Ida y vuelta

I'm reading a book of personal essays in Spanish called "La Loca de la Casa" by Rosa Montero. She writes that she has become accustomed to organizing her memories according to lovers and the books that she's written. She says all humans do this, categorize their life using idiosyncratically-chosen landmarks.

Todos los humanos recurrimos a trucos semejantes: sé de personas que cuentan sus vidas por las casas en las que han residido, o por los hijos, o por los empleos, e incluso por los coches. Puede que sea obsesión que algunos muestran por cambiar de automóvil cada año no sea más que una estrategia desesperada para tener algo que recordar.

All of us have similar tricks: I know people who tell their lives by the houses they lived in, or by their children, or by their jobs, or even by their cars. It's possible that this obsession people have of changing their car every year is nothing more than a desperate strategy to have something to remember things by.

Basically, I've figured out mine is moving to different places. I remember my time in each state I've lived in—New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Colorado—because of that state. I go first to the place. Then I recall events, loves, friends, jobs, storms, losses. It is easy to build chapters this way.

But although I left Spain for the U.S. on Feb. 4—coincidentally my intended date of permanent departure—I wasn't quite done with this chapter yet. So I came back.


I spent five days getting buried under the worst snowstorm in history with good friends in D.C., saw my mother in New Jersey, and flew back to Spain the night before all Continental flights out of my home state were canceled due to the severe weather.

Because for now, Madrid is home to me. I'm building a life here, although it has taken me three months to feel the roots of it.

I have girl friends from four other countries, and when we get together, we speak in five different languages (as my Italiana says, "Lo que quieras, aquí tenemos.") It makes me feel safe in an inexplicable way. Like with this many languages, we couldn't possibly get lost.

I teach English to a little boy named Jaime who amazes me daily with his intelligence, intuitiveness and generosity. He just turned eight, but his soul is much older. I looked at him today during our lesson, when he had started drawing a picture of a beach to explain a Spanish word to me, and I nearly burst into tears at the thought that I will lose him, and that he is exactly what I would want in a son. I stopped myself, said, "Jellyfish, madusa, thank you," and we moved on.

I take an hour-long Spanish class every day, then spend the rest of my afternoon studying what I've learned over café con leche largo de café. The other day in Pepe Botella, two of my extranjeras and I spent 5 minutes talking about one verb—just one Spanish word, enorgullecerse, to be/feel proud—and it didn't feel like a chore. It's because we want to dissect the language that much, to liquefy it and inject it into ourselves so it stays with us forever.


And so Feb. 9 I had one more plane ticket than I thought I would have. Because I could not imagine tearing myself from Madrid after only three months. How I ever thought I could has been another lesson in knowing myself better.

A curious Spanish day

Today, three months after I arrived in Madrid, I finally started Spanish classes at my appropriate level, of which I am quite proud (B2, according to the European standard for language proficiency). Afterwards I spent a languorous afternoon relaxing in the sun in Puerta del Sol, sipping café cortados with my Italian and German girl friends.

I ate lunch at one of my favorite vegetarian restaurants, during which a tiny Spanish baby waddled over to me carrying big metal salad servers he had stolen from his parent's table. Excited, I said, "Hola!" and started speaking to him in Spanish. As a response he placed the giant tonsils into his mouth and gurgled. Yes, little one, this is what I want to do instead of speaking Spanish sometimes, too.

As I was walking to a café later, I passed a crazy homeless man shouting into the air. All major cities are blessed with this phenomenon, however I find that when the hollering is in Spanish it is a lot less alarming.

"¿Cuántas pipas hay?!" he screamed at a building.

I am not sure how many sunflower seeds there are, sir, but I hope you figure it out.

On my way home, I passed by another cute child. Except this one was being held in the air by his parents, allowing him to pee on a small tree on the side of the road. In my upper-middle class suburban neighborhood. His pants down, happily relieving himself on the tree like a puppy.

And so tonight, I am staying in, indulging in an episode of Desperate Housewives in English, and turning my brain happily, delightfully and completely off.

Wisps and wafts and circumstance

Who am I? If this once I were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amount to knowing whom I "haunt."

— "Nadja," Andre Breton

Say "hello" and I will love you forever

On owning a language

I was standing on the Metro today reading To The Lighthouse. Its cover is unmistakably English, the title screaming to everyone my native tongue.

When I want to appear Spanish I don't read it. Instead I read ADN, a free city paper (primarily available in suburban neighborhoods, another plus for my disguise). I gasp or chuckle at some article or another, thereby demonstrating my ability to read and understand the Spanish language.

