I am off to choir very shortly, as we are performing this afternoon, singing this and that, including Verdi's Quattro Pezzi Sacri, or, in English, Four Sacred Pieces. I was tickled when the email arrived with the attachment, which had a typo, calling them the Quattro Pezzi Scari. That is how I shall forever remember them. They are very difficult.
I need some comfort and cheering up, after a telephone conversation with one of my sisters. Her elder daughter and her husband have recently moved to the city where my son works. I innocently suggested that they might like to contact my son, who is, after all, one of her very numerous first cousins. Apart from parents, aunts and uncles and siblings, first cousins are your nearest relations.
Oh boy, did I ever cop a lecture! Oh no, they were making a new life, branching out on their own, and this meant that making contact with a first cousin was not something worth doing. It is true that they do not know each other very well, but I meant it as a kindly suggestion, having more than once moved to a strange city and had to meet people, make friends and create a family life and our careers. And it is not as though they are newlyweds, as they were married in her husband's country several years ago.
Such reactions from my siblings really bug me. There is a very evident double standard, in which they evidently feel free to tell me what they think I should do, but if I suggest that it would be a loving action to visit me every few years, or that cousins might perhaps make contact with each other, it is Oh No, they are far too busy and have huge family commitments. Or the young ones are much too important to consider meeting another family member.
I could go on and on, but I won't. I have to think beautiful thoughts, in order to sing well thus afternoon.
I need some comfort and cheering up, after a telephone conversation with one of my sisters. Her elder daughter and her husband have recently moved to the city where my son works. I innocently suggested that they might like to contact my son, who is, after all, one of her very numerous first cousins. Apart from parents, aunts and uncles and siblings, first cousins are your nearest relations.
Oh boy, did I ever cop a lecture! Oh no, they were making a new life, branching out on their own, and this meant that making contact with a first cousin was not something worth doing. It is true that they do not know each other very well, but I meant it as a kindly suggestion, having more than once moved to a strange city and had to meet people, make friends and create a family life and our careers. And it is not as though they are newlyweds, as they were married in her husband's country several years ago.
Such reactions from my siblings really bug me. There is a very evident double standard, in which they evidently feel free to tell me what they think I should do, but if I suggest that it would be a loving action to visit me every few years, or that cousins might perhaps make contact with each other, it is Oh No, they are far too busy and have huge family commitments. Or the young ones are much too important to consider meeting another family member.
I could go on and on, but I won't. I have to think beautiful thoughts, in order to sing well thus afternoon.
