such a relentless pursuit have generated always take me back to my first experience in Chicago, that already then had left me excited but slightly uneasy and concerned.

Midnight train to Switzerland

To this day, the sensation is very easy to recall: the rocking motion of a steadily fast moving train. When I was still in Middle School, a trip to Maloya, Switzerland was made available at very little cost to teenagers from families where there were four or more children. In a Catholic country like Belgium, at a Catholic girl school, that was a done deal. Three or four kids was very common for a family. There were lots of girls in my class where there were six, seven, nine, eleven kids. The kids that only counted two siblings in their family were looked down on somewhat, and you really had to feel sorry for the kids who were only children. They were treated as outcasts with heathen parents. Sex was for procreation, not for fun. The nuns wanted to make sure we carried that happy thought  to our future marriages. Anyway, I was excited, we qualified, and I got to go to Switzerland for ten days, by train, together with all the other girls from morally responsible families, when it came to procreation, and some chaperons. It was so exciting, it was to be a trip to learn the basics of skiing, something it would turn out, I was not to be very adept at. But it did not matter, the ski label was just a formula, and I had a wonderful time, as the ski instructors were extremely kind and patient. I have a cousin near the town of Maloya, which is not very far from the famed St. Moritz ski resort. "The Shah of Iran takes his family skiing in St. Moritz", my mother proudly pointed out. We were moving up in the world!. Of course, we were not anywhere near where the elite of the world at the time, it was 1971, went skiing, but still, it all sounded impressive. We stayed at a large old hotel, that was past its glory days, and that now rented out entire wings of the place at very discounted prices to people like girls from schools who had won a basically free trip. The place was very large, and had very modest accommodations, but the large old fashioned cafeteria served decent enough food, and plenty of it. The carpeting had been removed, so the noise at lunch and dinner time, at the long tables was deafening between the clatter of plates and silverware on tables stripped of tablecloths, and the high pitched voices of about 200 middle school girls. The first day was the loudest to me, because I still felt the motion in my body of the all night train ride, and the impact of the lack of sleep, as everyone was way too excited to sleep. It was wintertime of course, and we had left a dreary Belgian winter sky to arrive at a blindingly bright blue sky in Switzerland the next morning. It was gorgeous, all this blindingly bright white snow amidst this equally blindingly blue sky, with a sparkling sun to add to the whole welcoming effect.We slept in big, tall ceiling rooms, eight girls to a room, in bunk beds. It took the hall monitors at least an hour each night to convince us to settle down and go to sleep. I was used to my own room at home, and sharing a room was both a bit unnerving and exciting. Everyone got along really well in our room. The fresh mountain air made me sleep better than I could ever recall, plus the daily exercise of trying, at least to get the hang of skiing. We also ended up with a tan, which threw me for a loop. It was winter,and the only other tan I had ever had was from being in the sun at the pool, or the ocean. I found out as soon as we got back from Switzerland that the tan was considered a status symbol. You were obviously a member of the elite, if in a grey winter country like Belgium, you were sporting a mountain tan you had acquired during your winter holidays in Switzerland. It was one of the first deeply felt experiences of the nonsense of social snobbery and one that to this day makes me chuckle. My school was already known for its social elitism, that was one added  attitude it did not need help reinforcing. But what I carried away from the trip was the memory of the beauty of the mountains, the incredibly fresh, cool air, the sun, and the camaraderie of a bunch of girls making new friends, having a great time, in the middle of a gloomy winter that we had been fortunate enough to get away from for ten glorious days.

