25 January - 2 February Anik visits us

We had met the Girards in Boston throwing snowballs at them in 1964: Anik, Marc and their children Manuel and Frederic. Christoph was born a year later. Marc had a guest research fellowship in molecular biology at MIT, Anik one in endocrinology at a Boston hospital. They came from Paris, cooked very well and were a most welcome European addition to our friends. The friendship endured when they moved to New York, and became even closer when Marc took another fellowship at the Salk in San Diego just as we moved to Pacific Palisades. After Marc had returned to his institute at the Pasteur in Paris we visited them there and later spent three weeks with them in an old farmhouse on the Dordogne in 1972. The relationship became tangled after that not without my contribution. I cannot unravel the times we saw each other. Anik visited us in Pacific Palisades for the last time in November 1985. The correspondence ended. Marc deserted her with another woman. They got divorced. The memory of our shared years never died completely. - Somehow I traced her in the French telephone book in 2006 and actually found her hiding in La Condamine, a tiny village in the Causses in Southern France. The euphoria following this re-discovery was overwhelming on all three sides, Anik's, Barbara's, and mine.

So it appeared like a minor miracle that Anik stood at our door again in January 2007. Under Barbara's wise guidance we retrieved our memories during the week she stayed with us.

As you see I was suddenly surrounded by two solicitous women inquiring after my dinner wishes. Anik had brought an authentic clay pot and a huge bag of condiments to make Moroccan tajine, a thick, slowly cooked stew, which lasted for three days. - Our relationship, now moderated by reality, has lasted through e-mails and family photos ever since. A source of pleasure only occasionally endangered by political left-right and old French-German misunderstandings. Give God that it continues in this way, we both love her dearly.

Two old Friends died in February

On 6 February our beloved Irmchen died

Irmchen Gernand, a hgh-school friend of Marga's from Berlin, came to us for the first time, when her daughter Gisela took care of our two “Goldschätze” in April 1966. We became her friends, each one in his and her own way. To me she was the first skeptical reader of my writing experiments and an indefatigable companion on many a ski tour in Mammouth. With Irmchen one could steal horses, as one says in German. Deserted by her husband long before us, she did not always approve of my escapades. We had no secrets before her. Later Susanne adopted her as a grandmother whom she adored more than my mother.

Throughout her life she practiced as a general physican supporting her two daughters. After she retired from the service she had the sense to buy herself into an “Augustinum”, one of the best German homes for seniors. Slowly her short-time memory began to vane, eventually reaching a state close to Alzheimer's. Gisela and Uscha visited her every week – and Barbara was her Liebling whenever she dropped by at her apartment. She retained a beautiful smile to her end as this photo from one of Barbara's last visits shows.

On 10 February Wachtang Djobadze died.

Wachtang was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. An archeologist who spent his life working on researching the medieval Georgian churches of eastern Turkey. He was made an honorable member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He had fled the Soviet Union to the German side in 1942, got his education in Freiburg, Germany after WW II, and via stations in Spain and Salt Lake City taught at East Los Angeles State University. I was given his name by a distant relative of his in Tbilisi. It was not difficult to find his unusual name in the LA telephone book. He had a German wife, Irene, and two grown children when I met him in 1977.

Wachtang was the most colorful man I ever befriended. Our friendship did not last long; our temperaments were too similar. Pained by a deep love-hate for his lost mother land, he stormed out of a slide show in 1981 at our house in which I showed the churches of his beloved home land, which he had not been allowed to see for 40 years. In true Georgian fashion he never set foot in our house again. Barbara, Irene, and his daughter Eteri kept the relationship alife.

