Our Other Daughters

We planned to have meals with 2 of our daughters today.

Lunch was with Sonia, our Brasilian daughter.  Sonia was one of the early foreigners we had stay with us, in about 1981.  She did not come through any program but came because a friend of ours who had lived with us for 6 weeks, gave her our phone number in case she needed help while traveling in the United States.  As it happened, she ran out of money in Oakland, and was having problems with her traveling companions, so she called me, in tears, because she had nowhere else to turn.

I brought her to Davis and she moved in with us, then happened to meet Charlie one night at a bar and soon after moved from our house to his. They lived together for several weeks until her return to Brasil. She and Charlie had great plans to remain close, but as time passed, they lost contact with each other. 

Many years later, Sonia contacted me about a trip she was making to the US on business. She hadn’t heard from Charlie in a couple of years, and had no plans to contact him, but wanted to visit us. We were going to be out of town the day she was scheduled to arrive, but I made arrangements for her to get into the house, if she could get herself to Davis. Then, on a whim, I called Charlie and said, “I don’t know if you want to know this, but Sonia is arriving on Saturday and has no way to get to Davis...” 

There was a long silence and then he said “What’s her flight information?” 

When we arrived back home again, there was no indication that Sonia had been there. We didn’t hear from her for a week, and when she called, she had been with Charlie. Six months later, I was the matron of honor at their wedding. And now they have Denise and Daniel both of whom are adults. In 2000 we attended the ceremony where Sonia became a U.S. citizen.

They now live in Napa, where Sonia is an artist and is trying to start a business selling her delicious gluten-free pizzas.  We don't see each other nearly enough, I realized, as we enjoyed getting caught up over sushi.  

Dinner was at the restaurant of our Mexican daughter, Marie.  We went with Ned and Marta to celebrate Marie's birthday, my birthday and Walt's upcoming birthday.

Unfortunately, she and Ned got their dates crossed and we were there on the only day she wasn't going to be there as she was at a wine tasting in San Francisco, but we had a delicious dinner anyway.

The circumstances surrounding Marie's coming to us were pretty weird. Walt and I had gone to a show at a theatre in Davis, and sitting in front of us were some friends who had just returned form Mexico. David is a physician who volunteered time down there each year as part of a program put together by a local minister and his wife.
They talked about how their trip had gone and said that they had met this girl whom the minister and his wife thought had great potential, but she needed to get out of Mexico to be educated. As she had dual citizenship (her father, who had died when she was young, was American), there would be no visa problem, but they needed to find a home for her to live. As they knew I placed foreign students with American families, they asked if I had any suggestions of people they might call to see if they would like to host Marie for a year.
Never one to be able to say no, I immediately said "we'll take her."
Most of our students had been male, which was fine because they could share a bedroom with the four boys. On the rare occasions when we'd had women live with us, they slept in the living room. We'd never had someone live in the living room for a whole year. And I'm sure Marie never dreamed she'd be sleeping on a hide-a-bed for a year.
The short version is that she came and we got along very well. She had some adjustment difficulties but after the first few months, she blossomed. The potential that she displayed in Mexico was very apparent. This was a girl who was intelligent, a hard worker, and she was going to make something of herself. She graduated from Davis High School and worked in a crepe restaurant most of the time she was here.
I can't remember now all the things she did, but she graduated from Sacramento State College with a major in business. She was chosen to go to Peru on a special international business program. She worked for some part of the state government for awhile on some sort of special deal. She wrote a book, I believe. It seemed that everything she touched turned to gold -- and not just out of luck; because she has a good head on her shoulders, knows what she wants, and is willing to work for it.
She married Mannie, a man from India, and shortly after their marriage they opened a restaurant in Elk Grove, south of Sacramento.. It's called Todo un Poco ("all in pieces") and was designed to be a two-part restaurant--one side was the "fine dining" Mexican restaurant and the other side was a more casual pizza parlor. It never quite divided up the way she originally anticipated, but they've had incredible success and it has been named best restaurant in Sacramento by one newspaper, one of the top 10 restaurants in the area by Sacramento Magazine. Marie, was "citizen of the year" in Elk Grove a few years back. She's done a lot of community work especially concerning diversity in the Elk Grove community.

I just love the very unusual paintings by a local artist with whom they became friends which decorate this restaurant.  Many based on a "day of the dead" theme have skeletons somehow resembling Marie and/or her husband.

We were sorry to miss seeing  Marie (but she called and I talked with her).  However, I was happy to have my favorite Todo un Poco dish, Punjabi pizza, which is made with cauliflower, potatoes and Indian spices.  When we went to the restaurant before it was opened, Mannie made 3 pizzas for us, two traditional and the Punjabi, which became my favorite.

I am so proud of both of our "daughters" and what they have made of their lives, and happy that I could spend today with both of them...well, kinda.  Next time we'll get the dates right with Marie!