The Jewelry Box

When I was growing up, the most favorite piece of furniture in my bedroom was a small secretaire, a small desk, made of two different types of inlaid wood. It had a bit of a rococo feel to it in its design of curved legs and the curviture of the fold out lid that closed the desk with a fancy and important looking key. I was about thirteen when my parents bought it for me at a fancy furniture store downtown. I was absolutely in love with it. I stored my favorite little perfume bottles in it, my favorite velvet ribbons I wore at the time to tie my hair back in a ponytail, my favorite copies of Paris Match with articles of my favorite singers and actresses, like France Gall, Francoise Hardy, Brigitte Bardot, Mia Farrow, Cheryl Miller. It held my first attempts at writing poetry in tiny little exotic paper notebooks. It was my little treasure chest. When many years later, my parents decided to move to the US, they had all their expensive antique furniture and objets d'arts shipped in containers to Arizona where they had bought a beautiful house about and hour and a half from Monument Valley and the Navajo Reservation, as they both had a fascination with Native American culture of the South West. I was heart broken to learn that my small treasured writing desk had not been included in the containers, as my mother put it, "It had no real value" compared to the 17th century antique dressers. It really put into perspective how ultimately irrelevant I had always been in the scheme of things. She knew I absolutely adored that desk, even though it was considered cheap in the larger inventory, as it was factory made. Anyway, I always missed that desk, its sleek feel and pretty wood, it tiny little drawers just right to hold my adolescent treasures, its smell of polished wood and lacquer. Then, last year my husband surprised me with a beautiful big jewelry box, that looks like a small version , in its lacquered inlaid wood design, of my cherished lost desk. It feels the same, smells the same, has these tiny drawers that now hold my rings and bracelets and necklaces. Some little sprite was looking out for my bruised feelings, because now each time I open my beautiful jewelry chest, I see my favorite desk again, and all its treasured memories, that now are turning the contents of the chest into new favorite memories with each new gift of jewelry my husband tries to fill it with.

Margot

Margot was a very interesting person to me when I was growing up. I don't remember exactly when my parents met her and her husband, but they were the friends that took my brother and I to London and Paris. She and her husband lives in a huge mansion that sat like a castle atop a hill overlooking a huge garden. We often went to their house, for brunch and dinner, and the place was a delight to explore, as it had secret passage ways and was full of exotic trophies from Africa and Asia. The house seemed like a fun labyrinth to me, and it smelled exotic too, of lilacs mixed with sandalwood or Moroccan musk perfume.Margot was Walloon, and everyone always spoke French at her estate, even though her husband was Flemish and so were we. She dressed extravagantly, in dresses and jewelry bought during her extended weekends in New York, a city she adored. She cooked extravagantly too, there were times I was not sure what it was we were eating, but it always tasted good, so I thought it was always exciting to eat at her house. She liked me, and I enjoyed her taking me seriously in conversations, she was a boost to my self esteem. Languages always came easy to me, so I was quite competent entertaining a conversation in good French, even at only age twelve. She was a big lady, and very gracious and sensual, and very attractive, in personality and looks. I remember many years later, when my husband Michael and I went to Belgium after we finished our master degrees from the University of Texas in Austin, and we took a train to Paris, you could at one point see Margot and Jeff's huge mansion from the train. It still was there, imposing, proud, still on its hill. I wandered what happened to her and her husband. If they are still alive they must be well into their eighties. With all the chaos of my parent's marriage falling apart, I lost track of them. I wander if she realizes what an impact she had on my desire to travel, and how much I always enjoyed her house, her company and conversations, and how grateful I remain for the wondrous experiences at a young age in London and Paris.

Paris 1970

In the late summer of 1970, my brother and I , who were 12 and 13, spent a week in Paris courtesy of the same generous friends who had taken us to London with them the year before. Most people think of Paris and images of the Champs Elysees  and the Eiffel tower, Monmartre, Notre Dame cathedral, L'Opera, L'arc de Triomphe, come to mind. My experience included all that and it was wonderful, but when I think of Paris, I think of the Catacombs and the Paris Mosque as the highlights of my week there. It is what comes to mind when I remember Paris. To this day I have the postcards from the Catacombs and to this day, the scent of mint,which now grows in our backyard and whose perfume greets me each spring and summer morning with its enchantment, reminds me of drinking hot sweetened mint tea at the Paris Mosque. I still remember how fascinated I was with the beautiful mosaics and their bright turquoise colours, and to this day that shade of bright blue remains one of my most favorite. The experience at the Mosque opened up my mind at a young age to the marvel of other perspectives in aesthetics, music, culture. I was fascinated by the sounds, the clothes, the timbre of the voices mixing French and Arabic. It woke up a subdued nostalgia for foreign lands, exotic adventures. I remember many years later, listening to the magnificent voice of the Egyptian singer Fairuz, and how her songs of love and country would transport and mesmerize me, even though I did not speak a word of Arabic, other than understanding that "shukran" meant "thank you" and "habibi" meant "I love you".
The Catacombs were a very intimate experience. You would not think that artistically arranged skulls and bones from an original overflow of mass municipal graves going back centuries would be a recipe for beauty and contemplation, but to me it was. The catacombs were opened to the public in 1874 and people have been going to see them ever since. Some 6 million bones in underground tunnels that are well lit and have spacious walkways, are on display in seemingly endless walls. To me there was nothing creepy about it. It was a spiritual experience, very solemn, very quiet, as people around you whisper respectfully. It is right in the heart of Paris, too. So one minute you are walking around the streets of Paris, the next you are going down this spiral staircase that descends to this cellar that leads into the Catacomb tunnels. I still remember coming back up to the streets. By then the light of day was fading, and the street lamps were lit. It was surreal to walk around, surrounded by all these people that were, well, alive, after seeing the bones and skulls of so many, many dead people.
I have very fond memories of Paris, thanks to the Catacombs, and thanks to the Paris Mosque.

