Journeys
A Spanish Sojourn with My Son
Traveling with someone you love, particularly a child, has a way of starting interesting new conversations.
By Michele Morris
“Try the octopus, Mom,” Nick urges. “You’ll love it.” I am not quite so sure, but I try to be a good sport. I stab my toothpick at a pile of purple tentacles, spear one, and pop it into my mouth. I contemplate swallowing it whole but decide to chew. And Nick is right. It is good, a bit rubbery with a satisfying crunch and a spicy flavor. I think back to Nick’s childhood when I tried to get him to eat brussels sprouts or cooked carrots. I hope that he trusted me as much as I now trust him.
My husband, Thom, asks Nick to order more sangria and more tiny fried eels. In the past, Thom has been the one who did the ordering. But here we are in a tapas bar in Madrid, and my 20-year-old son is the man in charge.
Just weeks before, we were sitting in the kitchen of our home in Park City, Utah, watching the sun set over the Wasatch Mountains. The conversation was a parent-child two-step. Had he cleaned his room? Would he please carry his duffel bag to the basement? How were his classes? It wasn’t the Spanish Inquisition, but it was awfully close. Now the backdrop has changed, and so has the rhythm of our conversation. Nick leads the way down cobblestone lanes, deciding which bar or restaurant to try. My husband and I follow in his wake, amazed at the transformation in our blond-haired son who towers over the Spanish men. His Spanish has evolved from classroom scripts to real-life conversations.
The added delight for me is that my son is walking in my footsteps. Thirty-five years earlier I left my home, a cattle ranch in southwestern Montana, and boarded a plane (my first flight) for my junior year abroad in Barcelona. My two years of high school Spanish allowed me to order breakfast, greet people, and ask for directions—but barely. I lived with a Spanish family where I learned to adapt to different rhythms, schedules, nuances. My lack of fluency made me rely on my sixth sense and my eyes. I haunted art galleries where I could see the paintings even if I could not understand the conversations around me. As my Spanish improved over time, the curtains opened onto a wide and glittering world of music and theater.
My year abroad was life changing in all the best ways. I discovered that I had an ear for poetry and a love of literature. I wrote poems and kept a journal. I learned how to be a chameleon, adapting to new and different social situations. It catapulted me onto a different playing field. At the end of the year, I didn’t go back to my Montana high school but to a New England prep school that had just gone co-ed. I couldn’t go home again.
Now here I am, three decades later, back in the city where I fell in love with Spain. I watch my son navigate this foreign world and see how Nick’s gifts are magnified in this urban environment. His language fluency and his navigational skills seem remarkable to me. I find myself remembering back to his childhood in New York City where he became fascinated with maps and started collecting them the way other boys collect baseball cards. Once when I lost my way in Phoenix after dark, it was 10-year-old Nick who figured out where we were and how to find our destination. After that he became my official navigator when I drove.
This time I am the one who gets hot and cranky, tired of walking down narrow streets with no shade to offer. “It’s just a little farther,” Nick urges. “We’re almost there.” When I suggest stopping for a snack, Nick is the one who reminds me that Madrid closes down from 2 to 4 and restaurants are shuttered from 4 until 6.
I regain my equilibrium when he buys me an ice cream bar and finds us a seat on a shady bench. I laugh to myself and acknowledge the role reversal. I promise that I will behave better.
In Madrid we discover a mutual love of visual art. I have seen his childhood drawings and his teenage paintings, but he has never seen my early work. We walk through the Reina Sofía Museum where Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica, a somber black-and-white anti-war statement, is on display. Nick comments on the similarities to Goya’s painting of an execution that we saw earlier at the Prado. Goya magnified the color palette while Picasso amplified the horror of war. As we walk out into the sun, on our way to lunch, Nick talks about Franco and the Spanish Civil War.
“I remember how Franco appeared on TV almost every night,” I say.