Love, Information and Pizza

I was proud of myself for getting both reviews of the show we saw last night finished and sent off to the respective publications.  Usually, I find writing two different reviews of the same show a challenge, but not for this show.  I almost always sweat bullets trying to get it right and to make the two reviews sound like I didn't plagiarize myself.  But it was easy to take a slight different perspective on this for each paper this time.  I kind of like what I wrote for the Sacramento News and Review:

Watching Capital Stage’s Love and Information, by award-winning playwright Caryl Churchill is like sitting in front of your television and clicking through the channels one by one, pausing briefly to see what is going on.

Eleven talented actors, some of the best Sacramento has to offer, play ~100 characters during 50+ scenes over 95 minutes. There is no plot to intrude on the action and you’d think this would be a big mess, but it works beautifully.

Under director Benjamin T. Ismail, the show moves at a fast clip and in the end, you realize the importance of “communication” in our lives, the sad, the funny, the informative.

Churchill takes the audience on an exhilarating carnival ride. Take two giddy teenagers mooning over a popular star and contrast to a conversation with an Alzheimers patient, or learning how scientists test chicken brains, or various words for the thing we put our dinner on as we sit down to eat.

We have developed short attention spans and this show plays into that. We get a glimpse, but only a glimpse of the lives of others and then we move on to the next scene. It’s the equivalent of theater in 140 characters, like Twitter posts.

It sounds as if it wouldn’t fit together, but it does. This is innovative theater at its finest, thanks to the skill of all involved (no small amount of which includes the technicians who designed the set, the lighting and the sound, all integral to the success of this show).

Capital Stage is offering its audience an opportunity to see a unique, highly acclaimed new play which should not be missed.

The difficulty with reviewing for the News and Review is that you have to give stars, 1 to 5, to show how much you liked it (I was SO glad when we got rid of that star rating system at The Davis Enterprise!).  I was going to give it a 4 because it really was fun, but the more I wrote my two reviews, the more I decided I really liked it, so in the end I gave it a 5.  

Before we went to the theater, I had to prepare dinner.  Usually on Sacramento theater nights I cook a frozen dinner but we were in luck yesterday.  Our Brasilian daughter, Sonia, stopped by for a visit with her daughter Denise (who is going to grad school at UC Davis).  Sonia is an artist, living in Napa with her vintner husband and so they are close by, but not THAT close by and we don't see each other often.

They could only stay a short time, but she brought me a sample of her newest "invention."  One Brasilian food I use to make and absolutely love is something called pao de queijo, which are little cheese breads. They are made with cassava flour instead of wheat flour and there has never been a time when I did not think I had made some horrible mistake as the dough, which feels like silly putty, looks grey and unappetizing.  But somehow, after it has chilled, when you roll it into balls an cook it magic occurs and the most delicious thing emerges from the oven as your finished product.  

Brasilians who have lived with us have said it tastes like the real thing.  I don't think I could make it any more because I don't think I still have the recipe.

But Sonia, after a lot of experimentation has created a gluten-free pizza using pao de queijo for the dough.  She gave us one of her vegetarian pizzas and it was delicious.

She had taken it to Whole Foods, which immediately wanted to order 25 of them, after tasting the sample, but unfortunately there are all those messy rules and regulations you have to go through before you can sell something like that professionally (thank goodness I didn't know about that when I was baking and selling cakes!) and banks are reluctant to give you a loan if you have no experience, which you can't get without a loan.  So she's in a Catch-22 situation and I don't know what is going to happen with her potential business.

But if she can't get it going the world will miss out on a delicious treat (and I won't be able to get another pao de queijo pizza!)

But It Won't Fit on the Fridge

Like most homes where children live, there was a time when the refrigerator door was the place to display special artwork (now it is covered with magnets).

Finger paintings, drawings, macaroni art...they all were displayed on the refrigerator door until it was too full and then the oldest was taken down, saved, and a new one put up.  With five children there was a real rotating display for many years.

(Several years ago, at Christmas, I pulled out those forgotten but treasured pieces of art, packaged them up for each of the kids, and gave the pictures to them for Christmas, figuring that I couldn't bear to throw them away, so I would leave it to them to do.  We had a wonderful time that evening, going through all the old projects.  I think they may each have kept a few things but most got thrown away, eventually).

When Jeri was working on her Masters Degree in theater design at UC Davis, she designed a set once and when the show was over, she brought home the large painted backdrop.  She gave it to me, a large rolled up canvas, and joked that it probably wouldn't fit on the refrigerator door (I don't know where it is now).

That's what I thought of when we read about the 2nd Friday Art About with Sonia Hossom at the Putah Creek Winery this evening.

Sonia is our Brasilian daughter.  I have told her story before, how we took her in when she was having problems with her traveling companion, how she met Charlie while living here, moved in with him, and then moved back to Brasil, which essentially ended the relationship.

Several years later she was coming to the U.S. on business and contacted me to see about visiting us.  We were going to be gone the day she arrived, and I called Charlie, saying, "I don't know if you want to know this, but Sonia is flying in and we can't meet her plane."  There was a long pause and then he asked me for the flight information.