Malaguena Salerosa

There is a beautiful Mexican love song that over time has become world famous. It is called Malaguena Salerosa and is the story of a man lovestruck by an enchanting woman of a higher social class. It is an ancient theme and a familiar dilemma. I have always been particular to both Mexico and Southern Spain, ever since I spent a month in Mexico City when I was 21. I have also always had a fascination for Southern Spain because of the influence of Arabic language and culture. So, the song Malaguena salerosa, literally, spicy woman from Malaga, holds a double intrigue. I recently had the pleasure of getting back in touch with a long lost friend, who is from North Africa, a part of the world rich in the confluence, past and present of several cultures, and it has always been a dream of mine to experience the richness of countries like Tunisia , Algeria and Morocco. Close to the time I received a welcome phone call from my friend, whose voice and laughter I had not heard in almost 27 years, my husband put on a CD with Mexican music and the first song to play was Malaguena Salerosa. I had not heard the song in many years, and it struck a deep chord of melancholy, of time gone by, of friendships gained and lost, and recently recovered. It is amazing to me how persistent the emotions can be attached to our dreams and aspirations. In this case, it was a favorite song reminding me of a Mexican friend I had loved and lost to remind me of the power of my longing to reconnect with a friend from a favorite part of North Africa. In my mind, I was already there, meeting at the airport, introducing my husband and son, meeting his wife, visiting his university, the wonderful area in the Atlas mountains, seeing the imperial cities of Meknes and Fez, visiting Rabat, Casablanca, Essaouira, just enjoying the experience of the blend of Berber, Arab, French, Spanish language and culture. If we make it back to Belgium finally again for a visit, it is only a few hours by plane to Southern Spain and North Africa. It was a powerful experience emotionally, to feel a resurgence of that dream to visit and travel to that part of the world. The invitation came by phone form my friend, only adding to the happy feeling of sensing a dream closer to reality. All our focus right now is on getting our son through college, and like in the song Malaguena Salerosa, I too will understand life if it chooses to move on past my dream, but it will never diminish the feelings of love and hope for a deep longing carefully kept in the treasure chest of my dreams.

