| 02/13/09 01:53 PM |
#46
|
|
Yvonne Senturia
25 Random Things About Me
Carrol, this is for you. I really was almost finished, before you sent me the email reminder in BIG RED LETTERS WANTING TO KNOW WHAT WAS TAKING ME SO LONG. Here are 25 things in no particular order, in keeping with the theme of randomness.
1. I haven’t lived in Texas since March 1982, when I married a Yankee, sold my house, quit my job and moved to London. But I’m still a Texan.
2. The most trouble I ever got into was while travelling around Israel during the summer after my first year of medical school. I was a temporary worker on a kibbutz (Degania Bet – the second oldest kibbutz in Israel) for a month working in the banana fields, and then was on my own, travelling around. My parents had no idea where I was, and neither did anyone else. How times have changed. Now I can text my kids just about anytime anywhere.
3. My senior year at Rice, in one of my senior sociology seminars, I did a long research paper on ‘Themes in Country Music’. I’d never really listened to country music before that, but have been a fan ever since. Best music for the Ipod when I’m on the cross trainer doing those long cardio pieces. A little Big and Rich goes a long way…..
4. The worst thing that has ever happened to me was the death of our first child, Sarah Emily Senturia Henkoff, at the age of 8 ½ months. Her birth was also one of the most glorious days of my life. Take what life gives you, and always remember that family trumps everything.
5. If anyone had laid odds on which of the Senturia girls would be married and produce three children, they would not have bet on me. Ron and I are about to celebrate our 27th anniversary, and if we keep working out and eating fairly well, we might live long enough to see grandchildren… Ron is a wonderful husband, a brilliant writer and editor, a hands on dad (never missed a parent-teacher conference from preschool on), and puts up with all my idiosyncracies with great equanimity.
6. When my kids were little, I used to buy those Wilton cake pans and the special icing colors and tips and make these very elaborate birthday cakes, including a policeman cake for Dan that I designed myself. My sister Susie, shocked and amused by such domesticity, used to take pictures of me icing those cakes. This was during the time that we lived in Wilmette IL and she could come from Chicago just by putting on her rollerblades and hitting the road/sidewalk.
7. Having been a decidedly unathletic girl growing up in Lake Jackson, it was somewhat of a novelty to play in extremely competitive tennis leagues in Houston, Chicago and Westport. Now I’m rowing, which is harder work but easier on my back and my shoulder.
8. In my next life, I’d like to come back as one of my children. They’ve travelled all over the world at least twice a year on family vacations, and had other opportunities that weren’t available when I was a kid. I don’t think I was as compulsive as my mother about serving healthy meals and snacks when they were little, but I tried.
9. I never changed my name. My girlfriends wanted Ron to change his name to Senturia when we got married, but he respectfully declined. I do answer to ‘Mrs. Henkoff’, since I am the mother of the Henkoff family.
10. My parents died within 11 months of each other. They had amicably separated one month before their 30th wedding anniversary. Years later, my dad married our old next door neighbor, Joy Wroth, and we acquired 4 half-siblings whom we’d known most of our lives, which was kind of a neat thing. I realize the chronology of this paragraph is askew, but the first sentence was the most important.
11. I still love to read. I’m in two book clubs, and can’t tell you one favorite book. Ron is a big reader, and so are both of our kids. That is a legacy from my parents that I’m proud to have passed on.
12. We probably had the only two bar mitzvah celebrations (the food and music with family and friends that comes after the kid does the serious work in temple) in the history of Westport CT (maybe the whole of Fairfield County) where the playlist included country western music. Dancing to God Blessed Texas was an integral part of the afternoon’s entertainment both times.
13. I’m in a semi-professional choir and got to sing at Carnegie Hall last June. That was in my website profile, which I’m trying not to repeat here..
14. When my older son was rowing in high school, I was the regatta mom – the one who organized food and transportation when they travelled to compete against other crew teams in other towns. The two most thrilling trips were to junior nationals in Cincinatti his junior and senior years in high school, after surviving regional qualifying regattas on Mercer Lake in Princeton ,New Jersey.
15. Sang a song by the Carpenters at a medical school classmate’s wedding. It was her second wedding, and I think she is now on her third, so I wasn’t much of a good luck charm.
16. I do not like heights, which has proven somewhat inconvenient during some of my travels. I also do not like speed, which really made downhill skiing one of my least favorite famly activities. I’ve gotten used to cold weather (Chicago and Connecticut left me no choice), but if I never saw snow (or slush) again, I would not complain. I do like the leaves changing in the fall, and the presence of distinct seasons, even if I could totally do without one of them.
17. Won a Lady Godiva contest when I was a junior at Rice University. Of course, since this was Rice, there was a written test to winnow down the contestants into a group of finalists. Still have a picture on horse wearing a long blonde wig .
18. I used to play my guitar (bought in Granada Spain, down the hill from the Alhambra the summer of 1970) and sing with a Rice classmate in coffeehouses in Houston, and on the Rice campus. I did my best to sound just like Joan Baez. Gee, that was a loooooong time ago. Unfortunately, only my younger son inherited the musical ability. He’s taken it farther than I ever did, performing in the college conservatory orchestra, the travelling choir, a mens acapella group and recently as Action in West Side Story. I have a picture of him at opening night with Leonard Bernstein’s son, but that’s another story.
19. I was a third generation graduate of Rice University. My older son, Dan will be fourth generation when he finishes in May 2010. His freshman year he lived 4 rooms down and 1 floor up from my dad’s room his freshman year at Rice. And the 4th floor of that same building used to house the coffeehouse where I sang when I was at Rice. It is a small world… And yes, I will cry a few extra tears at Dan’s graduation, because my dad won’t be there with us.
20. I call my siblings, and my nieces every year on their birthdays, and sing “Happy Birthday” on the phone. They expect it, and I love doing it.
21. My traditional birthday cake, since medical school, is carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Unfortunately, my kids don’t really like carrot cake, so we end up with a lot leftover which I end up eating……
22. While living in London, before I went back to school (University of London) to get my MSc in Epidemiology, I worked several temporary jobs as a consultant pediatrician in London hospitals, and even did a stint as school doctor for an English boys secondary school, which was quite unlike anything I’d done before or since.
23. In April of 1986, they asked me to go on the gurney with my baby daughter inside an MRI machine at the Institute of Neurology, to try to keep her still, since it wasn’t safe to give her any medication. I decided to sing, in hopes of drowning out the unbelievably loud knocking noise of the machine. This was considered unusual behavior by the proper British techs, but I was in an unusual situation, with a four month old with a brainstem tumor, and totally unconcerned about what anybody thought.
24. I think I’m becoming the family archivist. I’m in the middle of scanning 3,000+ of my father’s slides onto my computer, after which I’m tackling my mother’s poems, letters and hundreds of old family photos. I’ve got family trees from all four branches, and helped update an oral history from my father before he died. You get the picture. It’s sort of my new job.
25. June 27, 2009 I will be called to the torah as a bat mitzvah. It’s hard work, but I’ll be ready.
|
|
