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Southport, CT


Asphars and relatives


Cambridge has changed quite a bit since the demise of the Wursthaus, now a CVS, which tells you everything you need to know about the evolution of Harvard Square. Nevertheless, I love crossing over the Charles and invariably ask myself "Wait, why don't I live here?" and then get distracted by something before I can answer the question.


The same sentiment arises when I see my Asphar cousins, who you'd think lived in Lithuania, for all the frequency we see each other. Invariably, I wonder why our lives aren't more connected and make a promise to myself to change that, then get distracted by life.


Perhaps 15 years ago, back when Facebook was the boss of me, I came across a woman named Clara Tait from Adelaide, Australia. I can't remember whether she contacted me or came up as a friend suggestion, but we got to corresponding and learned that our grandparents were siblings in Malta. Not too long after, Clara, being an Aussie not shy of a walkabout, came to Boston with her sister Catherine and we had a lovely time together. She was immersed in family lore, among other things, and I was running picture life books, a company that created coffee table books containing photos and interviews with individuals about their lives and family histories. So we had some crossover there and made great plans to collaborate on a book about a history of the Asphars, who were originally from Syria, stopped in India for a generation or two, and ended up in Malta, where they had only stopped on their way to England. Clara completed the history without my help, due to a shoemaker's daughter sort of situaiton, but I thought of her often and was happy to be connected. So it was with pleasure I learned that Clara was returning for another visit, this time with her beau, Clayton, and that we'd have the opportunity to meet up in Connecticut.


Aborigine painted rocks Clara gave me with another procured in Saratoga, NY


Asphar ancestors, I always forget who and where and when, but Clara would know. What a photo, huh? I want the woman's outfit. Already have her nose, sigh.


The noses continue. Some of the Asphar siblings and a wife, my father at the top. Looks like Malta in the background but I could be wrong.

Asphar siblings. I so love these old photographs and styles.


When I was in the wicked awkward teenage phase, I held my older cousins in the highest of esteem because they set their hair around orange juice cans and had all the right clothes, making my hard-won irregular Levi's with the upside down tag seem like the potato sack they were. That Barb had a rapidiograph pen she used to make really cool drawings and calligraphy moved her into the another realm. She was always a size negative zero and at that particular time, sported some killer high-waisted pants. Kind person that she is, she handed me down a pair, white super high waisted with fat cuffs that were beyond the most fashionable piece of clothing I'd ever had. That I could maybe have buttoned them around one thigh didn't come up as an issue as I was determined to fit into them by the end of the week. She of course said nothing about the size being a bit off. Over some years, those pants moved around from drawer to hanger to, at one point, a ladder that I kept open in my bedroom to display my most favored clothes (I know), Needless to say, they never graced this body, but seeing them among my things made me feel a little less awkward and ever so grateful for having such a kind cousin.


Well, she hasn't changed, this time giving of her and her always-smiling husband Brad's house and garden for our get-together. I knew from the last time this talented man had fed me that we would be eating well, haunted as I still was by that white cake with whipped cream and blueberries he created some years back. I'm not doing the meal the other day justice telling you it was a pasta with aubergine and just a bit of tomato and ricotta but trust me when I say, it was sublime. And a salad so good I could have put my head in the bowl and left it there until there was nothing left. Looking at the chunks of tomato, which he approached differently than I would have in a salad, I mourned not having had the opportunity to watch his skilled hands at work, so comfortable with their tools and materials, fluid in their actions, creating visual and flavoral (yes, I made it up) beauty.


Everyone there was special, from my cousin who, when we were kids, had a bedroom that was blue and green that made me ever so jealous, to my other cousins with whom I share an English and Maltese heritage. And then there's my eldest, beautiful cousin who I love talking and listening to, reminding me as she does of a fully leafed tree, gracefully bending with the wind, yet solidly in the ground. We sat outside at a beautifully laid table that was cleared in minutes when the rain began, stopping minutes after we'd moved inside. Greg, who had been my parents' architect, told me stories about working with them, helping me understand how others perceived my parents. Clara told us a story about our ancestors who had a 10 year courtiship because the groom was gay but couldn't cop to it (they had two kids).


Having a priviledged, British, stiff upper lip, stop complaining and get on with it mother and an id-focused, living for the moment, magnetic and peripatetic father was confusing and as a younger person, felt like an either/or. As my father was often away, I identified more as English. But as I get older and the tip of my nose gets rounder, and am lucky enough to spend time with these warm and loving relatives, the more I embrace the Maltese in me. Though ever eating timpana again is 100% out of the question.



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