Spontaneous in Níjar

The weekend finally came after a long, busy week.

“I’m sipping the last of my now-cold coffee and enjoying the fact that I have nowhere I need to go today,” I wrote in an email to my parents.

Five minutes later, a friend whatsapped me: “If it works and you want to…” She and her husband were planning to pick up a load of donated clothing for our second-hand shop. Could I help?

“Yes, I can. What time?”

“Ten minutes.”

Even though it was after ten o’clock, I was still in pajamas with a bedhead. But I dashed around the house and out the door just in time, bedhead (calmed but not conquered), coffee breath, and all. Had I remembered to put on deodorant?

As we were loading the last of the clothes along the winding streets of downtown Almería, my friend’s husband said, “We would like to take you to Níjar.”

Of course, this statement wasn’t as unprecedented as I make it sound. They knew I had been wanting to browse through handmade pottery and they were willing to drive me to a quaint, mountain town to do my browsing.

There I stood with my bedhead and bad breath. But I wasted only a moment in indecision before heartily agreeing to the spontaneous plan.

So we went. And it was lovely. The spontaneity made it delightful. The handcrafted merchandise made it breathtaking.