The Lioness and her Cub

One day, out of the blue, my seven-year-old daughter presented me with her theory on life. “I think that before we were humans, everyone was an animal, and before we were animals we were insects, and before we were insects we were plants, and before we were plants we were rocks or minerals”.” Interesting cosmovision, or perhaps her very personal take on the “ontology recapitulates phylogeny” of my beloved grad school days: humans developed to a higher order just as life on Earth did. More or less. If we can be considered a higher order, that is. And if I remember correctly.

Having been raised a Catholic, who then rather lapsed in her wild oats-sowing days, I had tried to raise Cecilia nominally as a Catholic. So how did this vision square, I inquired? “Well, when you die you go to heaven and God sends you back to Earth as whatever you’re supposed to be, but humans don’t remember it.” All right. Hybrid Catholicism.

But the real fun of this theory was that she started to tell me what everyone we knew used to be. She informed me that I used to be a lioness – referring probably to my mane of unruly hair, and perhaps – I like to flatter myself – to my fierce protectiveness of my offspring. Her father, on the other hand, was a hamster. Why? “Because he’s super neat and always primping himself”, referring no doubt to his “no me despeines” (“don’t mess up my hair”) obsession. Her parents: a lioness and a hamster. From the mouths of babes: I did, indeed, eat him alive.

Her friend Andrea, blond, sweet, kind-hearted yet overbearingly hard to take, was a golden lab puppy. She is cute and awkward like her former canine self, “but she’s like a puppy – she wants too much attention.” So true.

This became a game in which we debated which each person was. You can only debate people you know well, because their animal alter ego reflects not only their appearance but also their character. Her friend Gemma, a graceful ballerina, wasn’t a swan but a swallow because of her dark, Mediterranean complexion. Unlikeable, cold people often ended up being fish or reptiles.

It’s funny how she was so often spot-on with her observations. My favorites were my friend Nestor and my boyfriend at the time, Enrique. Nestor is a masculine, barrel-chested “macho ibérico”. He’s got quite an ego about his own manhood which he doesn’t take pains to conceal. When I told him Cecilia’s theory, he said with all the puffed-up pride of a manly man, “And I’m a bear, right?” I asked Cecilia. Her answer: “A bear? No way! He’s a bat.” A bat? Why? “Because he looks like one.” I guess his face can take on a pinched quality at times. Needless to say Nestor’s ego was slightly deflated, but only slightly because after all, an ego like that has a life of its own, and he knew deep down he was really a bear; she just wasn’t ready to recognize it.

Enrique was tall and gangly. “He’s an ostrich,” declared my soothsayer Ceci. And it fit him like a glove: the kind of tall, angular man who never quite grew into his body, the head moving back and forth seemingly independent of the long legs; think Shaggy’s walk in Scooby Doo. Not to mention the personality that in time revealed itself to be none too kind. Perfect!

So what was Cecilia? A lynx. Why? Lynxes are quick, and Cecilia is a quick runner. They tire easy, and while she doesn’t so much tire, she does get bored easily when an activity doesn’t engage her. And, as she said, “They have pretty eyes like me.” Well, now that’s healthy self-esteem for you!

A lynx born to a lioness and a hamster. When Cecilia was just days old, I propped up that tiny baby, looked her in the eye and told her what I already sensed in my heart of hearts: “It’s just you and me.” Just two felines: the lioness and her cub.

By the way, if you ever see her, ask her what you used to be!

Coca de Vidre

“Coca”. Say the word and it conjures up all sorts of connotations – mostly illicit. But in Catalonia, coca is a traditional flatbread which has echoes in other Mediterranean societies, the best-known being Italian pizza and focaccia, along with pita bread and its more distant cousins the matzah or even Indian chapati. Coca can be covered with either sweet or savory topping, and its sweet guise reveals the kinship of the word “coca” with the English “cake” and the German “Kuchen”. Coca was developed as a way of using bread dough that didn’t rise. Thank goodness leavening agents don’t always work: they have left us the legacy of both cocas and the American invention par excellence: brownies.

Cocas are a dish for both rich and poor; the topping reveals which. Some are simply sprinkled with sugar, which caramelizes in the oven, others with olive oil and salt, scrumptious in and by themselves, while yet others are loaded with delicacies like seafood or vegetables, chocolate or pastry cream. Either way, in the past Catalan households had no ovens, so after the town bakeries were done baking their bread for the day, they let the neighborhood housewives bring their cocas and bake them in their ovens. Sometimes the bakeries would even donate their unsellable bread dough that failed to rise. Nowadays, bakeries sell ready-made cocas, often with roasted vegetables like peppers, eggplants, and onions on top, although any homemade version is infinitely better. They also make sweet cocas, like the famous “coca de vidre” (more on that delicacy below).

Cocas are often associated with holidays in Catalonia, such as the “coca de reis” and the “coca de Sant Joan”. Coca de reis is eaten on the Epiphany, January 6^th, when according to the Bible the Three Wise Men, or “reis mags”, reached Baby Jesus bearing their gifts. Coca de reis always has two surprises in it: a diminutive ceramic wise man, which brings the person finding it good luck, and a dried fava bean, which means that the person who bites into it or, in a more cowardly fashion, digs it out with their fingers, has to pay for the coca next year. But beware: they are both hard on the teeth!

The “coca de Sant Joan” is eaten on St. John’s Eve, June 23^rd, when Catalonians take to the streets to return to their pagan, solstice-celebrating roots, couched in Christian terms. They stay up all night lighting fireworks, building bonfires, drinking whatever is at hand, and waiting to welcome dawn on the beaches, most in a drunken stupor by then. They then eat this candied fruit-laden coca with a glass of “cava”, Catalan champagne, to welcome the summertime. Many a coca de Sant Joan has been eaten with no recollection whatsoever, I imagine, just as many other midsummer night’s frolics have quietly, thankfully drifted into oblivion after the inebriated revelry.