Intrigued by the personality of this haunted Georgian I slowly began to collect pieces his life story during the twenty years of my visits to Tbilisi. The first revelation was that he had adopted the name of his mother Djobadze only when he became a naturalized US citizen. Before that he used the name of his father Tsitsishvili. Now one has to know that the Tsitsishvilis were an old, highly cultured noble family of Georgia. It turned out hat he was an illigimate child born from an extramaritual love affair of his wild and fiery mother with one of the young scions of this family, while her husband was in a Tsarist prison – probably for political reasons. He did not know whether he was born on March 17, 1917 or 1918. At the time of his death it became apparent that he had never been baptised, nor had his birth been officially registered. - The times were turbulent during those years. In 1917 German troops (World War I) had “liberated” Georgia from Tsarist Russia. After Germany's collaps the British took over. And in 1922 Stalin annexed the four-year-old first Georgian (Menshewiki-Socialist) Republic. Bloody years under Beria followed. When in 1942-43, during World War II the German front had reached the Caucasus his mother urged him to run. He hiked alone through the mountains to the German side. To avoid repatriation by the Americans at the end of WW II, he hid as a lumberjack in Bavaria.

Eteri carried half of his ashes to Tbilisi, where the Georgian patriarch personally held a memorial service for the old sinner. His urn was buried next to his mother – but I don't think that his grave stone mentions his name as Tsitsisvili. Tbilisi is a closely knit, bourgeois society.

16-24 February Cornelius' Visit

For a few days Cornelius stayed with us. Here he is talking to his sister in Denver. I cannot remember what conference he had come for. Barbara had gone to San Francisco to visit Robert and Lorrain and Eva and Alan Leveton for part of that week, and so I was alone with him. We were visted by a delightful Chinese friend (J.F. Hsü), went for dinner to Anneliese's once, ate out Chinese, and occasionally he cooked for us.

The highlight of that week was an exhibition at the Getty of the rare and guarded icon treasures of the St. Catherine Monastery in Sinai. Beautiful panels which he enjoyed as much as I. We had all together a wonderful week.

26 February – 3 March Heike at our House.

Heike Rönitz had stayed with us for a year in 1976-77 as a an exchange student. She went to Pali High with Susanne and ever since has been our “adopted daughter”. She has 3 children and lives with her husband in Grafing near München.

After the cold winter months in Grafing Heike, overcome by a longing for her “American parents” simply flew to Los Angeles and spent a week of vacation with us. Her great sense of practical reality was again a pleasure especially to me: Lots of love but few sentimentalities.

Through her long high-school year in the Palisades and her many visits she knows and is loved by all our local friends. Here Barbara caught her hugging Traudel.

19 May- 16 June Barbara in Tübingen and Rome

Barbara had been visiting the Romans in 2006 shortly after Calliope was born and ever since longed to see her again. As it happened Marga had finally agreed to move into a Senioren Stift in Tübingen. Barbara, her brothers, and Christian Scherwitz had worked on this change for more than a year. Marga could no longer live alone in her appartment but fought any change of the status quo with her whole person. So Barbara decided to spend 10 days with her, help disposing of her precious furniture and chosing the right combination of rooms in the Helene Wetzel Stift. Barbara's brothers Dieter and Klaus eventually shouldered the thankless job of Marga's actual move to the Stift. Barbara, after her return from Europe had a bad flareup of her Sjögren Syndrome and was in no shape to travel.

Cornelius had tentatively suggested for her to fly to Rome for a few days.

Barbara did fly to Rome and on the weekend Cornelius took her to Niki de Saint Phalle's sculpture garden outside of Rome. The great attraction was, of course, one-year-old Calliope – and Nonna's decadent hat.

Cornelius and Calliope at the fountain.

Anne-Cecile.

With Nonna spending all her attention on his sister a bored Ulysse moped.

The entire family ensnarled by a colorful snake. - Not the happiest picture, it was hot, but then we don't have many photos of all four of them.

Calliope having pulled her fortune from a scattered deck of cards. In everyone's opinion she is the smartest of the children. At the time they lived in a spacious and expensive apartment above Via Salaria across from the Villa Ada in the northern-eastern part of Rome.

Sunday afternoon playing ball in the Villa Ada with friends.

Afterwards they all go home. - I love this picture of AC and Ulysse. It was not taken on that day.

7 – 11 June Susanne and Sophia

While Barbara was in Europe I was visited by two young ladies, Susanne and Sophia. Susanne had flown in to keep me company(!) and Sophia came up from San Diego, where she had looked after her mother Louise, who had to go through chemotherapy because of cancer. Louise died in November 2007.

