Ice Cream And Beer for Breakfast

I know we have friendly ghosts in the 4th floor apartment where Bryn and I are staying for the next three months as we prepare the Ceremonies for the Mediterranean Games here in Pescara Italy. It is just a feeling I have had since I arrived at the place a few days ago.

I am not a superstitious person. But one time, fifteen years ago, I walked into a couple’s house in the panhandle of Florida and before I could stop myself, my body going ice cold in an instant, I said, “Oh my God you have a Ghost, and She is a very friendly one!”

They started to laugh and said, “Yes, we do! Nobody has figured it out that She is here so fast before, but we do!”

I experienced this same feeling as we pulled up to our apartment for the first time a few nights back, but I was not so quick to figure it out this time. The apartment reminds me of the place that Judy, Ron, and I stayed at, in Barcelona while we choreographed our first Olympics, back in 1992. We lived twenty kilometers south of the City in Gava, a small beachside town. Our balcony was right on the beach.

As we were driving through Pescara a few days ago, all I kept saying was “Déjà vu, Barcelona, Déjà vu Barcelona.”

The architecture, the trees and the higgledy piggly lay out of the city, every turn reminds me of our apartment back there in 1992. Ron passed away from AIDS two years after Barcelona, and Judy lost her battle with cancer three years after we finished the Atlanta Games.

As I wake up this morning I can hear in my memory the sounds I used to hear every weekend floating in from the open balcony doors:

“Helado, Cerveza… Helado… Cerveza...”

Ice cream and beer being sold by the vendors on the beach. They would sing it out so that you knew they were close as they carried their Igloos full of the cold elixirs. It always lulled me awake on the hot summer weekends.

I realize it is Judy and Ron who have been spiriting around this apartment letting me know they are here. I think I’ll have Ice cream and Beer and a few happy tears for breakfast!

Thanks, guys.