So there I was, unpacking mementos of my 76 years as an unsentimental minimalist, when I happened upon a tiny coin-mounted silver llama which has traveled with me for six decades, mostly tucked away in kitchen drawers. In Scott Fitzgerald’s words, I was \u201cborne back …into the past\u201d and stopped polishing the silver to think about when H entered my eighteen year old sheltered and ordinary Brooklyn life. \u00a0A richness of long forgotten yet well remembered detail brought me back to that meeting and its joyous aftermath.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

How did the path of a young Brooklyn College student link to that of an Argentine marquis studying at NYU’s Institute for Latin American Studies? Even that’s a story: my dearly beloved best friend \u201csister\u201d Gioia went to NYU and, when I came to spend the weekend, we were set to meet her then boyfriend at the Catholic Students Lounge. There we met H and his Latin American coterie (it was the friend from Peru who gave me the llama) and went to one of the famed Village cafes. Somehow H and I connected and he introduced me to one of his (many) charming ways: he taught me to link arms with him as we sipped our wine. That was enough: I was smitten!<\/span><\/p>\n

His group of friends befriended me and we attended NYU parties and drove to the cafes on Sheepshead Bay while \u00a0H and I enjoyed a lighthearted and (we both knew) ephemeral romance. He was the first (only?) man who serenaded me with gaucho love songs; he wove stories about how if he and Peron met in the street only one would live; he told of the day he was speeding around a dangerous curve on his motorcycle and the Virgin Mary saved his life (Jewish girls from Brooklyn do not marry men who were rescued by the Virgin Mary); he described the \u00a0paintings in his parents’ home. And when my birthday (I think it was my nineteenth because I’d met Marvin before my 20<\/span>th<\/span>) arrived, he gave me a gold charm engraved with my initials; when I asked why he didn’t sign his name he said that my husband would not be pleased to see such a gift from another man. If he ever did an \u00a0unkind deed or hurt my feelings, I don’t recall \u2013 I don’t think he did.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t remember how it ended but it wasn’t hurtful for either of us: my dear husband of 53 years entered my life soon after that birthday and I lost touch with H and his friends (they may have returned to their home countries after I was given the little llama).<\/span><\/p>\n

Each person we care about transforms us in some way: Dashing H showed me the prospect of a bigger world, of a life of romance, of the possibility of playing one’s days out on a larger stage. For this I will always be grateful.<\/span><\/p>\n

The charm and little silver llama remained with me for all these years, as has the memory of this happy time.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So there I was, unpacking mementos of my 76 years as an unsentimental minimalist, when I happened upon a tiny coin-mounted silver llama which has traveled with me for six decades, mostly tucked away in kitchen drawers. In Scott Fitzgerald’s words, I was \u201cborne back …into the past\u201d and stopped polishing the silver to think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/phyllismindell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/llama.jpg?fit=691%2C517","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8jcdI-4Q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/phyllismindell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/phyllismindell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/phyllismindell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/phyllismindell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/phyllismindell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/phyllismindell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302,"href":"http:\/\/phyllismindell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions\/302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/phyllismindell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/phyllismindell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/phyllismindell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/phyllismindell.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}