Rosemary & Rosa 'Ebb Tide' 4 October 2023

With today's visits by my friends Art Bergmann and  Dave Chesney I was nicely distracted until they left. Alone with Niña and Niño melancholy set in.

This happens every day, no matter how busy I may try to be. I find myself on the bed with my two cats and suddenly grief befalls me.

I  know that I may have just a little relief by going to my oficina and writing about Rosemary in a blog. She is almost with me as I write.

It works. It is satisfying. But by the time I turn off the lights in bed the sadness sets in.

I have often written here that when we are curious enough to ask those important questions, those who can answer them, are invariably dead.

From my diploma on my oficina wall, I know that I crossed the equator in the Río Aguapey on 11 December 1966. It was a slow boat so by the time I arrived at Veracruz it may have been early February of 1967. By then I had shoulder-length hair. I began to tell people (in Veracruz few understood) that I was a hippie.

I decided I was going to visit my friend Robert Hijar, who at the time was living in the Haight/Ashbury neighbourhood in San Francisco.

There I read Ramparts Magazine, bought a ceramic peace symbol, and played being a hippie but rejecting all requests I toke up.

Nevado de Toluca - 1968

Ceramic Peace Symbol in this blog

I returned to Veracruz and went to the Mocambo beach. My mother was worried so she suggested I go to Mexico City and look for a job.

Once there my friend Raúl  Guerrero Montemayor told me he was going to teach me the Berlitz Language system so that I could work out of the school he was employed by. The school sent teachers to instruct Mexican executives in American companies in English. We were also sent to American hotels to teach their employees to deal with American tourists.

And so it was that sometime in mid-December 1967, as I was leaving the school, I saw a young woman walking away from the school. I saw her from the back and she had straight and long blond hair, she was wearing a dark blue miniskirt, and her legs were divine. From that point my memory is blank and I have no idea how I approached her.  Within a week I took her to visit my mother in Veracruz for Christmas and by February 8 1968 we were married.

How did I approach her? What did I tell her or ask her? What did she tell me?

I have a memory (the only one) that in the front seat of my VW Beetle, a few days later, she had her legs up and she began to tell me something about relationships. And that is it.

Now with her gone, I will never know how it was that I connected with the woman I lived with for 52 years.