Oct. 11 A recap of Jane and Geneva

I picked Geneva up at LAX on Thursday and on Friday we were joined by our distant German relatives, Frank and Inge, who were in Los Angeles visiting their daughter Taina and her husband Miguel, helping out between nanny gigs for their latest son Mateo, a midget version of his three year old brother Miko. On Saturday Taina and Miguel, along with my cousin Katya drove down to join us for dinner.

The last time I saw Katya was last Thanksgiving at Geneva’s, the occasion of Jane’s emotional meltdown which caused a major rift in the relations between her and my aunt, and by extension me. It was that Thanksgiving evening that Jane, unsolicited, started complaining about her hardships with her new life, including the short gap in October in medical insurance coverage that she viewed as a significant crisis. The next morning after a cordial beginning, things went rapidly downhill. Geneva let Jane know that in her opinion Jane was not much more than a spoiled brat living off my check book and with a tenuous grip on her mental wellness. The two got into it like pit bulls with me in the middle, not wanting to alienate either one. The two finally separated and later I took Jane to the airport where she departed earlier than planned for a visit with a friend in Arizona. I spent a few more scheduled days with Geneva and we mostly avoided discussing the fight. A few weeks later in Nosara I received an email from Geneva telling me that she longer wanted me to be the executor of her estate, based on her concern that I was too dominated by Jane.

Following that debacle, Geneva asked me to housesit for her for about 12 days in April while she took a river cruise in Europe. I happily obliged, wanting to get our relationship back on track, although spending the time alone in her house, with its sweeping view of the Pacific, left me feeling detached, with a sense of ennui and perhaps a bit of depression. Things had really been cooking in Nosara, literally, as the barbecue business was enjoying its early success with Tigre in the waning days of the high season.

Taina and Miguel, with Miko, visited for a week in Nosara last March, staying at the two bedroom house, and were there for our St. Patrick’s day barbecue debut at the Black Sheep Pub. Miguel thinks he met just about everybody there that night in his attempt to locate the owner of a van that had blocked their rental car, and I’m sure he did because he has that natural gregariousness of a politician. They asked about the business and were saddened to hear about Tigre’s death.

That night I returned to LAX to catch a red-eye to San Jose, where I would spend three weeks in Spanish language school, Epifania.