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Cool guy |
April 3rd, 1965 – April 3rd, 2008 – Shreesh completes 43 years.
The Mexican way of saying “Happy Birthday” is to sing “La Mañanita“. In Oaxaca, staying as we were in an affluent neighborhood, we would hear mariachis at dawn singing exactly this song, filling the first waking moments of the birthday boy or girl with it. Well I couldn’t really hire mariachis for Shreesh, but he did get his Mañanita sung for him by a really nice Mexican couple at Tulum, in one of the few precious shady spots at the site.
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Tulum |
Tulum is a lovely Maya city in the quirky sounding state of Quintana Roo, with an unbeatable view of the ocean. Cooling breezes from the sea uplift the dense cloak of heat that pervades the area since 8:00 in the morning. After staring royally out like a Mayan prince across the ocean like the helpful sign suggested, Shreesh celebrated his birthday by swimming in the cool blue Carribean Sea with the Mayan ruins a forming wonderful backdrop.
In the evening we celebrated by eating at an Italian restaurant that had something no Mexican restaurant seems to have – a good glass of wine. Why is it that we think of Italian food and good wine to celebrate a special occasion? This is not comfort food for us, neither one of us grew up in households that regularly cooked Italian food. It may be that every bite of pasta brings back memories of our life together and we get a chance to re-live those moments. We remember going to Italy for the first time with our close friends Fred and Ada and Jonathan; of taking Italian classes and making lifelong friends there, Liz, Barbara, Jerzy, Ayse and hence Tom and Ian.
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What is he doing? |
We think of our inspirational teacher Francesca whose opera classes opened up a whole new delightful world for us and of studying Dante with Stefania. It also brings back bittersweet memories of Pietro or Peter who is no more with us.
And as the flavors of the tagliatelle combine with the Soave I am drinking, we think of making spaghetti bolognese with Pavarotti blasting in the background, of the numerous happy evenings (and sometime days) spent cooking in our tiny kitchen at 645 Stockton St. Each sip of the Lagrein brings back the many pleasurable evenings at Bacar, one of the first few wine bars in San Francisco, spent learning of and enjoying the various and complex European, American and Australian wines with the help of Andrea Immer’s excellent book. And as the osso buco (even if it was the wrong cut) melts in our mouth, we remember our next door neighbors Salvatore and Amanda, who are getting married this year; Salvatore’s first attempts at hand rolling pasta on the floor; tasting the wonderful wines that Amanda would bring over.
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Sleeping in comfort |
And we remember Tom’s ski cabin up at Tahoe and the many evenings spent drinking wine, eating pasta from the Earthly Delights deli and watching movies like “Coffee and Cigarettes” with our ski cabin buddies after an exhausting day skiing the chutes of Granite Chief or the steep, wonderful slopes of High Yellow at Alpine Meadows ski resort.
Although we may not be rich and successful; we may not have pursued our careers to make loads of money and have houses and cars and kids; we have managed to live our dreams for the past sixteen years and been happy together. My hope and wish for Shreesh is that he continue to see his dreams realized; be it learning Hungarian or studying entomology.
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Friends |
Easter |
San Francisco |
Dolomites |
Feliz cumpleaños, Shreesh!
Happy birthday Shreesh, may all your dreams come true ..
Belated happy birthday shreesh! Have a wondeful life !
what’s this about awaiting moderation?
Shreesh,Happy B’day. Idid not know we were this close.. Mine is the 8th…
Bill
(from the WEMT course.)
Happy Birthday, Shreesh, mine is April 7th.
Happy Birthday BillW and Joseph! May yours be as pleasant as mine.
Shanta Auntie –
Did you sign on from another computer? If the system does not recognize you it will put the comments in for moderation for SPAM protection.
Happy Happy Birthday!!!
Tanti auguri a Shreesh!
Another beautifully written post. Feliz cumpleaños, Shreesh! Wishing you several more birthdays together in interesting places across the world.
You should’ve kept that goatee, you stud 🙂 Entomology?? Seriously?
“Although we may not be rich and successful”
Oh, but you are!
Fred
Oh, and by the way. I found 1 (one) bottle of Danzantes Mezcal here in S.F. for $71!
the same computer but I may have used my other iD.. don’t remember. Any way Neena writes beautiful !
Dear Shreesh and Neena,
One can interpret being “rich and successful” in many different ways. My definition of rich and successful would be the one who is happy in what he/she is doing, has sufficient money to pay day to day bills and doesn’t have to worry about tomorrow for living. I think you have accomplished that. So, in my own little dictionary you are successful and rich.
During your long journey, you may come to a point where you may have to decide what next? I am sure that at that point you will have a solution to what next and act accordingly. You are very fortunate to be able to do this at a very early age.
I wish you very happy life filled with joy.
Aai
Happy Birthday Shreesh. A very nice post Neena. We miss you too!
Fred, we still have 2 bottles of mezcal! Not the same without you to join us in consuming Alacranes!
Vinay, we will see whether Shreesh wants to pursue, entomology, oenology, linguistics…. I have dissuaded him from attending med school in India…its too political.
Thanks to everyone for the best wishes…One of the nice things with this blog is that we don’t feel so cut off.