DEC-B-5
RETURN TO CHICAGO FOR PHASE II OF CHICAGO
CHRISTMAS TIME VISIT
December 15—17, 2002
I had a good visit with the Griffioens, after my beginning stay with Milly and her family including a new Grandson, Paul Daniel, moving on to visit with Shirley having seen her new Grandson Ryan Scott (with each Milly through Gwen and Shirley through Amy Snoeyink expecting yet another new grandchild soon!) and a visit with Martheen and a chance to see her new grandson, Trinidad Jay. So, it was a grand slam on grands—none of my sisters having seen my first grandson Andrew William, or first granddaughter Kacie Elizabeth, or more recent twin grandsons Devin Michael or Jordan Lee as yet. I went to the Sherman Street church and there met people like the sister of Donald Gabrielson's mother—who knew me—now 38 years after my locker mate and classmate Don Gabrielson died of Hodgkin’s disease in our freshman Calvin year. I also saw Tom Geelhoed and George Monsma, before packing up for a dinner with Drew and Aubrey as we talked of their potential visit this coming year to Derwood and DC. I then made an uneventful flight to ORD—with the only new thing being that the checked in suitcase that I carried from GRR had to be unloaded of any cameras and film, since the new process of security screening of the checked bags is “unsafe at any (film) speed,” and I would not want them to destroy the memories of this Geelhoed Christmas party
I arrived at Chicago, with the luxury of the additional hour due to the time change, and got downtown to Le Meridien Hotel and checked into this rather luxurious Hotel (as contrasted with the more expensive and bumbling Marriott Lincolnshire which I had checked out of earlier this week) and set to the preparation for my Chicago visit Phase II.
DEL RIO AND VIRGINIA’S CHRISTMAS PROGRAM
I changed clothes and got a taxi and got out at the METRA Northwestern Chicago Train station. I waited there among the big Christmas packages in decorations to get the mercantile public to buy a bit more, and then got on the 1 1/4the hour double decker steel train to the northern suburbs toward Wisconsin. My exit is Highwood, a few exits after Evanston’s multiple exits, around the area we had just toured and shopped last week. From the train I can see Del Rio’s which is only a block or two back from the Highwood stop. There I met Virginia, who had just dashed out from the “first set” her first of two nightly performances with her group of selected singers—a baritone named Lorenzo Formosa, and a tenor named Lawrence Johnson, and a soprano named Deborah, who is about one fifth the size of Virginia’s very big voice. They are accompanied by “Doctor” (of musicology) Kip, a very accomplished pianist.
I shuttled in just as everyone else was seated. I sat with a seminary mate of Virginia’s sister Kate, and a former seminary professor of hers Tom, now retired, and a collector of old postcards. (You see, I may be making someone in the future a fabulous collection of antiques!) Tom’s wife Mary and he were also with me two years ago in this same setting. Kate was looking very trim and vivacious, and her husband Bob Jones, a neurologist, was telling me the accomplishments of his kids, who had all three had recitals or performances today. To make matters confusing, there was also another Tom and Bob—Tom is Bob’s brother, and he has a friend named Tom, and they are apparently an item—each causing jealous envy on the part of every other male in Virginia’s singing entourage. I found out later that Bob had been in US AID, and more particularly, in Maputo Mozambique. So, we chatted about the time I h ad spent there also, which was in the dicey time before the treaty of Rome, when FRELIMO and RENOMO were at war, and the “front” was a short distance from the place where I had stayed in the Universidad Eduardo Mondlane.
There was a good group dynamic among the four singers, and the performance went well, with especial cheers for bravura performances by Virginia, especially for the “home crowd” she had assembled, and I could tell only by her speaking voice that she was voice tired after ten consecutive performances. The best part of all was our rousing participation in Christmas Carols, my favorite being Stille Nacht. Our table was “Three French Hens.” I really enjoyed the chance to sing, and could really soar into the performances, largely since I am not a paid performer required to do it ten times in a row.
IT’S CHRISTMAS TIME
IN THE CITY
Chicago is a pleasant place to watch an urban Christmas unfolding. The lights and displays are pretty, and this year it was not so bitter cold and snowy as it had been in the last two years. We buzzed around a few shops like Marshall Fields, and a series of museum shops getting stocking stuffers and a special pea coat for Virginia’s niece in Cincinnati. WE swapped gifts, with one big package of Christmas presents from all over gone missing. The Christmas decorative bag I had left on my earlier trip into town had been left in the rental car, and when Virginia discovered it missing, she had called the Hertz agency and they had found the car, but the package was not inside it any more. Despite the slip inside one of the items with my name and address on it from a purchase from the RRCA of a Triathlon Ironman watch (so that it could be exchanged if it was the wrong one) someone apparently needed the world-wide collection of items more than I or Virginia did, since those presents vanished into the ether. Very fortunately, one big time I had wrapped separately, and was in her suitcase, and had not gone astray---the antique gilded intricate Thangka painting from Tibet. Virginia had got me a couple of sweaters that look superb on me, since she knows better than I about colors and matching—a Princess dressing a peasant.
We had dinner in the Meridien, and just to start out right from this hunting season and to look into the other gift she had given me of a wild game cook book, I had medallions of venison. This should remind me that I have four deer worth of wrapped venison about to arrive from Jim’s Custom meat cutting this week. We had some help from the concierge, and went to see a movie about an artist married to an artist in a tempestuous time and place: “Frida”—in Mexico, married to the famous muralist Diego Rivera, and an artist in her own right, but also friend, confidant and lover to a variety of notables, from Trotsky in those early Communist times, to the Negress who took Paris by storm, Josephine Baker.
The Chicago visit was a happy holiday event amid a time of good family reunions, and seeing the new life emerge in a whole series of new grandkids in Michigan and further plans and hopes for Maryland
As the title of my year-end letter goes: “Merry Christmas from Maryland!”