The three of us went to the Getty Museum on the hill. The girls had a grand time, but turned sillier and sillier as the day went on.

They were giggling, hugging, and kissing, acting like movie stars and taking photos of themselves with the camera in Susanne's stretched out hand....

Old grandpa Rolf became bored and despondent. – Susanne took this wistful picture of him. - I have been at the Getty so many times that I didn't even want to take any photos.

Eventually she was nice enough to sit with me and cheer me up. Sophia took this dear photo of us two.

After Sophia had left Susanne bought a sack of gardening soil and potted some flowering plants for her mother's birthday.

A month later Sophia gave notice at her job as perfume saleslady at a department store and easily found acceptance as a stewardess for United Airlines. With her fluency in French and Arabic she was soon flying all over the world. One day, when she felt very high, she called me on Skype from Dubai. Her marriage was irreversibly approaching a divorce, and Barbara became her intimate confidante in that decision.

8 July Barbara's Birthday

Barbara came back from Rome on 16 June. We celebrated her birthday with a dinner for Virgil and Stephanie Day and Peter and Anneliese, who took this posed picture of us and the flowers she had brough.

A couple of weeks later this pretty antique chest arrived by air-freight from Tübingen, a bequest of Marga's. After long deliberations (light but no sun) and much moving, it now stands in the breakfast room under Margrit May's flower pot painting.

1 – 26 October Laura Hernandez

Laura Hernández, a painter from Oaxaca, Mexico, crossed our path for the first time with a solo exhibition at the Long Beach MoLAA museum in November 1998. I took a series of fabulous photos at her “OMNIA” exhibition. We did not meet her then, but her papier-maché heads remained stuck in our minds for years. - As it would later turn out a number of her paintings and all heads - an entire container full – disappeared from the docks of a well-known international German shipper in Bremen. The suspicion is, the container was stolen by members of the Russian mafia. Of course, it was not properly insured....

Somehow in 2006 I became curious of what had happened to her and searched the internet, the most intriguing search I ever did. I found that she was having two large exhibitions in Germany. I alarmed friends in Hagen, Voerendal and Bochum who sent me photos of her and her later work. One thing led to another, I finally tracked her down in Amsterdam, and a lively correspondence ensued. I sent her my Omnia photos and persuaded her to open a website of her own. There is also a video on her website (in German and Spanish).

And here she was a year later, teaching a course at Mount St. Mary's, visiting us in LA. At the end of her stay she had an exhibition at the school. At the vernissage she appeared in a colorful Oaxacan dress next to Barbara and some of her friends. As a thank-you she promised me a watercolor of my choice.

I chose this intriguing autobiographical painting of herself. She would not interpret it for me. Suffice to say that some of the people in the picture had actually been instrumental in my tracking her in the internet. The final souvenir of a inexplicable series of coincidences.

The painting arrived in 2008 and now hangs, framed by Barbara, over our Morgan Memorial chest in the breakfast room.

30 October Cornelius arrives with Ulysse

In September, when we found out that Cornelius and Ulysse would come for a visit, Barbara made this wall hanging for Ulysse's bedroom. It shows the Californian sun shining on the snow covered mountains, the hills and flowers in the Palisades, and the beach on the Pacific Ocean. The pocket is intended for his pajamas.

And here they were. Cornelius was to attend the Neurosciences Conference in San Diego - and would leave Ulysse with us.

He had brought his laptop along to finish his talk at the huge meeting of some 5000 molecular biologists, physicians, and psychologists. The plan was to leave Ulysse with us when he drove to San Diego. - Amazingly Ulysse felt right at home.

31 October Halloween

But before that happened there was Halloween. Ulysse was trembling with excitement. Peter came over and they dressed up from Barbara's rags and fabric box. Cornelius had brought the original Venetian eye masks.

It wasn't easy for Ulysse to shout “Trick-or-Treat” at a strange door in that dark night. Cornelius had to cradle the frightened boy to give him courage.

