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Just Another Day in Spain

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The first day of first, third, and fourth grade! In SPAIN!

It begins at dawn, though the remainder of the world would not consider 7:30 a.m. dawn. Perhaps the sun setting at 21:00 in mid-September and not rising till 7:30 is just one of the reasons Spaniards wander the streets till the middle of the night, why they sleep in the middle of the afternoon.

I rise and get myself ready, everything about my movements pins and needles. The first day of school is always nerve-wreaking to mothers, but for my girls to start school (and not the one I wanted) that will be wholly in a new language, in a foreign country, where none of us know a soul? It’s no wonder I didn’t sleep.

They don’t particularly want to go, either, but are happy to put on regular clothes rather than the silly uniforms required by their charter school in the States. Before I know it, dawn has passed, dishes are washed, and we’re walking down the six flights of stairs to the street, where we see other mothers and children walking. This brings instant relief to my girls, who love pointing out all the children, noticing their backpack types, their shoes, their clothing.

We stand outside the gates of the school with the other parents, taking pictures like we always do on the first day… until we realize that we are the only ones taking pictures. Of course, let’s put a spotlight on our Americanism. Soon a nice mother comes up and speaks in English (albeit broken), telling us what to do as they open the doors and letting us stand on the patio. In a few moments, a siren-like bell rings, and all the kids shuffle in the school, parents left outside. Bruce and I exchange looks of panic. We don’t even know what classes the girls are in. How will they? But before we know it, the secretary comes out and allows us in, only for us to discover the school is so tiny that there is only one section per grade! (And I thought we were lucky at their class size limitation of twenty-three!)

We look through the doorways at all our girls’ apprehensive faces, wave goodbye, and head onto our day of adventure.

All I need to do is make copies, pick up my debit card at the bank (26€!!—must everything cost an arm and a leg??), and spread out flyers advertising my English tutoring. We are interrupted in front of the copy shop by a huge strike moving along in front of the Ayuntamiento, men in blue uniforms holding signs about the government robbing them, all plugging their ears at optimal moments before letting loose cannon-like firecrackers in the streets, their voices and faces a mixture of jubilation and angst. The fluorescent-green uniformed police stand on the outskirts of their demonstration, their raucous and cannons just a part of their day.

We move on into the busy morning of Cartagena, taping up flyers and stopping at the grocery store where everyone in Spain is shopping before school gets out. We tear off giant pieces of French-style bread on our way back to the apartment, and before we know it, the arduous four hours of school are over, and we stand again with the rest of the parents outside of the gate.

The same siren releases our girls, who come out with giant smiles and tales of their day so similar to the tales from home, relief washes over all of us. Mythili made four friends, has multiplication homework with four numbers on top, and is adamant about us buying her books and supplies by morning. Riona admits that she understood only some of what her teacher said, but she made a friend who shared crayons with her. Isabella, sentence by sentence, tells me all the grammatical errors and vocabulary she fixed for her English teacher, pointing out that she could teach that class (I have no idea where a daughter of mine would get an idea like that!!).

I then set out on an adventure of my own: shopping for the infamous libros de texto I’d been told would cost a fortune. I ride the bike across town, Mythili’s school supply list in tow, to Carrefour, Spain’s Wal-mart. It is only when I enter the store and begin looking at her school supply list that I realize, again, that I don’t speak Spanish. Libreta? Carpeta? Caseras? As if school supply shopping isn’t difficult enough, I am searching for items that I have no clue what they are! Can Mexico and Spain make an agreement and share the same language, puuhh–leeez!!

Then the books. NONE are on the shelf. Lined up behind the counter are all the organized-people-in-the-world’s preordered, boxed-beautifully libros de texto. I start to panic, and take out my iPhone, quickly typing in the ISBN numbers the school provided, hoping Amazon will save me as always. After four entries of “No disponible,” I begin to realize the truth behind what my Spaniards had warned me was a huge publishing scam. No one can buy these books on discount or order them online. We are victims to overpriced bullshit!!

