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| Rosemary and Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent'- rose scanned 29 May 2024 |
I believe that many married couples of the last century shared an “our song”. Rosemary and I never had one. It was mostly my fault, as when I went to high school in Austin, Texas in 1968 I did not know how to dance. If you did not dance you had no girlfriends. I managed to sort of shuffle around when I fell for a short cheerleader, Judy Reyes from St. Mary’s, across town on the other side of the University of Texas. I have an embarrassing memory of dancing with her on our basketball gym floor (It was my baby as Brother Hubert, Koeppen, C.S.C. paid me a monthly salary to keep it clean and shiny) to the tune of A Summer Place.
I met Rosemary mid December 1967 in Mexico City. We were married on February 8, 1968. We never danced until some 20 years ago when we attempted to learn to dance the Argentine Tango.
A year ago the Wahs, a trio of musicians headed by prolific violinist Cameron Wilson, played a house concert for me. One of the songs was Ashokan Farewell by Jay Ungar. I am sure that I may have heard the tune with Rosemary in 1990 when we watched the Ken Burns miniseries on the US Civil War. But I had not memory of the song. The fact is that within seconds of listening to it tears began to flow. Ashokan was our song even though Rosemary did not know and neither did I.
A few weeks ago The Wahs returned and at my request they played Ashokan Farewell. Instantly I was crying.
For me it is astounding and special that it has taken me 53 years to know that my Rosemary and I had a song, an intimate song. One that we never danced to.
The combination plant scan and photo print scan for this blog I cooked up last night. Rosemary posed nude for me sometime around 1969. I sandwiched two individual negatives in my scanner and printed the result. I placed the print on my scanner with the English Rose, Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’. Rosemary loved this large rose because our eldest daughter is called Alexandra even though we all call her Ale (pronounced Aleh).
Today I finally succumbed to listening to the recording of Ashokan Farewell as Don Harder recorded the concert.
Tears flowed.
We did have "our film". Shortly after we were married we went to the sumptuous Cine Latino, across the street from our little first rental on Calle Estrasburgo, and we say 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was certainly not romantic. But a couple of years later in our little Arboledas, Estado de México, brick house we would watch the dubbed-into-Spanish Star Trek that was called La Odisea del Espacio. Since we watched it on our siesta I can confirm here that it was very romantic.
