Since I wrote last, I feel like I’ve traveled the world. If not the world, then much of the United States at least. After an unexpected night in London, I landed in Chicago and spent enough days among the cornfields to get over my jetlag before I was packing my bags for Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, NYC, Virginia, and North Carolina, for a PR trip dotted with visits to dear friends. I returned to the cornfields just long enough to catch my breath before heading to Nebraska for part of a week. And now I’m about to embark on another adventure.
I’m not sure why I’m writing all this except maybe to excuse myself for neglecting my blog. Besides, I’ve been spending time with many of my most faithful readers so writing has seemed less important.
Should I summarize the last month? Wrap it up with a tidy bow when inside is only sweet chaos? I don’t know. The truth is that I have hardly touched the memories I’m making. I feel like I am skimming along their tops, saving them to remember later.
Learning to know my nieces and nephews all over again: changing diapers, reading stories, wiping noses, giving golf cart rides, explaining things I don’t even know how to explain and how did they grow up so fast?
Speaking almost exclusively in my mother tongue.
Spending time with friends over tea and coffee and dark chocolate peanut butter cups, looking at recipes on coaches or sprawled in nylon hammocks with a cloud of mosquitoes whining above us. Or maybe a time or two peering out an upstairs window at an unusual neighbor.
Almost never eating alone.
Laughing with family until tears streamed and abs ached.
Traveling, traveling, traveling. And now traveling again.
Oh, look! It’s almost time to head to the airport!
The Spanish classes of our language school took a day trip to Granada to visit the Alhambra. It was a gorgeous day and we had our own guide, which made the experience more memorable. My souvenir was two strips of bright sunburn on the back of my neck where I had missed with sunscreen. Hooray.
A Japanese classmate made me an incredible array of sushi. “You can pay next time,” she said with a smile. I went straight home and savored every bite.
A teammate and I redeemed Adra. (Read about our previous trip here.) We went without much of an agenda and ended up doing little, but enjoying it more. The fishing museum, the tunnels, the beach, and the baked cod with pisto were perfect.
I was tired on the day I went to visit friends in the countryside. The visit overwhelmed my senses and my language abilities. It was hard not to fantasize about going home and flopping down on the sofa for the entire next week. Then, I came back to a town gone crazy with Noche en Blanco and streets that were almost impassable even on foot and a stranger who thought it would be nice to take me out for a drink. Yep. Those are the moments my nightmares consist of.
Several months passed as I dreamt of a morning trip to a nearby beach town. I erased it from my schedule every time something else came up, which it inevitable did. Until one day… the chance came and I grabbed it. While waiting on the bus, I spontaneously invited a teammate and she came too! We delighted over our British breakfast. And then there was a second-hand shop and the stroll along the port before coming home to real life.
Kicking a ball around in Plaza Mayor with my neighbor boy brought a few other littles to play too. It was quite a lot of fun because these under-5-year-olds were about my skill level for soccer.
Our Spanish class met to buy our teacher a gift to celebrate the end of the school year. Someone had the bright idea of getting a classy looking bag for her teaching materials. Great idea! Except that I was completely exhausted by the time I got home. “How are we so indecisive?” I wondered. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t indecision as much as overstated opinions. Most everyone said precisely what they thought and then acted like they expected everyone else to agree with them.
Stopping by to visit a friend turned into helping her pack her things for a sudden trip to North Africa.
The dentist charged me half price for my cleaning just because. I know I saved just over 20 euro, but with all of the other extra costs that come with returning to the States, it felt like a hug from God.
My baby neighbor boy has grown a delightful little smile that just charms the socks off of people. Well, off of me at least. 🙂 I’ve started wearing sandals.
A friend send me two bags of Barry’s Irish tea. Oh, how I savored those two cups of rainy Ireland memories!
I hauled almost 50 euros worth of olives back from the market last week. I did it with the assurance that my family will be beyond grateful.
That’s all for right now. The rest would probably bore you if you’re not bored already. 😉 My teammates have all gone back to the States and soon I leave too. You may or may not hear from me for the next three months. Probably many of you will see me instead. I’m looking forward to seeing you!