I send a Skype chat to Bruce that just repeats FUCK four times, then finally have my place in line fulfilled. Giving the sales associate my iPhone and Mythili’s list, he disappears into the back to retrieve my books. Well… two-thirds of my books. The remainder he doesn’t have, and as usual, I don’t know the right words to ask him if they’ll order more, and I’m running late anyway, so I book it out of there, penniless in my pursuit (ummm. 5€ for a NOTEBOOK??)

I fill my backpack and two saddlebags with all the supplies, patting myself on the back for at least having the adamancy to bring my bike! What a relief! I rush up the six flights of stairs with all that in tow, thinking, I sure as hell don’t need a gym this year. Then shower, dress, off to my first appointment with potential clients, who meet me in front of the giant JCPenney (AKA Corte Inglés, twelve stories in the making), and of COURSE we go to a café. Ironically, I order my Spain-usual café con leche, and they each order a Coke.

We talk for more than an hour, and somehow manage, with my broken Spanish, to arrange tutoring with their three- and six-year-old sons for four hours a week! (No need to mention I have no idea what I’ll be doing, and I think it’s just glorified babysitting in English, but whatever!)

Then Bruce and I make our first Spanish tortilla, for the most part successfully interpreting the Spanish directions on the baking powder package, and it’s a hit with all the girls, who BEG to go to the park after dinner as those are the hours that kids will actually BE there. And they’re right. It’s party time at the park, and Isabella makes a friend who comes up to her parents on the adjacent bench bragging about her American friend, with her parents’ response being, “Que suerte.”

We are lucky. While in the park I receive four emails inquiring about tutoring!! On the walk home at eight-thirty, Mythili has switched her ever-imaginary talk with dolls to Spanish, and we put the kids to bed so I can head to Corte Inglés for one more attempt at books… to no avail.

But it’s just another day in Spain. There’s always tomorrow between nine and two, where I can witness a strike, have a café, and make the most of every moment.

The Spanish Siesta is NOT a Myth

/ lovizmytrio / 2 Comments

Today I left my girls in the park with Daddy, ready to ride across town (it’s only a mile) so I could put up flyers advertising my English tutoring. The park was new to us still, a dirt ground, a paseo of palm trees, bougainvillea, and hibiscus bushes intermittently spread among playground equipment. It was empty, totally empty, at 3:30 in the afternoon. The Spanish siesta is NOT a myth.

I pedaled across the ghost town of my city, seeing only a few cars. All the garage doors and persianas were closed up, waiting for tomorrow or the five o-clock hour. Only a few cafés were open and bustling with activity. I rode through the neighborhood adjacent to the harbor, at a slow pace as I still found myself mesmerized by all the shops, cafés, and architectural varieties. I managed to find fifteen poles/phone boxes to tape up my flyers, and came across the small park with the lorikeets that was close to one of the first apartments we looked at. Everything here, I realized, is becoming familiar to me. Soon I will know all the street names in my neighborhood, the major interchanges in other areas, and all the bus numbers we could possibly take to get across town. I won’t have to question which roundabout to turn left at, or which direction La Plaza de España is.

And while it is a relief, a burden lifted, at the familiarity of it all, there is also a sense of loss. Of fear. Eleven days into this new adventure, this almost still feels like a vacation. Yes, the four months of hell and paperwork beforehand kind of tainted the vacation feeling, but once we arrived, we’ve been eating tapas, spending the day at the beach, meandering around mesmerized by the warmth of the Spaniards, the intricacies of their city planning, and taking everything in with new eyes.

But tomorrow? Reality sets in for sure as the girls have their first day of school in their new country. Soon I’ll be working part-time and filling in the extra hours with tutoring sessions, and I will be traveling all over our city. And it will be ours, to keep, for a year.

So why am I afraid? Feel like I am losing something? Because I fear that with the newness wearing off, the vacation-like feeling disappearing, I won’t be so enthralled. I will be irritated with the deserted park at three, the dinner I don’t want to wait till nine to have, the cafés we can never afford to visit. And it might be just us. No family. No friends. Just the five of us, the girls getting into fights as they’re trapped in the apartment alone playing with the same old ten toys we lugged across the ocean, Bruce and I, trying to manage a lifestyle in a country neither of us are familiar with or accustomed to, the language barrier a thick wall that sometimes feels insurmountable.

