Edgartown, Massachusetts

by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

My sixteenth summer I told my father that I wanted to get a job. It seemed to me a rite of passage. He replied, "How many summers are you going to be 16?" The next summer, having just graduated high school, I did have my first job, washing pots and pans at a restaurant in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard.

The sister of my high school sweetheart, after her first year of college, had rented a house on the island for the summer with a group of friends, including her high school sweetheart. My girlfriend, N, and I arrived in late July.

I don't know what N's parents were thinking. Her father, the son of Greek immigrants, was a very successful eye surgeon. This was back in the day before all the supportive technologies, when all that you had was a scalpel and a steady hand. He was very traditional; sex before marriage was whorish. He didn't drive us to the ferry, but he loaned us the family's third car to go and facilitate the larger move back at summer's end.

At work, in the kitchen of the restaurant of the Harbor View Hotel, washing pots and pans, ruining a good pair of shoes in the puddles on the floor, immediately it was impressed upon me that the call "Hot stuff!" meant a round tin saute pan (like a pie tin) had recently been flicked, that is, forcefully released, from a handle still in the chef's hand (there were four chefs working on the "line"), and was currently flying towards my back frisbee-like across the kitchen. My role, at that point, was to gingerly step aside and let the hot, greasy, flying object hit the wall and drop sizzlingly into the water in the sink.

I lasted only two weeks in that capacity; how many summers would I be 17 years old? Still, that was long enough for me to witness the following scene:

A waitress, returning with a plate of food from the dining room, passed along to the chef who had made it the customer's complaint: "He says that it is underspiced." Immediately, abruptly the considerable, ever-present clatter of the chefs stopped. They all paused their very urgent business to see how the chef in question would react to the insult. He himself, pausing his own clatter, spat back after only two seconds, "What the hell does he know about food?" Judgement definitively passed, their professional honor defended, the clatter of the chefs began again in vindicated unison.

The beaches and the ice cream stands on Martha's Vineyard were delightful, as was the complete lack of parental authority. For my eighteenth birthday, August 25, N made me my favorite, lemon-meringue pie. Ah, the foolish certainty of youth that now is all and forever.

The chef's formula, "What the hell does he know about..." has stuck with me regarding people's opinions, and my own. It occurs to me when perusing Civil List (a habit I find hard to maintain even when, as a publisher, I need to know what is happening in the community), when I read civilians opining about which alternative health practitioner is best.

I know that people are just trying to be helpful and that, following the Romans' advice, caveat emptor (buyer beware), we should take such recommendations for what they are worth. But I can't resist asking myself, "What the hell does this person know about massage therapists?"

This, when as it turns out that, having been licensed as a naturopathic doctor for 25 years, and having had massage therapists, counselors, acupuncturists and other alternative therapists working in my office for the whole of that quarter century, I am expert on the subject of alternative health. (Of course, there is a lot I do not know, but if I want to, I can figure it out.)

With my credentials established, allow me to make a recommendation to you:

I dated Veronica for seven years. When we stopped being a couple four years ago our friendship got deeper. There are a lot of people with whom I enjoy spending time, but she's the only person I actually go to visit. As she walks with two canes, when we were a couple, I got used to helping her out, and I never got out of the habit. But she offers much in return.

Veronica's suffering has opened her up to other worlds. The most renown Tarot card reader in Chile (where Vero is from) referred the clients he couldn't see to her. Among her friends she inspires not just respect, but something like awe... and she has a lot of friends. She's witchy, but a very good witchy. She's studied with the Mapuche, the still very reclusive Indians in Chile, who were never conquered by the Spanish. She's studied Steiner's Anthroposophy and has a masters in Waldorf education. When the local Waldorf school, where she taught, closed, she devoted herself to doing therapy, opening Casa Crisálida.

Therapy means care. When I go visit Veronica I feel cared for... at the deepest level, often where I know it least and need it most. Whatever the issue, in heart or mind, sharing it with Vero is enlightening.

The Tarot (she's never read my cards) is a vehicle, a language for her to express her intuition. But she uses other methods as well, including art and motion.

So here's my hot tip: go talk to her yourself, in person or over Zoom. (The instant translation app makes it easy for those who don't speak Spanish.) We can all use some wise, highly-intuitive counsel. My guess is that it will become a habit, maybe not monthly, but once or twice a year.

Veronica just published an article here this week. Read her in her own words. She's one in a million. Take it from me; you won't be sorry.

Veronica Genta
veronicagenta@gmail.com +52 415 117 8436

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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