When I sit down to write, I like to have a plan. Today I have none. I have a mental list of undeveloped ideas that I haven’t had time to think through. Not yet. So welcome to my stream of consciousness, which has no theme nor plot nor point.
Summer is coming. The forecast says that May is supposed to cool off partway through, but so far we’re careening towards a hot and dry summer. It makes me glad to miss it. I’m booked now: my bus ticket, my Airbnb, my flights, my airport pick-up. Everything is arranged for physically arriving Stateside come July.
The trip is planned. It’s everything else that worries me.
I don’t enjoy closing down a house for three months, especially when I have an inkling that a host of other townies would be delighted to change the locks and move into my house while I’m gone. (Yes, yes. This does happen. And regularly.) The landlady says she’ll drop in every now and then to check on things, and it’s her house, so I guess I’ll let that inkling evaporate. But cleaning out the fridge and freezer and purging the cupboard of anything inclined to hatch moths or rot… Sigh. My down-the-hall neighbor volunteered to babysit my plants. “Don’t worry if they die,” I told her. They lead a fairly risky life with me anyway.
I’d like to buy some new clothes and maybe sew too so I don’t return to my passport country looking like a tramp. The other day, my neighbor boy was delighted to find the shoe rack I recently tucked behind an inner door. “Shoes!” he cried, exposing the rack to his mother and me. Shoes indeed. All two pairs of them. Well, three if you count my walking shoes which can only be differentiated from my “good” shoes by how worn the soles are. Oh, and my good shoes have a smudge of yellow paint from when I slipped on a freshly painted curb. It wasn’t until my neighbor boy exposed my shoes neatly lined on the rack that I realized how slim my pickings have become. So I promptly ordered a pair of sandals.
But the truth is that I like limiting my choices. When my days are filled to the brim with choices, it’s nice to have an area I don’t have to consider at length. Sneakers or flats?
Then again, I also run the risk of looking like a tramp.
I make myself a weekly menu too. Beans on Mondays and Tuesdays. Fish on Wednesdays, etc. Of course, I am forever changing my recipes and portions–the fun part for me. And there are those days when I could happily devour everything in my refrigerator because I can’t stop being hungry. But always sticking to a plan isn’t much fun anyway.
Do you limit your choices in certain areas of your life? If so, which areas? Do you find it repressive or helpful?
I think I should sign off now. I’m realizing that the only reason I wrote this much is because I’m dragging my feet about the next items on my to-do list. So until the next time, when I can hopefully provide writing with a bit more substance (but don’t hold your breath).
Note: I have a new pair of sneakers waiting for me in the States. They *cough* may be exactly the same shoe that I already have two pairs of, but at least they’re a different color this time!
Also note: The purple striped wallpaper was not even close to being my idea. If you want to discuss limited choices further, we can talk about moving into a furnished apartment with a very involved landlady. 🙂
I awake to my bed shaking. The window frames click and tick with the shifting earth beneath them. Another earthquake. Is it a bad one? In my sleepy stupor, I wonder if this time we will all have to dash onto the street in our pajamas. My heart pounds as I listen for voices and wait for more tremors.
But all I hear is the thump and whine of the garbage truck making its rounds like it does every night. It is comforting to wake up in uncertainty and then find the world is familiar after all.
Is this what my neighbor boy thought when I slipped across the street in the middle of the night to pick him up? While Mommy and Daddy were at the hospital awaiting baby brother, Little S had spent the evening with another neighbor but would not consent to spending the night. He filled their home with his wails.
When he saw me standing at the front door, he ran into my arms, sobbing as if he had just been waiting for something that made sense.
I picked him up and brought him home. He knows my house, and he knows me. We curled up on the couch after he had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. For hours, his breath shuddered from leftover sobs. The body does not quickly forget its tears. Spending the night away from his parents for the first time in his life wasn’t easy…for either of us.
But in a sense, I got to be his garbage truck–the familiar presence as the earth shifted beneath him.
If you have the time and energy, check out part 1, part 2, and part 3 before reading this final part of my family’s visit.
