Los Reyes Magos

January 5, 2013 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

It was a year ago, at the Día de los Reyes fiesta, that I swallowed three glasses of wine, pulled out the plastic baby Jesus from the Roscón de Reyes cake, and made my announcement to ears who would never be ready to hear such a thing.

So tumbled down the following months of my life, steps leading to a new view of the world, first from their eyes, a new set implanted in my own silly head, and now from a small apartment in Spain, where I have pulled out, year two, the King of all Kings.

He stands godlike amidst the Catholic words, his luck ready to carry my family on my back into a new year of discovery.

Yes, I said it like that. How I carry them, how you know I do, yet despise me for it in the same downtrodden tone that is washed away by the admiring and adoring words of those who know me best.

This is MY king. There is no chance, even in the small circle for which this cake is cut in this year now passed, that anyone else was meant to carry it like a charm of fruition at the bottom of purse number four. It was in my reluctant-to-indulge piece, la crema spilling out the sides and pushing his beauty into my lips, wish and resolution now granted, for another year that I know will change my life.

You couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to stand in front of duck-pond-soaked daughter for Life Moment Number 23 in Week Two of National Lampoon’s European Vacation, cousin in tow to witness it all, and not be able to say all that you need to say to the man who means more to you than anything fathomable in this or any life.

There was no Plaza de España. There was no beauty of a park unlike any other park. No romance amongst horse-drawn carriages. No tiles that could capture the intensity of my life upside down backwards and incomplete if for one moment he is angry with me.

The reason you can’t understand it is because you don’t have it. You don’t have him day to day, the most amazing human being placed upon this Earth. You couldn’t possibly understand the weight of his anger, so uncommon that the sky could fill with dark rainclouds in the same moment that you stare at the fishermen leisurely filling their nets in the sparkling sunlit river with color-coded stone houses mocking European beauty into your blood.

It was a year ago, at the Día de los Reyes fiesta, when that Fear of Losing Him broke me down to the core for the first time in fourteen years.

He is all mine now, standing like a perfect statue on top of Spanish words. He returned, peppermint bark, Spaniards, Heidetoes, and Spain, into my arms, into the warmth that I could only receive after our heated argument in that freezing cold Sevilla apartment. He is mine, this King of all Kings, and I will carry his luck on my back as we make our way into a new year, a new life like you’ve never imagined.

Españalution

December 9, 2012December 9, 2012 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

early morning dark

we part with unanswered moon

new day hope awaits

history beckons

brighter than a ship’s home flag

Españalution

the wallet declines

what Señor Pérez offered

why some tell us no

words cannot define

Barcelona’s blue sky view

man made God-loved art

The View from My Window

December 1, 2012December 1, 2012 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

The view from my window is not quite the beauty I imagined, years ago. It didn’t come with a famous creative writing disclaimer: “This isn’t good enough!” It is streaked with bits of cloud and greasy rain that clings to the single panes in a mockery of winter.

Red tile roofs? Can I have me some Spanish red tile roofs? If I squint, and look several blocks down from my level three piso, I can see a few, scattered just as intermittently as the palm trees in this on-the-fringe, immigrant-ridden neighborhood.

Instead? Run-down row homes, cracked walls along a courtyard aching for maintenance, its sad sprouts of wishing-to-flower plants drooping like withered beans in the midst of a seasonal downpour that they were not prepared to encounter. The street bleeds with life from the early hours of the morning, first with traffic on this central artery leading to downtown, and then earlier in the morning with partyers who linger like plaque along the corner capillaries, trying to sober up after visiting the nightclub down the block. Painted-white aluminum Persian blinds block out most of the windows in my view, their attempt to trap in warmth and keep out the evils of a steady rain as pathetic as a surrender flag held up by a villain still holding a knife, ready to strike.

The inner courtyard speaks a slightly different story. Yes, the rain has reached here too, but with a different set of fingertips. It drips from the metal clothes racks, the nylon lines, and soaks through freshly-washed laundry, its pungent smell, aching of wet sidewalks and age, present on t-shirts and pants when, hours later, we will lay them out in front of the tiny space heater, homemade dryer number two, to force them wearable. But the courtyard itself? It sings with craving-for-rain plants from our neighbors below, with the chirping of caged birds who share stories with our whistles, with the clinking of plates from the sacred three-p.m. meal.

The view from my window in this small city in Spain is not what I thought it would be. There are no waves, no clear vistas of mountain peaks, no perfectly clipped palms to remind me that I live in paradise. So it is when we imagine our dreams, too perfect for their reality upon accomplishment. But as I rise this morning to rewash our rain-soaked sheets, to sit under layers of blankets with my hoodie on, my hot Macbook keeping my legs warm, my youngest popping out of her bedroom to share my covers, the clouds retreat, a quilt of gray tinged with the pink perfection of a late-morning sunrise, and I know, despite the tainted view, that this is still my home.

An Open Fire

November 30, 2012 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

Medieval market
roasted chestnuts across sea
an old song in Spain

Siesta

November 29, 2012November 29, 2012 / lovizmytrio / 2 Comments

a cold in the cold
our apartment an icebox
relief in his arms

We Are the Aspens

November 24, 2012November 24, 2012 / lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

It is impossible to say in words, or to describe to students in Spain during my PowerPoint presentation about Colorado, the beauty of aspen trees. They share the same roots, can never grow alone, and plant their seeds in my heart, my home state.

There is a reason people travel hundreds of miles to take that picture in front of the Maroon Bells, the reflective lake picture with the aspens at the base of the two magnificent Fourteeners. It is because of the aspens, their paper-thin trunks, quaking leaves, green-to-gold beauty, their thin branches collecting snow in winter and blossoming in a whisper of shades for spring, summer, and fall.

But I didn’t want the traditional photo. Instead I chose this one, the lens pointed up, our Colorado sky so blue you feel it is a color you can cup into your palm, the leaves at their golden-age pique, ready to burst away from the grove with a gust of mountain air, and the intertwined trunks pointing to the heavens in a singular strength found only in trees.

We are the aspens. All of us, connected at the roots, holding each other up when times are tough, listening to each quake of every leaf, our soft sounds lost to everyone far down in the forest, whose postcard-perfect picture could never capture our connection.

What others see, cameras ready, is the beauty we plainly project: a set of trees along a mountainside, roots clinging to the slope, trying to survive the seasons with the grace that makes us who we are. What they don’t see are the winter nights, the beating-to-the-bone blizzards that shake our interconnected souls, that expose us to each other in a way that a lens could never reproduce.

We are the aspens. We cannot grow individually. We are with each other in this photo, clutching our view of a perfect autumn afternoon. And we are with each other on those dark winter nights when the frost bears down on everything that keeps us alive on this mountainside.

We are the aspens, unlike any other tree in any other forest. Our saplings sprout up around us in a flurry of activity, held tight by our roots that keep us together, that keep us alive, when everything surrounding us would work to tear us apart.

Photo