Afternoon Musings

Oh, how I wish I was writing more! I’ll be walking on the street, sitting in classing, sipping on a coffee and wish desperately that I had a way to capture so many of these priceless moments. I’m trying to sear them into my mind, filing them away to recall some lazy Sunday afternoon a million miles and hours away from this place.

I’m imprinting this sunny Sunday into my mind. There is nothing special about this particular afternoon. In another world far from here, it is the inevitable tax day. My sweet senora and I met in the street this morning. She was returning from buying the daily bread, and I was off for a paseo, a Sunday stroll. I was to meet two friends in the Center. One friend received 1930’s postcards of Sevilla from her father for Christmas, and we spent a few hours locating the sights pictured in the postcards, taking the same picture seventy years later. We ended up speaking with a few characters as well. Old men on park benches and old women in Sunday suits with a lifetime of Sevilla history aided us in our hunt.

It has just been Victoria and I home together this weekend, as my roommate is traveling. I returned home to a kitchen that smelled delicious and to Victoria standing on our terrace, her hair in curlers, hanging up my laundry. I joined her in the half sun of the terrace and we chatted away about the weather, time past, and socialism (a favorite topic) as we hung my clothes on the rack to be dried by the sun. She is always wearing an apron as she bustles around the kitchen and the house. Today, it is the pretty pink apron that my parents brought her, along with some fun kitchen gadgets that she loves to use. Our midday meal was a dish “de mi tierra” as Victoria affectionately calls Extremadura, the region in which she grew up. Bacalao (fish), rice, and potatoes stewed together in a sauce most likely consisting of white wine and olive oil. Victoria loves talking about her recipes; she continually is marking recipes in her cookbooks and laying them on my desk for me to copy. She’ll make a Spanish cook out of me yet!

I’m sitting at her painting table on the terrace now, looking out on the rooftops to the south. Being six floors up enables one to see the world of roofs. The man across the way has his feet up on the table as he reads the newspaper. Many roofs are airing fresh laundry as the sun is bright and warm. A woman and her daughter are folding the fresh pink sheets and hanging up the next load. A man walks on the street with his bag of bread. The playground of the school is quiet, and the blue of the sky gives way to a bank of white clouds in the distance.

And so there is nothing special about this Sunday except that it is. It is pristine and sacred. These are true Spain moments. And in a life far from this moment where the light breeze wafts the smell of my clean laundry and the voices of the street toward me, I will recall this calm of space and life.

For I am still, in one peace.