Somewhere along the line, the family travel journal petered out. It may have been due to the fact that Spain felt like coming home to me, not another adventure. Or perhaps it is was due to my sister’s stomach bug which made her less ambitious. Or–ahem–simply due to a lack of discipline. Regardless, some of the details of our time in Spain are fuzzy. So I’ll stick to the things that I remember…
After a teammate picked us up from the airport, we ran out to get chwarmas for supper. Sure, we could have cooked something, but none of us felt like generating any more excitement that day.
The next morning, after first breakfast at home, we strolled down the street to a café for second breakfast. My family enjoyed their tostadas, even if they didn’t enjoy the booming café music. “THIS IS SPANISH CULTURE!” I bellowed over the din.
A few of us zipped around town with a grocery cart, buying most of what we needed for the next week. Mom exclaimed over each new load of groceries we brought home but dutifully put everything away while we went out for another load. (Let the record show that we ate almost everything we bought and had to buy more!) Our shopping trip ended just in time to race–somewhat disheveled at this point–to my teammates’ place for a yummy lunch.
I tried to whip up soup for dinner but mostly just whipped up a giant disaster, which Mom cleaned up while we raced across town to pick up the rental car. The soup, partially cooked, was put on hold until the next night.
Photo credit: R.K.
Wednesday was market day. Everyone had been looking forward to the market, but with PEOPLE EVERYWHERE it was much more stressful than they had anticipated. Before long, I deposited them in plastic chairs by the churro stand and finished the shopping on my own. It’s strange, I thought, how much I’ve adjusted to living in a crowded space, to waiting in line or catching the vendor’s attention to get some service, to holding my ground when people get pushy and reaching around people when they’re in the way. New experiences quickly become normal life.
That afternoon, we went on a greenhouse tour. Our enthusiastic tour guide showed us the variety of methods they used for planting, ventilation, and pest control. After pigging out on the samples and buying a bag of produce to take with us, we spontaneously slipped over to the beach to watch the sun set and dip our toes in the chilly Mediterranean.
We finished the evening with the North African soup I’d tried to make the night before.
Thursday consisted of mostly cancelled plans, due to my sister’s stomach bug. No couscous with my friend and no drive up the mountain. Mom and I slipped out to some North African stores. My usual shopkeepers were delighted to meet my mother. I should have brought Dad along too because they probably were wondering how the American giant belonged to a woman half her height. 🙂
My sister was busy being sick so the rest of us took it easy, putting a puzzle together, reading, and the like. My brother-in-law cheerfully fixed my leaky washer, changed out the dorky bedroom light fixture, and reassembled a malfunctioning drawer. Meanwhile, my adorable and unsupervised nephew amused himself by dropping things from the balcony, as we discovered later.
Our big outing of the day– “Come on guys. We have a rental car. We HAVE to use it.”– was going to two grocery stores: Aldi and Mercadona. Since there is a tiny piece of Roman ruins right next to Aldi, I led my family there to see it.
Photo credit: N.H.
Dad stared down at the puny wall. “Oh wow.” Mom didn’t say much of anything. I’m not sure she even saw the wall because she spent the whole time trying to avoid the dog piles. My brother-in-law dutifully snapped a photo. At Mercadona, Dad disappeared for a bit and then came sidling over with a guilty grin and a container of pecan praline ice cream behind his back.
We tried to fuel the car, but due to the confusing labels, had a hard time deciding which was diesel. The guys stood at the pump, sniffing the dripping nozzles. Finally, I went inside the station to verify that they guys’ noses were accurate after all.
By the time we got home from our mini-adventure, my sister was feeling a little better. But she was not feeling good enough for pecan praline ice cream. So the guys took care of it for her…and for the rest of us, come to think of it.
The next day, we took the rental car up to the mountain lookout. We bounced all of the way up, the guys discussing the quality of the tires and such. We got out and admired the view of the sea of white plastic greenhouses before heading back down. By then, the clouds were moving in and visibility was limited.
My downstairs neighbor brought up a big plate of couscous, which hit the spot. Besides wandering over to the Spanish pastry shop and the nearby park, we didn’t accomplish much else that day.
I guess we were storing up energy for the next day. Saturday we went hither and yon–to Immigrantville to visit friends, to Almería to climb up the Alcazaba. Then back to Immigrantville for tapas in a loud and crowded tapa bar. Then to visit another friend who insisted we come in for tea and sweets. Then finally, home.