London 1969

There is something enchanting about our persistent fascination with the British royal family. I just watched bits and pieces of the four day celebrations in honor of Queen Elizabeth II 's Diamond Jubilee of her ascension to the throne. I watched the images of Buckingham palace, Trafalgar Square, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and it took me back to 1969. I was twelve, and my brother and I had been invited to spend a week in London with good friends of our parents and their twenty year old only daughter. These friends had traveled all over the world, and they had this big, old jeep they drove everywhere, a souvenir from their safari days. They decided to take the old jeep to London, just put it on the old boat that would take it across the Channel to Dover. The ride on the big old mail boat was exciting, we went up on the deck,and I loved the fresh wind in my face, as we left Oostende and headed for the famous white Dover cliffs. Once we got there, we got the rambling, loud jeep off the boat and started driving for what seemed endless hours by miles and miles of row houses leading into London. We ended up staying at the posh Carlton Towers. It was the first time for my brother, who was eleven,and I to be abroad, without our parents. It was thrilling. I still remember the luxurious feeling of waking up in the spacious room, of eating breakfast in the elegant dining area, the lush feel of the bathrooms, the carpeting everywhere. The fun part was exploring London, from Picadilly Circus to yes, believe it or not, Soho and its seedier sights at night. I still recall how I was slightly scared when we walked by a very loud all nude dancing strip club. I remember seeing the naked picture of a very pretty woman, and how worried I was about her having such a dangerous job, from the looks of the nasty looking men hanging around the entrance. We were there during a garbage strike, and in Soho and elsewhere, away from the fancy boutiques and prominent tourist places, there was enough garbage to feel it hitting above your ankles. In with the super short mini skirts and cutting edge hairdos and footwear, it was an almost surreal experience, especially for an eleven and twelve year old who had grown up in a very quiet small town. I bought my first mini skirt ever at Harrods of London. It was so short, my father refused to let me wear it once I brought it home, unless I wore long pants with it. It was one of those mini skirts they sold with matching panties, because it was so short. I am surprised my parents let my brother and I go to Paris with the same friends the next year! I remember having my picture taken outside Buckingham Palace with one of the Queens' famous horse guards in the shiny helmets. I remember the thrill of being at Trafalgar Square and being fascinated at all the different cultures and ethnicities : Sikhs in their impressive turbans wearing smart western suits, women in sari, black men and women from various African countries, very rich people, and very poor. I remember one mad homeless guy, dressed like Napoleon. He got around walking on skis he had painted gold. He would do a song and dance for money. It left quite an impression on me. I remember being in the Tower of London, and what a creepy place I thought it was. I loved the peace and quiet of the beautiful St. Patrick's Cathedral, a respite from the hustle and bustle out side. It was summer when we were there, very hot. The week long trip to London left a vivid impression of how a big city can be both absolutely wonderful and absolutely terrifying. I loved the experience and already looked forward to our trip to Paris the next year.

Meterke

One of the fondest memories I have of my father's mother, whom everyone called Meterke, "little godmother", for reasons I am still not sure of, is her large cookie tin full of buttons. She and my father's two older sisters were seamstresses and my Meterke made some beautiful dresses for my sisters and I. The two dresses that stand out in my memory were a pair of jumpers in a very soft red and dark blue corduroy with very smart short sleeved lace blouses. I loved those dresses. My Meterke also made my first Communion dress and veil, out of a beautiful French eyelet lace, with pink satin ribbons and a matching little handbag. I was so proud. She also made the most elegant clothes for my sisters and my dolls.I had a doll I adored, called Isabelle, and she had gorgeous long black hair, which I combed every day. I kept her little white shoes sparkling clean. Meterke made Isabelle a red coat, with a mandarin collar in black velvet trim, that matched the trimmed cuffs of the coat's sleeves. Where she found the tiny glass buttons for the coat I never knew, but I was thrilled. Meterke had a lot of patience with her grandchildren, took their concerns and ideas seriously, and she was great to play boardgames with.She was also a very upright person. My youngest sister who at the time was no more than five, loved to cheat at card games,and Meterke tried very earnestly to change Ludwina's penchant towards this particular delight in mischief, but to no avail. So, she just chuckled and let it go. It was fun to go to her apartment in Oostende, by the seaside, in Belgium, as there was the irresistible attraction of the big box with what must have been hundreds of buttons. Buttons large and tiny, shiny, wooden, mother of pearl, glass, ceramic, satin, lace, bright red, gold colored, black, silver, and Meterke allowed us to dump them all out on her sewing table. They made the most lovely rustling sound, like water running over large boulders, it was such a delight to run your fingers over them, as were they keys to a very bizarre musical instrument. I also remember her helping me buy a lovely piggy bank piggy in ceramic, that cost two dollars at the time. I was about eight, but I had only brought one dollar in my little coin purse, so Meterke paid the difference, because she could tell I just fell in love with that piggy bank. I still see it before me. It was a girl piggy, with flowers in her hair, a big smile, and big eyelashes of which I was always fond of. I made sure my little sisters did not have a chance to cut doll Isabelle's eyelashes or hair, as they liked to do with the less alert dolls. Meterke died in 1976 of breastcancer, about six months after I left for the US. I missed her funeral, so she stayed alive in my mind, as I never saw her dead. All these years later, I still think of her fondly, and every time I see someone wearing a sweater or dress or coat with unusual buttons, I remember the fun times my sisters and I had with her big box of buttons, and how beautiful my doll Isabelle looked in the coat Meterke made for her.

