A Taste of Home

Yesterday, Deb got to try on her new teeth. She has been making do with temps; temporary teeth good enough for now. But they are loosely connected to her posts, and have been shifting around when she eats. She had a fitting of her permanent teeth. Fitting teeth is careful work that has to be right. Since we are flying out Saturday, we don't have a lot of time to come back and get any adjustments. But she has had the final products fitted for the first time. We hope to have her permanent teeth in place late Wednesday.
We both were so happy about her teeth that we decided to try the T.G.I.F. here in San Jose. Frankly, we both wanted a taste of food from home. We weren't disappointed. The look of a TGIF is there, with junk nailed on the wall. Except for the waitress only speaking Spanish, it was pretty much the way we expected. We were seated outside, on the terrace. I had a big old burger and fries, with real ketchup. Deb had fried shrimp, with fries. We were happy kids.
Deb started a conversation with a woman, Samra, and her sixteen year old son, Emir. She had moved to Costa Rica a few months ago, from Lebanon. She is married to an American who works for an international NGO. She was born and raised in Sarajevo, Bosnia where she met her husband.
"The stupidest thing I ever did, was walking down sniper alley. They could kill me, or cripple me, but they couldn't make me run."
We asked about schooling and Emir talked about going to an international school in Beirut. "They're all so racist." he said, "And so open about it. Most of the kids were Lebanese and they all had dual citizenship. I don't know why, they despised everyone else."
Her grandparents religious backgrounds were Greek Orthodox, Muslim, Roman Catholic. Her father was an atheist. She said that it was confusing growing up but eventually found her own Christian faith. She invited us to come to their apartment and sample some Georgian brandy someone had given her. She didn't drink it herself. We were both interested in learning more about her and her life so we went with her.
She lives in a large apartment building, surrounded by a high wall, and a guard who opens the gate for the taxi. Emir tapped in the security code so that we could get in the front door. We walked up one flight of stairs to her apartment. We were impressed with the size and layout of her apartment and with the view from her many large windows. She opened a new bottle of brandy from Georgia, the country, not the state, and we had a drink. In the few months she has been there, she has worked to put her imprint  on her home for her and her family. She has accumulated little things from their travels. She has a Persian rug from Lebanon, little elephants from Sri Lankar, and terracotta figures from Hong Kong. She showed us family photos, some very old, of her parents, grandparents, and pictures of them in Bosnia.
Then, she talked about a quilt she wanted to make, and showed photos of quilts she made for others, and how she has to do things quickly before she loses interest. Her husband says she is like a bullet, put your hand in the way and she'll shoot right through it. She wanted to do a cathedral window quilt otherwise known as stained-glass window quilt. I had done one for my sister and her husband as a wedding gift 27 years ago. Samra was confused on the directions in her quilt book. I read the directions and it was confusing. I asked her for a square of fabric, which she tookfrom her armoire full of fabrics. I showed her how to make the squares, and how to place the pieces. Here were the two of us from such disparate backgrounds, sharing the experience of quilting.  I did tell her that this type of quilt takes a lot of time, and the shortcuts I learned, hoping this would help her with her impatience.
We visited for awhile, then decided it was time to call a taxi, so she did, and said it wasn't a legal taxi, but that she'd used him before and he was a good guy. Turns out that he was.