I whipped up a pot of puchero and then a few of us returned the rental car. Handing over the keys was melancholy, like our time was winding down too quickly. And it was. Sunday was our last day together. We were in charge of team lunch, so late morning we worked on food prep and then spent the rest of the day with the team for lunch and a church service. I was pleased to see my worlds unite: some of the people I know best in the world getting to know each other.
By Sunday evening, part of me was ready to get back to real life, but the larger part of me was trying to hold on to every single minute.
They left early Monday morning. I came home from the airport to wash a load of sheets. But I chose to leave the tiny fingerprints on my windows at least for a few more days.
“I would like five carrots,” I told the market vendor as he weighed the other produce I had collected from his stall.
A moment later, he breezed back with a bag bulging with considerably more than five carrots.
“No.” His coworker pointed to the bag and looked at me. “That’s too much, isn’t it?” He had overheard my tiny order.
I remembered the first time I had bought produce at this stall. It was the coworker who had pretended to forget to give me my change and then came back, minutes later, surprised that I was still standing there–neither oblivious nor angry. He quickly handed over the correct change without my reminding him of the amount.
Now I found it refreshingly ironic that he was the one looking out for me.
Long ago, I wrote about how I tend to be a loyal shopper, shopping in the same places, even when I know other places have better prices. I still do that today. On market morning, I make sure to stop at my normal vendor stalls first before picking up what I couldn’t find at other stalls.
You may think my loyalty is blind, but that’s not fair. And this is why…
One day I was meticulously selecting the brightest pomegranates from a pile. My produce vendor noticed what I was doing and slipped over to show me how to tell when pomegranates are ready–and it has nothing to do with how rosy they were!
Sometimes I’m offered samples of special fruits. And when I ask if new apricots are sweet, they answer honestly because they know I’ll be back even if they’re not.
The first time I made puchero, I ordered my bones and cuts of meat. The shopkeeper happily filled me with advice on preparing the dish. “Boil these bones for 15 minutes before putting them in your soup or they will make the soup too salty.”
One day I bought semolina flour for harcha. “You like harcha?” the shopkeeper asked. At my happy sigh, she disappeared to the back of the store and came back with harcha, still warm from breakfast. More than once, she has given me handfuls of mint leaves from her personal stash when there wasn’t any to sell.
Another shopkeeper refused to sell me a lone chicken breast. He quietly shook his head until I understood that it probably wasn’t the freshest chicken breast north of the Mediterranean.
Sometimes when the fabric vendor sees me coming, he pulls out the bolts he’s pretty sure I’ll like. And if I stroll into his stall wearing something homemade, he spots his fabrics with delight.
Just the other week, my shower curtain rod was repeatedly falling down. Finally, after several days of clattering, banging, readjusting, and scratching my head, I decided a new rod was in order. But the store down the street didn’t have any. “Come back this afternoon,” he said. But that afternoon, he still didn’t have any. So he opted to get to the root of my problem–what was the problem exactly?
As I was still making feeble attempts to explain without the proper vocabulary–”The thing in the middle of the stick…”–he began to work on something he had dug out of the dusty depths of his under-counter. Then–pop!–out came a yellowed suction cup and he told me precisely how to position it to keep the shower rod up. “You can even trim around the edges if you don’t like how it looks.” And my curtain rod has stayed up ever since. The yellowed lip of the suction cup is a happy reminder of the resourceful people who are looking out for me.
My meager loyalty has been rewarded so many times over that it has been crowded out by their generosity. In fact, I’m not even sure that my loyalty has much to do with it at all!
I have to remind myself of that. The other day during our team lunch, I declared with a sigh, “I’m so glad it’s March!”
They all laughed at me. Or with me, because I laughed too, even though I was startled. Was I really an entire month off?
You may wonder why I feel like I already have one foot in March. Because a few family members have tickets to come to this side of the world. Yea!! It has been a long time since the last “exclusively-mine” visitors, especially family. Long, as in, 2019.
