Nothing but the Start

It was just another stunning morning in Madrid. Blue sky. Perfect temperature. Bars filled with people drinking their café and eating pan con tomate and croissant a la plancha. I was headed to work on a Monday and I didn’t even care that the weekend was over because, my god, I live in Spain and it is like one long beautiful vacation.

And suddenly my body reacts, before I even see him. Before my brain even computes the sound traveling down the street, I break into a cold sweat. Coming towards me is a barrel of a man, booming some deep song of a word that I cannot understand.

Muscle memory is a powerful thing and people who live, or have lived, in Boston are trained for this sort of thing. Some expats may have been worried to cross paths with someone slightly unhinged or still drunk from the night before and ready for a fight. But not me. I start checking my pockets. Where are my keys?

You see, in Boston (ahem, Cambridge/Somerville) one is ever prepared to leap out of bed and into the snowsleetrain at the first sound of a man’s voice from a car loudspeaker. Speed is of the essence and the goal is to move one’s vehicle to the other side of the street or to the next block or to a friend’s house cross town before the army of trucks rumble around the corner to tow away or throw a boot on any car that dares exist on the second Tuesday or last Friday of the month.

Of course, this particular morning I was in Madrid. No one else seemed to be paying much mind to this man and his circus leader voice; so, I pulled myself together and stopped frantically rummaging around my bag for keys to a car I no longer drive.

And here’s the lovely Spanish bit. This man is no vagrant nor does he drive a truck. He is a chatarrero – one of the oldest professions in Spain. A collector of metal and scraps, he walks from barrio to barrio, yelling out “Chatarrero! El Chataaaaaarrero!” so that people will gather up all the scrap in their home or shop and give it to him to take away. Recycling, old world style.

I am scared of the telephone. No joke. The landline rings in my flat and I make myself busy. I start doing the dishes. There is no way to pick up the phone when your hands are all soapy.

The phone is the devil to a person learning another language. If I pick up a ringing phone there will be some fast talking Spaniard on the other end – and they are just as difficult to interrupt as they are to understand. Once I do manage to slip in and ask them to speak more slowly, they just start the entire conversation over again at the same speed… because, let’s be realistic here, I am picking up a ringing phone in Spain. Where they speak Spanish.

Watching dubbed television is equally ridiculous. When the mouths form shapes that do not match the sounds coming from the TV, it’s impossible to follow. But so much is dubbed here in Spain that I should get over it — just like my fear of the telephone. Spain is going to keep on dubbing American TV shows and the phone is going to keep on ringing.

Sometimes I bump into my Madrileña roommate in the hallway and we will have a conversation while I am not wearing contacts or glasses. I can’t see her lips moving, so I must concentrate. I unconsciously move closer and closer to her in an effort to see her face. Now, Americans find this lack of space between two people horrifying, but the Spanish would probably prefer to converse when I can’t see, because it means I am an appropriate two inches away from them.

Getting out of one’s comfort zone is always a good thing and clearly my zone exists as far away from the telephone as possible. But today I got over one of those ridiculous hurdles and actually, willingly (well, okay not entirely willingly) picked up the phone to make a call in Spanish. Ironically, for an eye doctor’s appointment.

We’ll see if it was a success when I go to the given destination at 9pm next Tuesday.

Wait…9pm doesn’t seem like an appropriate time for an eye doctor’s appointment, does it?

An adapter is a connector for joining parts or devices having different sizes, designs, etc., enabling them to be fitted or to work together. (Random House)

In the taxi on the way to Barajas airport, I closed my eyes.  Simply leaned my head back and rested, even though the scene out the window was beautiful – the sort of thing for which an American should keep her eyes open.

But one gets used to things.

Madrid is flat but there are always mountains and hills in the distance.  And the color is this auburn orange dotted with Cyprus, olive, and dusty pine – colors that sit well under clouds that can’t decide which hue of grey to be.

It’s not something I’d ever think would become ordinary to me.  But I’ve plugged my American self into a Spanish adapter, and such is the day to day – just like the more mundane things over the past year: Spanish keyboard, hanging laundry to dry, lunch after 2pm.

Acclimation cannot simply be a bad thing.  We grow accustomed not only to the wondrous of life but also to the not so pleasant.  This is particularly helpful in circumstances that we cannot change.  For example, my grandmother, a painter, is losing her sight – an irreversible situation that calls for adjustment and acclimation.  Useful adaptation.

Nevertheless, I’d like to choose when to adapt.  I’d like to choose not to become blasé about the highlight reel.  What does it mean that we, as human beings, are such good adapters that we steer our existence to the middle ground by making the beautiful ordinary and the ugly palatable?

