Inks and Derek: Art and the Cricket Scores

In the early 1970s my husband Danny accepted a stint in his company’s London office.   (See Laundry Day in London,   Kinky Boots,  Valentine’s Day in Foggytown,  Intro to Cookery,  and Munro)

He’d be working for a guy named Derek whom I hadn’t met,  but Danny assured me I’d soon come to adore Derek and his wife Inks – and I did!

In fact soon after we’d settled into our Chelsea flat,  Inks took me under her wing,  and we realized that we shared a passion for art.  And so Inks took me to museum and gallery exhibits all over London,  and we enjoyed lovely lunches together in elegant members’ dining rooms.  Inks,  I learned,  also collected art and sculpture  – both British and African – much of it displayed in their house in St. John’s Wood and their wonderful country retreat in the Cotswolds.

And she and Derek took us to concerts and theater,  memorably to Athol Fugard’s stirring Master Harold and the Boys, and Trooping the Colour in honor of the Queen’s birthday.

And years later when we were back in the States we drove down to Richmond, Virginia to join Inks and Derek in celebrating their eldest son’s wedding.

And we joined them on a wonderful trip to South Africa – Derek’s homeland – and met them at a business conference in Barcelona where we explored Gaudi’s amazing Sagrada Familia together.

Over the years we’d see each other whenever we were in London or they in New York,  and I always found Derek to be larger than life – warm, bright, generous of spirit,  and an outstanding athlete who played cricket well into his 70s with teammates half his age.  And I was always touched by the way he ended emails and phone calls  “With fondest love.”

Then four years ago we got the devastating news that Derek had been diagnosed with cancer.  We kept in touch with Inks and their sons about his condition, and when Derek died we asked about his last days.

He was quite weak at the end,  we were told,  but he always asked for the latest cricket scores.

Thinking of Inks and remembering Derek – both with fondest love.

–  Dana Susan Lehrman 

Monsoons are more than just rainy days.  They are the wet season, the dry season’s counterpoint.  The rains are intense downpours, not drizzly affairs, and they sweep in ferociously. They are the annual water renewal that makes life possible.  Of course, that is changing along with the rest of the climate, but still.

The small commercial plane carrying me, my two sisters and my parents pitched and rolled through the monsoon clouds on its way to a bumpy touch down in Dacca (now Dhaka) in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1962.  Below us were glimpses of the saturated great green delta, so prone to flood and cyclone.  After a disorienting drive through humid gray streets, we arrived at our temporary house and wondered what the future held.

There was air conditioning.  The house had some servants assigned to it, dressed in loose white cotton.  Michael the cook served us rice pudding for dessert and he had a pet Alsatian dog with small puppies we couldn’t play with. My sisters sneaked sips of purloined crème de menthe from a preceding plane flight while my parents had their grownup discussion in another room.  I would later hear my mother summarize this as, “what god-forsaken place have you brought us to?”

That first impression was hardly improved when we awoke the following morning to find our house essentially an island in a dull watery lake.   The tanks (manmade water catchment ponds) had overflowed, the road runoff had overwhelmed the ditches on the side which served as open sewers, and we were going nowhere until the waters receded.  Michael and the rest of the crew were nonetheless unfazed, and we were soon visited by the cheerful and chaotic family across the street, the one we were replacing with our two-year posting. Welcome!

The monsoon season passed and the land dried up. Our new life developed its routine. We moved to a new house, the kids started school, met new people, got to know the city better. We ate dry season vegetables of pumpkin and okra. It was still hot.  Always humid and hot.

One sweltering day, I walked a few blocks over to visit my friend Pam..  She was blond and freckled, energetic, a year behind me in school and cursed with an obnoxious younger brother named Larry.  Her parents weren’t home.  She showed me how to make burnt-sugar candy in a frying pan, maybe a little too burnt, maybe sticking to the pan too much.  Uh oh.  To get out of the heat of the kitchen, she led us up the stairs to the flat roof for a bit of breeze.

Red-faced and overheated, I stepped outside and turned towards a quickening wind with an unexpected freshness.   The clouds had become very dark and we felt the weather turn.  And then it came, the astonishing wall of water, heavy drops sweeping across the roof, starting at one edge and swiftly advancing in a distinct line, a knife-edge front.  It raced forward and then washed over us, quenching our heat, giving relief, making us giddy.

Hooray, the rains are back!

Jews were told to remove their shoes and then shot by the Hungarian Arrow Cross and pushed into the river. As one of our guides said, “They disappeared.” Only their shoes remained behind.
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Good films can imitate life so well that we can discern and assess the values they convey.
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Namekagon river, Wisconsin

What could be more glorious than a weekend on the Namakagon River in Wisconsin? A group of female nurses, myself, my 12-year-old daughter and her friend, Emily,  drove under a bright sky across rich agricultural land through the St. Croix river’s national forest finally stopping at a roadside rest over the river. Our group planned a weekend canoe trip. We portaged the canoes down the banks of the river to a camping spot. The weather promised us a wonderful weekend where we could cook, play, swim, and paddle. We did not anticipate the storm that split our weekend holiday,

An idyllic spell filled our first two days with laughter, luscious recipes, and camaraderie. The canoe trips through scenic passageways and smooth rapids lived up to their amicable reputation. The small tents with their sleeping bags spread over drop cloths warmed us in the cool Wisconsin night.

