In 1986, our best friends hosted an 18-year-old student from Sweden in their home during the school year. We got to know Sofia well and remain friends today. (Just this week, we received a group of digital photographs of her beautiful new daughter, adopted in China earlier this year.) The joy we experienced getting to know Sofia, led us to host our own exchange student the following year. We invited a young woman from southern Sweden that we felt was a good match for us. Her father was a college professor, but also a professional musician that directed plays in a Swedish ocean side tourist village. She played the cello, sang in her school’s chorus, loved to sew and liked participating in plays and musical shows.
From the minute Christina settled in our house and to this day, she was our daughter. She was the source of laughs, learning and love in our house for almost a year. She played in our school orchestra, sang in our choir, participated in our high school theatre program (her favorite role was the grandmother in “Pippin”), and traveled with us across the U.S. to our nation’s capital and to our family homes in Indiana. For hours, she and Mary sat together, sewing clothing and costumes, giggling and sharing their seamstress secrets. She made her prom dress and other clothes that revealed her “style” and her sense of whimsy. Our favorite remembrance, though, was our trip to Disney World, which fulfilled a childhood dream, as she loved Donald Duck dearly.
When it came time for Christina to go home, our hearts were broken. One of the funniest moments she shared on her return was that her English teacher in Sweden made her sit in the back of the room and told her not to talk. According to Christina, it was because her English was no longer “proper” British English, but “southern American” English, and not acceptable at all! We kept in touch as she finished high school, attended a special institute for sewing, and made costumes for her father’s shows the next summer. She was so proud to be a paid professional! After her university graduation, she took employment teaching English to older Swedes and immigrants at a community school. Over time, her ability to communicate and lead secured her employment with a publishing company specializing in creating English textbooks for older students. We were lucky enough to meet her family and attend her wedding to Henrik, a handsome professional flute player in the Gotheborg Opera orchestra. They now have two children, both extraordinarily lovely, the same age as two of our grandchildren. Through all of the years, we still share a love for all the things that brought us together, our love for the arts, for music and for family.
It occurred to me this week that one doesn’t always know the value or depth of an experience while in the throes of it. We wanted our boys to have the experience of a sister; they got a lifelong friend in Christina. We wanted to share our American family life with a visitor; we also got to share her Swedish family there. And we learned that the arts - music, dance, and theatre - not only bring people together, but make those bonds inextricable and forever. Just think how much fun we will have when our children and grandchildren become friends!
Mark this date on your calendars: “Crooked Rivers’ Sisters Three” will be reprised next month, Sept. 22, 23 and 24, at the CCHS Auditorium. More on show times and ticket information next week.
Opportunities for this week and the future: for a healthy heaping of gospel classics, don’t miss “Great Men of Gospel: Spirit Into Sound” by Aurora Theatrical Co. at Ezekiel Bryant Auditorium through 8.27; aspiring actors, young and older, can take lessons with Theatre Jacksonville starting this week, call 904-396-4425 for times and class descriptions; “Dreamgirls,” a fictionalized musical about The Supremes’ star turn, opens at Alhambra Dinner Theatre this week; catch Charlotte Mabry’s annual percussion extravaganza in UNF Fine Arts Center, 8.26, 8 p.m.
If you have ideas or events you want me to share with readers, send me a note at pkraack1@tds.net.
8.23.06
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