Famous People

I'd all but forgotten about an encounter I had a few summers back. Yes, loyal readers, my summer in Middlebury, VT.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the author Julia Alvarez. She's written several very good books including In the Time of the Butterfles and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent. Until that summer in Middlebury I was completely unaware of her works, I'm sad enough to say.

Before leaving for the summer I had read all the literature I could on Middlebury, and found out that Laura Esquivel who wrote Like Water for Chocolate, my as of then favorite Hispanic author, was a recent visitor to the school and the summer program. I had read that book backwards and forwards in both English and Spanish more times than I could count. I also, unfortunately had to read it for my literature class that summer and the professor didn't like my interpretation. Which brings up a side note, how can you be graded poorly for your own interpretation of the meaning of a book?

When I got there that summer I found out that Ms. Esquivel had been there the summer before and wasn't planning to make an appearance that year. All hopes of an autograph dashed, I contented myself with my classes, and the story of a professor who had met her. Apparently she had cooked several of the recipes from that book for him, and they really weren't that good. There's a reason she's an author after all.

About 3 weeks in to my summer, I was sitting outside after classes and looking at the mountains, pretending to do coursework. As I was sitting a woman rushed by, arms full of papers. I couldn't figure out who was going somewhere in such a hurry on such a lovely afternoon. About 10 seconds later I heard a loud thump and a woman screaming and crying. I didn't rush over at first, because frankly I was a little scared of what I would find. What if she was being held by some man with a gun? After another moment of indecision, the lifeguard training kicked in and I ran over to see if I could help. The woman who had been rushing by had tripped off the curb and with her arms full of paper, fallen head first onto the road. She had a huge goose-egg on her forehead that was already starting to bruise, and was for very good reason, very upset. I told her to hold still I'd run grab some ice and call security. She clutched my arm and asked me to PLEASE not leave. She didn't want to sit there alone. So I sat with her and talked to her and tried to calm her down until she felt I could go get some ice.

Once she stopped crying, she said she just needed to get to the auditorium where her husband was and she would be ok. We got up and I held her arm and helped her walk down the sidewalk towards the Arts Center. She turned to me and said "In case I pass out, my name is Julia Alvarez." She told me her husband's name and I promised I would get her there safely. I don't know if she was insulted I didn't know who she was, or relieved that she didn't have to deal with an adoring fan just then. In any case I told her my name, and kept right on talking to her.

All of this happened in English by the way, a very clear violation of my promise to speak only Spanish for the summer. She realized this halfway down the hill and said "I don't want to get you in trouble." I told her that this was clearly an emergency and the best thing was to get her taken care of regardless of the language. She switched to Spanish anyway, but soon switched back since I kept asking her to repeat herself (she spoke fast, and I was still rather slow on the uptake).

We made it down the hill and I got her to a security guard at the auditorium, she said she'd be ok from there and waved as I left. I still had no idea of who she was at this point. When I got back to my room and mentioned to my roommate the strange thing that had happened to me, her jaw dropped open. Not the Julia Alvarez? I responded with "that was her name, yeah." She dug around and came out with a book and pointing to the cover "Was this her?" My jaw dropped open at this point. That was her alright.

The next day heading back from dinner I ran into her again, with her husband this time. She smiled, came over and gave me a huge hug and thanked me for saving her. "My Angel" she called me. Her husband hugged me and thanked me as well for getting her safely back to him. All of this in Spanish this time. I was also a bit more embarrassed, since I knew who she was now and felt guilty for not knowing before. After they left, several people I didn't know came up to me and asked how I knew her so well.

A couple of weeks later my friends presented me with a copy of In the Time of the Butterflies for my birthday, which I carried around in my bag for weeks hoping to see her again and get an autograph. No such luck, she had gone for the summer.

I keep hoping to run in to her again, at a book signing somewhere possibly, to see if she would remember her Middlebury Angel, and finally get that autograph.

I've bought all her books, poems and essays since then, based my senior project on a good portion of her writing, and read everything of hers I can get my hands on.

What brought on this nostalgia trip you ask? When I went to pick up Andy from the airport the other night, I absent-mindedly grabbed a book to read while waiting. It was one of hers, and the story jumped back into my head and made me wonder, how on earth could I have forgotten about that?