But it’s still February, and that is a good thing. More time to anticipate my visitors, yes. But also more time to just plunk myself down right here in the middle of today. To study elusive Arabic vocabulary, to take a spontaneous walk with my neighbor, to attend Spanish class, to plan and teach English lessons, to stand in the middle of the market listening to a soul’s sad story, to spend an hour orienting myself at my new job as a space heater thaws my feet, to bake a batch of granola, and even to reheat leftover soup and eat it straight out of the kettle (*cough* Yes.).
Here is Joy. Look, right here! See her in the slippery soap suds puddling around the soap dish? And in the far corner of the deepest cupboard you're cleaning, Back, back, back until you can just dab the dirt triangle with the corner of your rag? Do you hear her bursting through the speakers of your car stereo? Or in the grunt of an awakening work computer? She's here on the supermarket shelf, coming along free in the celery stalks just because. Do you see her? In the scuffed magnet that pins a child's artwork to your refrigerator? And in the orange flame waltzing on the tip of a match as you light a candle and open the front door? She's whisked into the batter and adds just the right nutty note…or is it woody…or just plain sweet? She's here. Always here. Even when your neighbor tells you never ever to add cinnamon and now you've ruined it completely. Yes, sometimes Joy tastes a little like hot noodle soup during a head cold. Or enlivens an aroma with a world of redeemed memories. She's more than a good tiding at Christmas. She's now. Today. Riding along on the eternal breeze of faithfulness. Look for her.
To me, the holidays bring a sense of belonging. There is a warmness, an extra niceness.
Yes, the world gets frantic and grumpy when the store shelves aren’t stocked with what we want and the check-out lines are too long and the children need naps and, well, so do we but we still need to make that Aldi stop because Wal-Mart was out of pumpkin pie filling.
But then we come home and the individuality fades and there is a togetherness again, even in the hustle and bustle of a busy kitchen.
Celebrating far from family isn’t quite like this. The sense of belonging is lessened. Not vanished, but subtle, something I need to search for. But those remaining shards are precious too. Even from far away, I belong. And that belonging tints the world with bright, warm tones and I find myself extra happy this Thanksgiving and Christmas season.
I don’t want to spend the holidays wishing I were somewhere I am not. I choose to contribute to the joy of right here, because this is where I belong too.
Ten things I’m thankful for this year:
the great faithfulness of a loving Father
Spain’s acceptance of my 5-year residency application
the tail-end of COVID-19
friends and neighbors that I bump into every time I step outside
strong family dynamics, even though I live thousands of miles away
music
opportunities to travel and experience other worlds
True love drives away laziness, that’s what a young friend learned in philosophy class. It drives away apathy too.
Then why do I grow apathetic to the woundedness that surrounds me?
Overwhelmed, that’s what I am. Overwhelmed by the dissonance of compassion and my own limits. I am one person with moderate abilities and stamina. I cannot be a superhero no matter how hard I try. My tiny contribution of self-sacrifice will not change the world.
And so I begin to seal off my heart, and what began as love is reduced to apathy.
Or was it even love to begin with?
When I fill my schedule to the brim with world-changing activities, what is my motive? Can it be love? It might be, but, if I’m honest, my motive to change the world often starts and ends with pride. And it’s a pride that turns apathetic when I refuse to be humbled by remembering my limits.
There always will be busy seasons in our lives, some longer than others, but a sustained frantic pace, even under the pretense of love is not truly loving.
Love isn’t defined by the absence of laziness or apathy. The real meaning isn’t found in the absence of something. It’s not even found in the presence of something like hard work or compassion. It is ultimately found in the Presence of Someone.
When I realize that I am not the one who must save the world, I am freed. The burden to be the savior rolls away. Finally, I can stop panicking over my limits in light of all the work that needs to be done. I am finally free to love well.
I can sit with someone who needs to cry. I can make cupcakes for a team event. I can read a captivating book. I can agree to tutor another student. I can have a friendly chat with my neighbor from the patio. I can probe deeper into the heart of a young woman who isn’t sure who she wants to be just yet. And I can do all of this, recognizing that I am just a small piece in what is happening, and, praise the Lord, I get the joy of being a piece.
I am a created being, created with limits. And that is very good. Why? Because the work does not begin and end with me but with the One who is limitless.
For an excellent resource on human limits, I recommend You’re Only Human by Kelly M. Kapic.
My Thoughts From Afar | 