Rain

Days that are cloudy,cool and quiet when in springtime we expect warm and sunny skies, I often find soothing, but also energizing. For some reason I think of Merlin in his cabin in the woods, solving problems he'd been pondering for a long time, somehow having an extra clear insight, because the weather is just right for a keen understanding. I like to think that everywhere important solutions about the universe, medicine, climate change, feeding the world's growing population, resolving military conflicts, all come about easier on days when the weather is subdued, here, in the tropics, just about everywhere where there is such a thing as weather. Rainy days too, have their own meaning to me. I know a lot of people complain when it rains, it gets everything wet, it makes for muddy shoes, dirty cars, messes up floors and carpets,etc., but to me rain gives me a sense of security, of being less visible, more shaded, more relaxed,too.I like the sound of rain, and how it makes everything green in the garden and forest shiny, abundant, and how it enhances the scent of the leaves, the dirt, the trees and the flowers. Cloudy days also enhance colors, makes them more dramatic, deeper,richer. In the spring and summer, the rain brings out the small tree frogs, who sing ecstatically, delirious with the joy of a new mating season. I love to fall asleep with the window open, listening to their exuberant calls. Sounds carry differently on rainy days in, too. They are more muffled, more musical,softer. I love to feel the rain get my hair wet, and how it gets frizzy, making me feel more relaxed, more casual. Everything smells better after a rain shower,it is mother nature's washing machine, for our hair, our clothes, and also our attitude, our energy, our soul. Rainy days always make me feel renewed, lighter, freer. I know too much rain is a real problem, and so is not enough rain. It is rare that a flood or drought are a blessing. But just enough rain, to add a touch of sparkle to everything when the sun comes back out, to freshen the growing flowers and vegetables, the feeding animals, the stressed out people who tend to take everything too seriously, a whimsical rain shower that messes up our hair and shoes, our carpet and car is just the thing to get that sense of humor back on track. A walk in the rain, with or without that umbrella, might be just what the proverbial doctor ordered, so we can watch the ponds and lakes rejoice at the extra reserves they will have when we do hit a dry spell in the summer, and watch the birds and frogs get a cool drink of water as they watch us too appreciate the blessings rain can bring.

Legos

It is an image that comes back to me
Time and again:
The four of us playing Legos together
Noisily, on the garage table
On a hot summer's day.

The garage was cool, a happy refuge
From summer's heat.
The hundreds of Lego pieces
Bustling loudly in our busy hands.

We were building toy houses.
This is where I'll put the window.
This will be a door to the kitchen.
I'll put the bathroom here
And these are our beds.

Laughter, happiness ringing out
Above the Lego blocks.
Hours passed, blissfully.
Four children playing together
In innocence and joy.

Whatever love there was, turned to ash.
Leaving bitter seeds for us to digest.
Whatever home we had, was broken.
The toys spilled all over our hearts
And souls, like toys gone mad.

Death and silence triumphant ghosts
ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

But in my heart I still can feel
a faint smile come to me,
A longing palatable, persistent, strong.

The sun is hot today,
The garage cool, full of my now grown son's toys.
And I dream and wonder
Of  a childhood come and gone,
his and mine, and childhoods yet to come.

May they be sweet and long
Full of joy, and may they be spared
The dark shadow of our family's tragic war.


Trudi Ralston.
April 15th, 2010.

One of the most persisting memories attached to this flashback in my recollections of this particular moment in time, is the sound, like music, of the Lego pieces, and the voices, so happy, so unaware of what was to come. It is one of the most hypnotic memories I have of all four of us playing together, my brother Bart, my sisters Goedele and Ludwina and I, a moment of innocence and happiness frozen in time.
June 1st, 2012.