“Mom,” Nick says, as he stops in his tracks. “I can’t believe that you lived in Spain under Franco.”
I savor this moment, knowing intuitively that it won’t happen very often. He looks at me as a fascinating individual, someone with a story to tell, not his mother with a million questions to ask.
“What was it like?” he asks.
“Repressed,” I answer. “The people in Catalunya couldn’t speak Catalan on the street. They had to speak it behind closed doors.”
“I can’t imagine being afraid to speak your native language,” he marvels. “What else do you remember?”
I Didn’t Know You Liked History
Suddenly I was catapulted back in time, remembering the smell of churros in the morning. I lived with a widow, with a quick wit and a quicker smile, and her daughter, a competitive swimmer. She worked in a bookstore, and I used to go there after school and linger in the travel section. I called her Mama, and she called me hija. She taught me how to make gazpacho and paella. By the time I returned home, I had the extra pounds to prove it.
Later, as we spoon paella, redolent of saffron and seafood, we talk of Spain and its civil war, the roots of Fascism. Nick quotes his Spanish history teacher and raves about a book by José Termes.
“Señor Termes was my Spanish history teacher,” I say.
“Really?” Nick says. “He wrote five books on modern Spanish history.”
“He was a college professor who taught our high school on the side,” I recall.
“I didn’t know you liked history,” Nick says.
“I like history,” I answer. “It helps me understand literature and life.”
He considers this for a minute. “People make the same mistakes again and again.”
I agree, adding that people also learn the same lessons and come to appreciate the same wisdom.
At home in Park City, I go to bed early and scold Nick for staying up so late. Here in Madrid, I adapt to the city’s rhythms. We sit down for dinner after 10 and often end after midnight. I acknowledge that Nick is a night owl and find myself joining him for late-night conversations on the balcony of our hotel suite. While it’s true that he never sees the sun rise like I sometimes do, he enjoys the nighttime quiet when it feels as if you are alone in the darkened world, not waiting for dawn but relishing the velvety night. I can’t see his face in the moonlight, but I can hear his voice and it is full of hope and dreams and passions.
Then one morning our Madrid interlude ends. Nick has to return to school and we have to go home to jobs. He packs up his duffel bag, tossing dirty clothes and books and toiletries into the bag. I resist the urge to tell him to fold his clothes and put his toiletries in a dop kit. I see that this is the way he does things. He travels light. Suddenly he stands up, checks his pockets for his wallet, iPod, and camera, and hugs me good-bye. I watch from the balcony as he walks down the street to the subway, at home in Madrid, at home in the world.
Who’s That Fascinating Guest?
Our time in Spain together was the start of a new dance step. Before our relationship was more like a box step—one, two, three, one, two, three. We moved through a small space, repeating the same conversations, the same concerns. Now when I think of Nick, I imagine flamenco guitars as our background music. Our conversations dip and twirl and stride, covering new ground.
A month later when Nick arrives home, I make paella in the big round pan I bought in a market, hoping to recapture the intimacy we shared in Madrid. Thom makes a pitcher of sangria, and Nick is the one who is coaching him, advising him to add more sugar and to chop the fruit into smaller pieces. This time when we sit down to dinner, the backdrop has changed again. Rather than tall buildings with cupolas and iron balconies, there are magnificent mountains, some still snowcapped. Having Nick home is like having a fascinating foreign guest in the house.
I see him through a different lens and accept him and his habits. Rather than talking about the weather or school, we talk about history and art, exchange observations about what’s happening in the world. I listen to his opinions and consider his point of view. I can tell that he’s doing the same.
Travel changes people as much as time does. Sharing a journey with someone you love, particularly your child, gives you a new language of intimacy. When the backdrop changes, the journey begins and we become travelers, looking at the world and ourselves with new eyes and open hearts. +
Michele Morris is author of The Cowboy Life and has written for such national magazines as More, Good Housekeeping, and Travel + Leisure.
November/December 2006
Yoga+ magazine