It’s scary, isn’t it? Strange, unreal, many words creep up into my pedals as I take in the salty air, as the breeze from the Mediterranean pushes me up hill beside the Roman Theatre, as I come across a park, a roundabout, a beautiful view I haven’t seen until this moment. Am I crazy for choosing this, for putting my family in this situation? I’ve asked myself that thousands of times in the past months, and the only answer I can come up with, as we make ourselves at home, is that we’ll never know. There is no going back from the choices we’ve made. I will have to pedal further, see new sights, take in a different view, perhaps, to keep the adrenaline of the past couple of weeks burning in my blood, making me grateful for this amazing place, this amazing experience that I know in my heart we were meant to have.

¡Viva España!

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I came all the way to Spain to have what Americans always want. Granite countertops. Eat-in kitchen. The ability to walk one block and buy fresh fruit, grass-fed beef, and hand-crafted beer. Mariscos that cannot be defined in our American Spanglish.

I couldn’t begin to describe how much this feels like home. How, after four months of turmoil and doubt, I am completely relaxed. We can sit on our balcony all night, watch passersby go to the night club, head downtown… we can look into the courtyard, smell the marijuana, and watch as our new neighbor shows his friend the various pots where he grows it. Somehow, laundry hanging from wires in the place we all share, this feels like home to me.

Don’t get me wrong. It is still, after four days, a tiny bit surreal. I mean, are we driving in roundabouts and searching for two-way streets? Are we really walking on travertine tile sidewalks and watching Spaniards meander by in soccer shirts? Are we ordering tapas and Amstel because we’re on vacation, or are we going to accept that this. Is. Now. Our. Home?

After fourteen years of marriage and nine and a half years of parenthood, we have picked up our family and moved to a country none of us have ever seen. For the most part, we don’t speak the language, though my girls and I like to pretend we do. We disseminate labeling and nod, “Sí, sí,” even if we do not understand. I signed a lease whose specifications I cannot identify, and our plan for Monday is to register as citizens, open a bank account, buy a cell phone plan, and enroll our girls in school. Inestimable for five people sans car, but I think we can make it happen.

If we could, on a whim and a prayer, place ourselves in this city without much of a job, little hope on the horizon, and find ourselves an apartment within twenty-four hours, I think this view of the rising moon between palm trees and clouds, the Citroen cars speeding past and the endlessly open cafes—they will take us where we need to land.

All is well. ¡Viva España!

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The Top

/ lovizmytrio / 2 Comments

Doubt and stress have plagued me for months. You may think I am different from you, a standout among your citizens. But I am just like every other American, fighting my way to the top, working, working, working till there’s nothing left to work for.

There is a difference, though. I am working for a different top, a different experience, one that cannot be achieved by sitting on my back patio and complacently watching my children push each other on the tire swing.

The blood, sweat, and tears I’ve put into my version of the top are not much different, though, than any MBA-proud corporate employee climbing his way up the ladder to the corner office, the brightly lit view of downtown, the paycheck that buys his family all they’ll ever need or want… His presence not included.

I want a top where we’re all there, watching the moon rise in the still-light-at-8-o-clock twilight, our tired eyes too overwhelmed to accept the shift that has moved us from one continent of thought to another.

It may look the same. There are maples and evergreens, dry plains and rose bushes, mountains starving for moisture. Just like home. There’s a Burger King, McDonald’s, Starbucks. They’re right there, along the same boulevard that leads to the king and queen’s palace, the plaza mayor, the Roman built museums and churches. Even along the highway, you might think you’re driving in Kansas, as one wind farm after another pepper the landscape, propellors spinning languidly in the heat that has followed us across an ocean.

