drive along Spain’s coast
modern curves and old designs
walls peppered with salt
Spain
La Catedral
new discovery
buried two thousand years deep
family’s source of life
Seasewn’s Greetings
their aunt from back home
handmade Kentucky stockings
Spain’s first Christmas gift
Almost a Thousand
A thousand posts in three years. I’m almost there. So funny; I started this blog after seeing that Julie and Julia movie. Probably a hundred other people did too. I always wanted to be a writer. Things weren’t looking good in my school district. I thought, perhaps… but now it seems ridiculous. For one thing, unlike the girl in the movie, I couldn’t think of a consistent theme. I didn’t want to write every post about my primary passions: parenting, cycling, baking, education, or travel. I didn’t want to limit myself, and so I just wrote about my day, as I always have, from the time when I was young and kept a journal. The blog became more to me than just a way to possibly make a living someday–you know, all those crazy stories you read about someone making it big in seven months, their site filled with advertisements and their schedule filling up with book tours and talk show appearances.
But I realized, quite a while back, that none of those things would be me anyway. I want to write what I want to write–not geared specifically towards a mother, a teacher, a lover. And I don’t want ads, publishers, or talk show hosts to influence that choice. That would defeat the entire purpose of this blog for me, which is therapy.
Sometimes people ask me how I have time every day to write a post. It’s quite simple, really. I make it a priority in my life, and it becomes as routine as brushing my teeth, kissing my girls goodnight, or heading to work. It is so easy to say, “I don’t have to do that.” On the other hand, it is just as easy to say, “I can do that, and I will.”
Yes, my philosophy of life can pretty much be summed up by The Little Engine that Could. Why not? Those simple children’s stories that we all love and remember really have the key to success for most any society anywhere.
So here I am, almost at the end of year three, and almost at a thousand posts. I certainly never thought, when I decided to start this blog, that I would be writing my thousandth post across the sea, in a small Spanish town along the Mediterranean, where I hear the heavily emphasized tongue of Castellano more often than my own. But dreams have a way of making their way into your life, just like a daily blog post.
All you have to do is think you can. And you will. 🙂
The View from My Window
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
Medieval market
roasted chestnuts across sea
an old song in Spain
Siesta
a cold in the cold
our apartment an icebox
relief in his arms
Christmas Spirit
my mom sent me lights
Christmas beauty in Denver
only a moon here
I Damn Well Know I Can Do It Again!
I’m old. That is pretty much my realization at this point of my year in Spain. I was thinking about my horrific schedule, and reading about all the employees who had to work on Black Friday, and even Thanksgiving this year (GAG!!), and then I started chiming in about my movie theatre days, when I never knew my schedule from week to week, always had to work holidays, and had no benefits. Thinking about this brought my mind around to college in general, where my schedule obviously changed from one semester to the next, with classes on varying days and hours with irritating middle-of-the-day breaks.
Only then, those breaks weren’t irritating. I used them to catch up on homework, chat with friends, or go home to see Bruce on his days off.
I rode home today during my intermittently-interrupted “three-hour” break (with a tutoring session scheduled smack dab in the middle), and of course I had to work during my free time on my University of Phoenix class, part-time job number three.
But it occurred to me, when I was telling the students in Spain about Black Friday, when I was reminiscing those glorious movie theatre days when I got “promoted” to assistant manager and all the employees called in on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, leaving us three managers standing with lines out the door because everyone in America had to see The Green Mile rather than having a conversation with their family members on a sacred holiday, that I have done this before.
And I can do it again.
Sure, stack on the responsibility of caring for three children… but I can do this. I can piece together three part-time jobs to somewhat fill in the gaps of a severely minimal salary. I did it before, worked my way through college, not a penny of debt trailing behind me, and I can damn well do it again.
However, when I was trying to say to Bruce tonight, “That wasn’t that long ago… I mean, I just did that!” I realized that it was thirteen-fifteen years ago… man I’m old. This is why all the other auxiliares are twenty, why they don’t blink for a moment when they pile on extra tutoring sessions or weave their way between parties and bars. They are young, with raw desire for what the world can still offer them, the inconvenience of an erratic schedule just that… an inconvenience.
But as I sat at home this afternoon, thinking, Wow, if my school actually had functioning Internet, I could just stay there and do this Phoenix work, I cut myself short. I came home to Bruce who fixed tea for my aching throat, piled high scrambled eggs with sour cream and salsa, Spanish bread on the side, just exactly how I like them, and my legs were still burning from my quick uphill ride, a few extra miles of back-and-forth commuting tucked under my belt, and I knew, I just knew, I had reached a turning point.
I’ve done it before, and even if I am as old as a bat, I damn well know I can do it again!
Time is Short
i am a teacher
not an entrepreneur
must learn to say no
Step Write Up 