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This is a paeon to Rosa Jiménez of Venezuela. For the past five years, she has been a student and assistant in the graduate studies program at San Diego State University. Since her arrival, we have been tutor/tutée and friends. Our conversations have been limitless in their explorations of language, history, culture, music, politics and the universe.

Since Rosa will be returning home next month, I thought it meet and proper to encapsulate her tenure here in words that may provide her with a keepsake of this slice of her life, spent so far away from those and that with which she is most familiar.

My translation of the Spanish verses used herein may be found at the end of this piece.

“A ROSE IS A ROSE…” – IS ROSA

The poets said it best:

In an enchanted garden, at the edge of a fountain, there grew a rose bush. One rose, in particular, was the favorite of the old gardener, who cultivated it with special tender care. One day, a gentleman came to the garden and picked that very same rose.

¹A la orilla de la fuente

un caballero pasó,

y la rosa dulcemente

de su tallo separó.

When the gardener discovered what had happened, he was overwrought. He wondered what had become of the pristine heavenly body that had graced his rose bush.

²Y al notar el jardinero

que faltaba en el rosal,

cantaba así, plañidero,

receloso de su mal.

Rosa and I swere partnered through the San Diego State University International Students Tutor/Mentor Program. After a while, our regular meetings at the school’s new library (much more comfortable than I remember the old one), became too cumbersome for our other commitments. At the time, I was teaching classes at the Braille Institute and Rosa was adjusting to her schedule and finding a stable residence.  We continued our contact telephonically, even though I took on other students at home.

Not only did Rosa find a residence, it came with a caring community of friends, headed by Suzy and Jonathan. They embraced her  and provided a daily touch of Americana, which has enhanced her stay considerably.

Rosa’s compatriot and friend Otilio completed his studies and returned home. It was through Otilio’s tutor, my friend, the late Peter Saldamando, that Rosa and I were able to get together. In that regard, I managed to interest another friend, Millie McCoo, also to enter the program.

Millie has since taken on a variety of students from different continents. Millie and I attended some of the program’s potluck affairs, hosted by the inveterate Gigie and Larry Price, the guiding lights of the Tutor/Mentor Program. These are occasions where food, students and mentors from different cultures intermingle.

Rosa took every advantage to travel within our borders, as well as to our northern and southern border neighboring countries. Deciding to make travel more personal, very shortly after purchasing her first automobile and learning to drive, Rosa found herself whizzing along the freeway toward Palm Springs, accompanied only by the mellifluous Castilian voice of her Garmin GPS navigator!

Apparently squeezing precious time from her busy class and staff schedule, Rosa’s irrepressible curiosity drove her to autodidactically take on French and the piano. In that same light, she is not the typical ESL student; she spends every spare moment combing the Web’s infinite language references for any bit of linguistic nuance available. Then, in extensive late-night calls she would query me for further elucidation of her finds. Of course, this arrangement allowed me to expand my own knowledge of her language.

Then, the unexpected: A diagnosis subjected Rosa to a year of debilitating, self-administered injections. In the process, she suffered hair loss and other side effects, which affected her full participation in the studies program. With it all, her indomitable spirit prevailed.

I was able to host several restaurant get-togethers involving Rosa. 1) A Peter Ruiz visit from the Bay Area; 2) My brother Richard was here for a one-day visit from Atlanta; 3) Rosa’s sister, a nurse in Venezuela provided her with a week of familiar frivolity; 4) Tommy Dodson (my composing partner) and Horace Birgh were down from Los Angeles. The last occasion included a post-dinner, musical performance at Jennie Hamilton’s newly renovated Community Actors Theatre

There were also two festive harbor cruises. After attending a Catholic wedding ceremony for Rosa’s friend Mercedes, we all boarded a harbor cruise for a full, perfect day of celebration, returning only as the sun began to perform one of the most beautiful solar exits imaginable. Just recently, we joined the López family on a holiday brunch cruise. The eldest daughter Liliana insisted upon spending her birthday afloat upon the calm waters of San Diego Bay.

In August, Rosa will drive her car to Galveston, Texas, for shipment to Venezuela. She will fly home from there, as well. We look forward to a possible last meeting, this coming Saturday, with many of the friends with whom she has communed along the way. At RosArt Multimedia’s annual picnic/shareholders meeting, Rosa will have the chance to say goodbye to RosArt’s staff and CEO José Rosa; his wife and RosArt’s administrator Michael Ann, her two children and mother Mary. Also present will be Ken Nash, Millie McCoo and several members of the López family.

With the same ardor as that of the keeper of the enchanted garden, we, too, decry the loss of a Rose from our garden of friendship:

³Rosa, la más encendida

la más fragante y pulida que cuidé…

¿Te hará bien o te hará mal?

¿Quién te llevó de la rama,

que no estás en tu rosal?

(The above excerpts in Spanish are from the poem, "Era un jardin sonriente," by Serafín and Joaquín Alvarez Quintero)

¹At the edge of the fountain,

A fine gentleman appeared,

Like Mohammed to the mountain,

To that flower he adhered.

²When the gardener awakened

To the absence of the rose,

He realized he'd been forsaken --

The most heartrending of woes.

³Dear Rose, who outshines all flowers,

The most fragrant of all the bowers that I tend…

How will you fare on your own?

Who could have despoiled the rosebush

And left me all alone?