Nicolas

In 1992 we met Nicolas Gorski. This is how it happened…

Nicolas 2012

I was a teacher at Sparrows Point Middle School where Jesse was an eighth grader. The school participated in a cultural exchange with a school in France. For two weeks local families provided an authentic American experience—Edgemere style. Although there were daily educational activities at school and through field trips, the French students lived with their American counter-parts.

Nicolas and Jesse 1992

Accompanying the eighth graders and two French teachers was Nicolas Gorski, a tall, slender high school student-chaperone of Russian heritage. (Heritage maybe, but a 100% French combination of Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, and d’Artagnan.) Those two weeks twenty years ago were as meaningful for us as he claims they were for him. He enjoyed himself so much that the following summer he returned on his own, and we flew to Florida where Big Lar showed us the sights. The next year when Debbie, Jesse, and I toured Europe, Nicolas met us in Paris for a brief reunion.

Not so long ago thanks to social media, I informed Nicolas of my decision to live and work in Amsterdam. That’s all it took.

The party on Leidseplein (plus Ev, the photographer)

Last week as I approached the American Café on the Leidseplein in Amsterdam, I saw seated beside the fountain the same lanky 17-year old I last saw twenty years ago. It’s funny, you know. Three brief encounters could mean enough that a 37-year old would travel five hours north to a city he (admittedly) never thought to visit before just to see his old friends.

The Reunion

He brought with him his “lady-friend,” Valentine, his iPad full of photos from our times together, and his memories of us. If you can imagine impeccably spoken English (Nicolas meticulously structures his sentences much as I imagine his matronly French-born English instructor would have insisted) with a beautifully lilting French accent, you will hear Nicolas as we do. “Mr. Principal, (preen-see-pal) do you remember zee gift you gave me when I left America?” he asked. (No offense taken, but it is unimaginable that I might not remember giving him his first baseball mitt.)

“I do,” I replied.

“You see, every day when I return home, I see my glove. I tell Valentine…I told Valentine many times about zee gift you gave me.”

He’s not the only one who received a gift; believe me.