Let’s try some fast food, shall we? It’s inside this tiny restaurant with tables on the sidewalk. Tortilla de patatas, sardinas con aceitunes, cafe con leche, langosta pequeña, tastes that pop in our mouths, that burst with whole ingredients our American stomachs can’t quite identify. We will sit for hours, Spaniards sharing their stories, asking about ours, lingering over a meal with so many small courses that we fear it may never end. Each time another platito comes out, we hear, “Muy tipico de España.” I want to say, “Us? We’re very typical of Americans.” But I know it wouldn’t be true.

I didn’t even need to leave the airport to shed, after a walk down marble steps into a heat-filled baggage claim, my typical American view of stress, doubt, fear, loss. We’d been traveling for twenty hours, loaded down with three girls, eight bags, and all our dreams. To move from one gate to another in the Toronto airport, we had to stand in line, fill out declaration forms and get our passports stamped (I thought we were buds with Canada?).

But in Madrid? Six empty windows with sharply-dressed, handsome Spanish police officers stood waiting for our arrival. I swallowed, ready to answer twenty questions, ready to declare all that they could ask of me, ready to complete an array of paperwork with my broken linguistic abilities. Instead? One officer took our five passports, opened them up to the page with the visas, stamped them, handed them back, said, “Bienvenidos a España,” as simply and suddenly as he’d taken them in his hands. Not a question, not a form, not a single complication.

I’m still fighting my way to the top. It may look a little different, linger a little longer on the realm of success as seen by others. But my version of the top began in that moment, the moment I realized that things don’t have to be as complicated as we make them out to be. We could, for a year at least, immerse ourselves in the relaxed Spanish view of the world. Will I be able to reach my dream, to reach for the top? Perhaps, perhaps not. But whenever I feel myself falling off my ladder of success, I will open my passport, look at that stamp, and remember what it is that I came here for.

Small Shadows

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on the hill of our last hike,
in sweet drinks at one last happy hour,
their voices and eyes are glazed with joy

somehow they haven’t seen
the hurt hovering around every corner,
their small shadows ghosts to
the darkness they’re blind to

i watch them climb Boulder’s boulders,
skip through the sprayground,
stand fearlessly at trail’s edge,
the steep mountain no match for their courage

if you could gather up their joy,
swallow it with angel’s rays
that stream through Colorado clouds,
if you could see the light they always see

then you’d know–
you’d let their small shadows stomp out
the hurt that hovers,
you’d be free, full of life,
ready to shake up the world.

Homonyms of Hope

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i have hidden from you my family
(the largest portion of myself)
in a (dream-filled) hot air balloon
we will travel the world,
place our feet on
never-before-seen soil,
and you will never place the real me

so many dark hours
this screen has lit my life,
my only guiding light
to a hope i lost months back
when i fed words
(fits and fits of words in two languages)
tears ever-present
words you scrupulously screen

i speak, type, pound them out to you now,
my global disconnection bleeding
through a web of wish-wash weariness
as you question my connection,
my commitment to a job you won’t quite offer

don’t you see the white light
that brought me to your screen?
oceans cannot compare
to the depths of loss i carry
heavy inside my belly,
the greatest weight (wait)
i’ve ever known

you don’t see my now-teary-eyed girls
all these months later
just realizing the loss they’ll face–
you just see my face,
stolid for you, eager, ravenous,
so i may feed them,
feed myself on a dream
i just cannot let fade to darkness

My Game Lost

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the third day
of the job i no longer have
(its nightmare clutching my morning).
the gossip regurgitated
from freshly painted new faces.
the perfection in concentration
resulting in my words
tossed back at me from
the digital keyword demon.
the ball that flies into the sky
never making contact with my arms.

my game lost
in an argument
a dream
a choice that burns me
with each rising ball of fire

give me a new day
a bright-starred moment
to know that
the person i have become
is more than a digitized rejection letter
flashing failure in too few words

From Israel to Spain

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across the world’s seas
Mediterranean switch
family, home, love, dream

Our Visa Miracle

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clouds, mountains, lake, sun
a beach day like no other
WE’RE GOING TO SPAIN!!!!

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