But today I felt more like absorbing words rather than walking among them, occasionally having to tap one on the shoulder and ask, excuse me, what do you mean in this particular context?


So I chose Ms. Woolf. I looked up to see what stop I was at, and that was when I saw it. Smeared vulnerably across the face of a man of about 40 years. The look. The "please say something, anything, in English!" look. Floating there so exposed, above his cheeks that were gently etched with wisp-thin lines, like a palm.

It's a look I know well, because I give it to others on days I feel most lonely, when I see someone reading in English, or pass by people speaking it. One time in Chueca I meandered around three people talking about their English teaching experiences like a silly satellite, waiting for a way to break into the conversation. But there didn't appear to be an opening, so I shuffled away.

This is one of the more difficult aspects of being here. I am at an intermediate (some days low, some days high) level of Spanish, and I often feel trapped inside of myself because of the language barrier. I'm trying every single day, talking to people, reading newspapers, books, study materials, watching Spanish telenovelas. I am listening, always. I am putting myself out there; I am trying hard enough.

But when I start to think deeply about language and communication, as I have been lately, I feel that I might not be able to know another language intimately. To the point where I can express, for example, that sometimes I feel like a paper bag billowing in the breeze of someone's departure, gulping up thick mouthfuls of the air he leaves behind, my lips caked with dried longing. I am not able to pour things out of myself in another language, and I don't know if I ever will be.

There are moments to the contrary, of course, where I'm able to see the beauty of not needing words. Zoe, a girl from London who I befriended in Spain, was in pain over the recent burial of her grandmother, and she wanted to explain it to her Spanish friend, Cristina. She wasn't able to be there for the burial in London, so her family emailed her photos. She showed a picture of the box of ashes to Cristina and said, simply, "Mi abuela."

And she said the simplicity of that was comforting, that she didn't have to explain everything surrounding the death of her grandmother. That she could just say those two words and it was enough. That, essentially, the limitation was freeing. Freeing her from saying unnecessary words and, perhaps, the trouble of not knowing where to start or end, and allowing her to express herself in just two.


I am so drawn to the Spanish language, and I intend to be fluent in it. But maybe fluency is different than knowing a language intimately, the way an artist uses language, as threads for weaving. You don't go digging for threads; they are already there, and it is the final artistic product that takes the effort. Maybe I will create art with Spanish words someday.

Or maybe I won't.

And that's the interesting thing about living in another country. You learn things about yourself you did not expect. For instance, I am in love with the language I already own. It's almost as if I feel I need to explore English more, because these words are my tools, because I am a writer and can be nothing else.

But as for the man on the Metro, I will admit — he and I didn't need words.

Images: #1, "Raining words," Flickr user pfv; #2, snow-day in Madrid, Amy Segreti

The 427,000th definition of love

It's like when you scratch a new bug bite, and the old one mysteriously starts itching again, reborn anew. You're like that.

Still you lurk beneath my skin, hatching memories.

In the static between hums a melody

"El mundo es un pañuelo," I say to him. It's a small world.

But what I end up saying is "pomelo" — the world is a grapefruit.

And he laughs, and I laugh, and between the padded walls of language everything is all right again.

An incomparable comfort

The holidays are hard on me. Always. I'm not sure if it's because I make them hard—like, say, choosing to be 5,000 miles away from close friends and family—but I always dread them.

I am going to admit to the world right now that I did nothing, absolutely nothing for New Year's Eve. If I have told you otherwise, I am a huge liar.



The Spanish family I am living with was away in Zaragoza for almost two weeks. I've enjoyed having the house to myself, but my very sensitive line between demanding/loving alone time and becoming lonely/morose was getting a bit fuzzy.

I knew that the whole family would be returning today, and so I went out for a late dinner. I wasn't sure if I wanted to wait until tomorrow to see the kids, as sometimes they drive me a bit crazy.

I hadn't seen them in 13 days. I came home at midnight, and when I walked in, Ana saw me, looked at me curiously for three seconds... then, her face lit up. It just... glowed.

"Amyyyyyy!" she screamed, and ran over to wrap her arms around me. Jaime—the macho 7-year-old that he is becoming—even came over to tug my arm and smile at me.

They proceeded to show me their new toys, and I played a game of Star Wars chess with Jaime while Ana sang to us with her new, soon-to-drive-me-insane microphone and mini-stage set.

I'm not used to this. I didn't grow up with younger brothers/sisters/cousins/anything. I don't understand this kind of emotion.

But basking in the simple purity of their affection was something I'd wanted—needed—and didn't even realize.