We prepared for the last glorious night with an array of homemade specialties eaten at a campfire with plenty of hot chocolate. Except for me it was an all-female evening with no booze or awkward relationships. Just as we were closing, a sudden unexpected legion of dark clouds, wind and lightning threatened our evening. Before we could repack the dishes, the storm broke. The deluge of rain threatened to flood and knock over our tents. The ground cloths that were to provide a soft surface for the sleeping bags became drowned in running water, thus providing the campers with wet chambers.

I hurried the children into our tent. Then fled out to get the last cups of hot chocolate to warm them up as well as calm them down. They cried out that they were too cold to sleep.

I told them to shut their eyes while I told them a story. “Concentrate on my voice, fall into the story, fall asleep.”

I had much practice in this technique with my daughter. I often told her Morpheus inducing bedtime stories which I read, plagiarized, or came from my own inspiration.

So, I began. Once a storm struck a boat filled with children. Fortunately, it was near a small island and was able to crash on the shore. The children were wet and frightened. However, they spied a light house on the cliffs above. Struggling up to the door, they found it was open. And warm. They climbed to the top where they could observe the lightning and listen to the wind in safety. Old blankets for the lightkeeper were found in a closet. They curled up to sleep.

But, before dawn, they heard animal noises on the stairs. Rats who had also been on the boat were also seeking refuge in the lighthouse. They were scared.

By now my children had fallen asleep. In the morning, my daughter complained that she did not hear the end of the story. She asked me what happened to the children and the rats. Since I had been watching my daughter and her friend gradually fall asleep, I had not planned an ending.

I could have assuaged their fears by saying that along with rats were the cats also kept on the boat. These cats came up the stairs to eat the rats.

Or less grim, as the dawn arrived, the rats ran back to their burrows to get a good day’s sleep.

Or I arrived to save them.

In the morning we pulled our canoes through the muddy slope to the river to the cars above. We drove back the way we came into the sunlight, across the prairie, and to homes with warm beds. The storm, like the trip, became an adventure in itself.

 

I wanted to join that company.
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Seating Plan

Years ago when our son was busy studying his bar mitzvah Torah portion,  we were busy planning the celebratory luncheon that would follow the service.  (See Ghostwriting in the Family)

We picked the restaurant,  selected the menu,  made up the guest list,  and sent out the invitations.

We invited family of course,  our friends and our son’s friends, old college classmates, long-time neighbors,  and business colleagues of my husband and teaching colleagues of mine – all the communities that were so meaningful to the three of us.   And accordingly we drew up a seating plan for the luncheon.

And then on that joyous bar mitzvah day we went from table to table thanking all our guests for coming.  And altho I felt close to everyone gathered in the room that day,  it was the table where my teaching colleagues were sitting I felt I best belonged.

I spend all my working hours with my colleagues,  we mentor and support each other,  we share our passions and our goals,  and we appreciate what we do day-to-day far better than our spouses or our friends ever could.  (See Mr October,  Magazines for the Principal, The Diary of a Young Girl, The Parking Lot Seniority List, Educator of the Year  and Going Back to Work)

When we put our hearts and souls into our work,   it’s the community of our colleagues who knows us best!

Jane Addams HS Faculty Reunion – 2014

Jane Addams HS Faculty Reunion – 2023

– Dana Susan Lehrman

Exploring the unexpected.
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Tapestry

A few years ago my husband’s college roommate Ken invited us to join him on a trip to Normandy.   I had a bit of a hassle replacing my missing travel documents,  but eventually all was resolved.  (See The Purloined Passport)

We flew first to Paris where we visited with family and friends, then rented a car and drove to Caen  where we met Ken,  and for the next several days immersed ourselves in World War II and D-Day history.  And as we expected,  we found our time in Normandy both very educational and very emotional.

Towards the end of our stay the two men decided to go to another of the several Normandy museums in the area but I wanted  to spend some time in Bayeux to see the celebrated tapestry,  and so I went alone.

There I found the 230 foot long tapestry mounted behind protective glass and encircling the walls of the Bayeux Tapestry Museum.  An excellent auto-guide took me through the 58 scenes,  embroidered with colored yarn on the tapestry’s 9 linen panels.

Thought to date from the 11th century,  the tapestry depicts the events leading up to the 1066 Norman conquest of England and the British King Harold’s  defeat by Duke William of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings.

I was captivated by the tapestry –  the pain-staking work of the artisans who wove it centuries ago; the imperative at the time to record the historic battle in art;  and the story of how the tapestry survived and was preserved.

When we left France we took with us a clearer understanding of the events of WW II and what happened in Normandy,  and I left with a deeper appreciation of my father’s part in the war.  (See Captain)

And I also left with the story of another battle – one fought in Hastings ten centuries ago,  and immortalized in the extraordinary work of art I saw in that lovely museum in Bayeux.

– Dana Susan Lehrman