Several months later, I was the matron of honor at their wedding and now they have two beautiful children, one who has graduated from college, and one who is in college.  They live in wine country because Charlie is a vintner.

In addition to everything else she does, Sonia is an artist.  We have a beautiful ceramic vase she made and I have seen many of her paintings, which are lovely.  Tonight they were going to be put on display at this local winery, which described the upcoming evening thusly:

Wines by the glass and wine flights available. Artist Sonia Hossom and musician Ryan McBride will be on the back patio until 8PM (heaters included!). Sonia's work is watercolor and whimsy! Ever wonder what the grape vines do after harvest when no one is looking? Curious about the frog's eye view or whether Mr. Oak and Ms. Wisteria are a match? Come find out! Her work will be on display February 12th through March 11th.

One of our kids was going to be celebrated for her work.  Naturally, we had to go!

It was held at the winery tasting room and when you entered the tasting room, Sonia's watercolors were hanging on the wall.

You went out the back door onto a patio where there was a lovely reception, with wine tasting, a display of more of Sonia's paintings, and the guy who was supposed to be providing background music, who never heard the word "soft" in his life. He was selling his first CD at the event.  Trying to speak over the volume of his music, I told Walt I wasn't interested in buying it!

Sonia's husband Charlie was there, and her daughter Denise, who met a friend she had known since kindergarten, who had come in from Sacramento for the event.

We had such a good time visiting, getting to see Sonia's work, hearing how she happened to start watercolors (and why they are so expensive!).  Her paintings are way out of our price range, but I really enjoyed looking at them.  It's probably just as well...they wouldn't fit on the refrigerator door anyway.

 
And as we always do when we leave each other, we promised to get together again soon.  But we probably won't!

What a Joy to be Here

I will always remember the feeling of awe that my friend Alison and I had the first time we walked into a Lamplighters rehearsal in the late 1970s.  We quickly lost that sense of awe over the coming months, of course. as we (or maybe just I) attended rehearsals frequently and the magic of seeing the world behind the theatrical productions we had watched for years quickly dissolved.  But that first night was magic, as if we were trodding on hallowed ground that only those privileged few involved with the company should be allowed to see.

It was a rehearsal for a production of Die Fledermaus and as we crept quietly through the dark to seats where we could watch things, the chorus was singing the opening number for the second act.  What a joy to be here, on this wonderful occasion...  We watched them rehearse it many times.  To this day, I can't hear that part of Die Fledermaus without remembering that magical evening.

Today we drove to Yountville, near Napa, to watch The Lamplighters bring its latest production to a theater there.  They haven't performed the show in nearly 25 years and we will not be able to attend the San Francisco performances, so we decided to catch it in Yountville.

We're not around the company much any more, so I knew very few people in the production, but it was fun to hear the old songs again.  This is a new translation.  The one I know pretty much inside and out was done by Ruth and Thomas Martin.  This is a new one by David Scott Marley.  I met him after the show and told him he'd done a great job.  In truth, I don't know whether he did a great job or not.  As I said, I know the Martin version backward and forward.  Marley left out some scenes, rearranged some scenes, and of course the lyrics are different and I miss the old lyrics.  I also missed my favorite lines of dialogue ("How long have you been an actress?" "About as long as you've been a Marquis, Marquis.")   But that's not to say it wasn't great.  It probably was.  One reviewer says it's better than the version that's currently at the Met, so it must be very good.   I just don't do change well.

When I realized we would be only about 10 minutes from Napa, I contacted our Brasilian daughter, Sonia, whom we have not seen in about 10 years.   Which is ridiculous, since we live about an hour apart!  But somehow we just don't make the time.  I told her we would be in the neighborhood and would she and husband Charlie like to go out to dinner.  She was thrilled.

I later got a note saying we should just stay for dinner at their house.  Even better.  It gave us time to really get caught up, not only with Sonia but with kids Daniel and Denise.  I remember when both of them were born and we haven't seen either of them in nearly 15 years.  They've grown up in the interim!

Charlie, a vintner, poured wine for a toast while Daniel and Denise helped get dinner ready.

Over dinner, we had a good chance to talk about lots of things, and I was deighted to discover how much Denise and I have in common in the area of animal rights.  I happened to mention Temple Grandin's work and she lit up, as she has read several of Grandin's books.  It was just so much fun.  I loved all the table conversation on animals, politics, and everything else.

And at a certain point, there was a tira misu cake which was fabulous.

We celebrated all of our birthdays -- Paul's (last week), David's (this week), which he shares with Sonia, our friend Nelson in Brasil, me and Walt (Nelson didn't get any cake, of course--nor did Paul and Dave!).

Eventually we had to say goodbye, but not before making friends with Dan's bird, Mel.

Sonia is, among other things, an artist and works in clay and watercolor.  She wants to give me one of her paintings for a birthday present, but it's difficult to see them in the dark of the living room, so I suggested we get together for lunch sometime in the next month and I can choose.  I'm thrilled with an excuse to get together again.

 What a joy to be there, on that wonderful occasion!