These days, my life is filled with adapters.  I’m talking now about those little electrical devices that I am always leaving behind – at the office, in hotels, on airplanes.  My hairdryer is from Spain, my laptop from the US, and my phone from the UK.  And, yes, I also live in constant anticipation that my appliances are going to explode at any given moment.

So, here’s a tip – to keep your computer and your self from browning out: Don’t leave items plugged in and unattended.

Ever try speed dating?  I’m fascinated by it but will likely never do it.  (Although I  wholeheartedly support your decision to give it a go.)  In fact, I have a New York (female) friend or two who’ve found it thoroughly enjoyable.

I bring up speed dating because that’s what it felt like being in Boston the other week.  I hadn’t been back in a while (I wait so long because it doesn’t feel so long until I land in Logan.)  I was speed dating my friends and former colleagues.  Many of my phone conversations/emails went like this: I have an hour here… do you have an hour here?  Luckily though, I didn’t need to do any thin slicing (Gladwell) since I adore these people, but packing them into two or three hour time slots is difficult. And exhausting. And not good enough.

It was a handful of days to see everyone I could (not a dent) while claiming to be more available in December (highly unlikely), and driving to favorite locations (ahem, being driven) to eat anything that wasn’t a tapa, and ordering all the holiday coffee drinks at starbucks.  Spain’s starbucks does not believe – perhaps to their benefit – in pumpkin spice, peppermint mocha, or gingerbread lattes.  (I admit to drinking Starbucks in both America and Spain.  Kill me.)

And in the whirlwind, I noticed that my old haunt did not disappear while I had turned my back:

• The front yard of my condo still insists on re-blooming flowers in November.
• The weather is still cold and mists at you; umbrellas are useless.
• The sidewalks are still lethal with heels.
• Harvard Square’s Pho Pasteur still makes excellent tofu vegetable soup, just under a different name.
• Union Square’s Bloc 11 still makes the best sandwiches and lets you swap or add any ingredient.  (Don’t try that in Spain.)
• Any coffee shop in Somerville or Cambridge still makes me feel at home.
• The girls at the table next to you are still beautiful and bookish and talking about bottom of the pyramid and microfinancing.  The boys are still reading Sartre.
• There still isn’t any real need to go across the river into Boston.

And all that is a relief because I still really like it there.

Of course, there were some developments (hello completed road construction on Somerville Ave).  In fact, being away for a year allowed me to see how much my friends have changed during that time.  Many of them will be surprised to read that sentence; they probably think they are just going along their life, one day after the next, going to work, going to dinner, going to sleep.  But the friend speeding made clear how different they all are from one another, how their paths have forked into unique lives.

In the past year, one or more of my friends has: gotten married, become a mother or a father (again), moved apartments, gone into therapy, found a new job, been promoted, become a vegetarian, fixed a relationship, ended a relationship, shown their work in a gallery, taken one step closer to knowing what they want.

Most of them look like the best version of themselves: shiny and sleek and happy.  And I wouldn’t have noticed that if I had spent the year with them.  Funny how that step back really helps things (like taking a long, non-America style vacation.)  So, I resolve to think of them – my “old” friends – if ever I feel that I’m just going through the motions.  Because things are happening even when we feel we are standing still (I dare you to quote Lennon) and we just need to be reminded to step back and take a good look.

And that’s what friends are for, isn’t it?

Lists.  Everybody loves them.  (Okay, mass generalization right there.  I am bound to get an email now from someone who does not enjoy lists.)  So, sure, lists can be confining.  But they can also be immensely helpful in two ways:

• Being Productive.  Lists help you focus.  And focus helps you get things done.  Particularly at the office on a beautiful sunny day when you’d rather be outside enjoying the Madrileño sunshine or on a rainy day when you’d rather be under the covers at home.  Such lists also make it so you don’t have to think too hard (aka stress reduction.)  You’ve already done the work of figuring out what needs to be accomplished and in what order.  All that’s left is to take a look at the prioritized items and do them.

• Brainstorming.  Look at another person’s list and take advantage of their experience.  Someone else has put in the time and come up with a top ten of blues recordings (Amazon is filled with this sort of thing) or the top ten novels about the civil war.  These lists give you an idea as to where to start – a place to begin and then branch out to develop your own opinion.

Why am I going on about lists?  Oh yes, because this list of Spain’s most beautiful villages and towns, (not cities) brought me to Mogrovejo:

Mogrovejo is this teeny tiny little pueblo in Cantabria, Spain, high up in the Peaks of Europe.  Built mostly between the 16th and 18th centuries, the village is quiet and sleepy and seemingly unaware of its status as one of the most beautiful in Spain.  The villagers, the sheep, the cows, the cattle dogs…they all just go about their business surrounded by some of the most breathtaking mountains and valleys I have ever seen.

It’s well worth a side trip if you are within a hundred (or two) miles.