1- 7 November Ulysse stayed with us alone

Mumin knew how to engage him. Every morning he squeezed oranges with the squealing juicer.

And when John Specchierla, the gardener talked Italian to him he became his helper.

One of Ulysse's dearest wishes was that Nonna paint some easter eggs for him to replace the ones she had painted a year earlier and had broken since.

Nonna devoted herself full-time to him. One day they went to Santa Monica Pier for a ride on the hundred-years-old merry-go-round and the ferris wheel.

And on another night Uncle Peter came for dinner and played with him. Peter has become a most charming uncle for all his nephews and nieces.

My contribution was an idea. I ordered a pair of skis, racing boots, and poles for him from REI. At his age I enjoyed skiing so much and Cornelius too, that I felt he would learn this art in the Abbruzzi soon enough.

And he knew what to do and at once skied expertly across the rug of our living room. - Meanwhile he has become a not quite fearless skier.

We had a good and easy time with Ulysse, nevertheless he was glad when his father returned. They left in the afternoon.


8 - 15 December Barbara in Tübingen

16 – 29 December Barbara and Rolf in München

Jutta Micheuz, our Sorgenkind of many years, had wrestled herself out of her dangerous depressions and was getting married to Fredy Schneider in a tiny Swiss village near Basel. Of course, we would be there. Barbara also wanted to see Marga in her new place in Tübingen. What was more natural than to spend Christmas in our beloved München. Barbara flew first, I was to meet her in München. It happened that a few days before she was to leave, she had a bad fall in her room. She fell on her bud. An x-ray showed no damage. Notwithstanding she left.

This is how we had imagined the Marienplatz in München at Christmas,

and a visit to the renovated Alte Pinakothek. - It was to come differently.

When I met Barbara at the door of our trusted Hotel am Markt, I found her in agonies, barely able to walk. A severe pain in her lower left side had developd as a result of her fall. We dragged ourselves to the Schwabinger hospital where a kind doctor again found no damage. He gave her some pain killer. By Christmas Eve she was confined to her hotel bed. I went alone to Irmgard's celebration and to the Keilmanns' Christmas dinner the following day.

In the week between Chrismas and New Years Barbara was just able to visit Irmgard and walk through the Pinakothek with the help of the medication.

Every day on the way to the U-Bahn we crossed the Viktualien Markt - loaded with Christmas trees and decades-old memories.

One day we met Carola and her daughter Margarita, a.k. Maggie, the Lufthansa stewardess, at a nearby restaurant for tea. On another evening, per taxi, we had dinner with Jochen und Marianne Kreutzer at a restaurant in Schwabing.

And Carolyn drove us to the Buchheim Museum in Bernried am Starnberger See. A beautiful day under a silken-blue Bavarian sky.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, “Akt auf blauem Grund” 1911, Buchheim Museum, Bernried. Barbara was in extasy among the collection of paintings from the Blauer Reiter and the twenties. The hanging of the Buchheim collection is singular. It easily outshines the new Pinakothek der Moderne in town.

Carolyn, our love, was not happy. She had found a job in Berlin and now had to travel back and forth between Irmgard's house and an apartment in Berlin. The burden of renovating Irmgard's house weighed heavily on her shoulders. She felt tied down.

Barbara's condition became worse. She stayed in bed all day, still her pain remained excruciating. We finally called a doctor, a charming Palestinian, who came to the hotel and gave her an injection of Tramadol. That gave her a good night's sleep, then the pain returned.

We called Jutta. A 6-hour train ride to Basel was out of question. I decided that we fly home and take her to Kaiser in LA. With the help of our travel insurance we made the flight changes with Lufthansa. Thank God we had a this insurance.

We flew home on December 29 with the help of a wheelchair and another dose of Tramadol. Peter picked us up. On the following morning Kaiser confined Barbara to the Hospital.

Susanne, dear soul, dragged herself from the the bosom of her loving family and immediately flew in to pick up Mumin at the hospital and care for her for a few days.

The Romans celebrated the holidays with an excursion to the beach

and a dinner with AC's parents at a restaurant on New Year's Eve.

The End