On to my favorite: coca de vidre (literally “glass flatbread”). It was so named because of the crystallized sugar that forms as it bakes. The dough used in Spain is more similar to pizza dough, but coca de vidre is equally – if not more – delicious using a flaky homemade pie crust. Yet another name for coca de vidre is “llengua de gat”, or cat’s tongue, because of its elongated shape.

Here’s the recipe: there is none. Like most traditional dishes, each cook has her own way of making it, and they’re all valid. How should you make it? However you like. However it tastes the best to you. But if I must: you preheat the oven to – I don’t know, maybe 400? Roll out the dough, brush a thin coat of olive oil on it, smother it in white sugar, and add pine nuts that toast up nicely in the oven. When is it ready? When it’s ready! How do you know? Does it look delectably edible? Yes? Then it’s ready. As soon as you remove it from the oven – and this is the key – spritz it with anisette (anise liqueur); this immediately liquefies the sugar with a satisfying sizzle, which then hardens into a glass-like coating. Hence the name. Don’t stint on the sugar: coca de vidre is emphatically NOT a diet food, so indulge… and enjoy! And eat it hot, right out of the oven, when all the flavors infuse the senses with the delightfully cloying sweetness of the anisette-glazed sugar, the toasted earthiness of the pine nuts, and the buttery flakiness of the crust.

I don’t know… it’s fairly heady stuff. So maybe coca de vidre should be considered a controlled substance after all, bringing into closer kinship with its better-known namesake.

Closure

When you leave your country and come back periodically, or permanently as is now my case, you notice trends, groundswells of popularity for things or notions that only had a shadowy existence in the past. Take Asiago cheese. Where did that come from? I had never heard of it, but about eight to ten years ago Asiago was suddenly on every menu. Was there a surplus in Italy that Sysco got wind of? And what about tilapia? When I was a kid there was haddock, catfish, flounder, not to mention what I was raised on: frozen “fish” patties. But I had never heard of tilapia.

Language goes through pendulum swings, too. What’s up with “My bad” and its counterpart – on the opposite end of the spectrum – “I’m good”? I didn’t ask you if you behaved well, I asked how you were. But that’s probably just the old dried up sourpuss grammarian in me. As a human, however, there’s another new emotional, armchair-psychological, faddish development I take issue with: closure.

Closure is a tempting notion. Something bad happens, you want closure and poof! It’s gone. A loved one dies, you get divorced, or a friendship ends: Americans seek closure, the panacea for all woes.

Rituals to mark sad occasions abound as time-honored ways of helping us handle bereavement. Over time every culture has developed its own way of mourning the death of a loved one, some of which last for months or even years: a fitting way to grieve over the survivors’ loss and honor the deceased person’s memory. Mourning is messy; it can entail wailing, sometimes even with formal paid wailers, special clothing – widow’s weeds, or ritual purification, prayers, or processions. Yet it also involves love and togetherness, solidarity and support in the guise of dishes cooked and brought over, company kept with the bereaved family. All of this in its motley, makeshift, utterly human way gradually lures the mourners back into the world while acknowledging their loss.

But closure isn’t about mourning, and it’s not a slow process: it’s a modern, streamlined version. It’s quick and simplistic and tries to erase everything in one fell swoop.

Closure is business-like. We perform a quick act with the aim of sweeping that sadness under the carpet and getting on with the bright side of life. After the Oklahoma City bombings, some suggested that the families of the victims watch McVeigh’s death as a form of closure. As if that could erase the loss. Or, less drastically, some celebrated the jury’s decision as a form of closure. But did justice really heal anything? Now the loss is… what? Karmically offset? Nullified? The idea behind closure is neat efficiency: instead of coexisting with the sadness of loss, we perform or witness a quick act with the expectation that it will cauterize that wound and erase that scar, pronto!

Sadness, like death, is part of life. Why we try to avoid it is understandable; why we think we can is incomprehensible. American culture is deeply uncomfortable with anything associated with sadness, and hence with death. I remember being disconsolate soon after a very painful event. A friend told me, “Maybe you need to take antidepressants.” I was flabbergasted. I was sad! I was sad for a reason and I felt I had the right to be. That was not abnormal and it was not clinical; it was a healthy response to loss. I wasn’t floundering, giving up, burrowing inward, plunging into the abyss. I was rightfully sad. I wanted to be allowed to be sad, yet it seemed that I was violating some happy pact. Apparently we do not allow ourselves time to mourn anymore; instead we seek the mythical grail of closure so we can get on with the brisk business of life.

By the time we reach a certain age, most of us have already experienced serious loss. And if you have, you know it’s not something you can quickly cauterize and then blithely gloss over. If only! Instead, loss gradually tears away at the edges of our bright, shining youthful selves; it beats our innocence into submission and leaves us battered and bruised. In our culture we then desperately seek that band-aid, that cure-all – closure – to try to get back to where we were pre-loss ASAP. Why not simply accept our rips, shreds, and bruises? They are our history, and they don’t go away. Like all our experiences, they season us and they burnish us; they make us who we are. They are an inextricable part of our biography. There is no need to wallow in them, but nor is there a reason to erase them. And let’s face it: even if we wanted to we couldn’t.

So, reluctantly, Asiago and tilapia are keepers, I guess: Sysco says so. “My bad” and “I’m good” are grammatical abominations, but I’ll save tirades on them for another day. Closure, on the other hand, is what needs to be swept under the proverbial rug and replaced with an acceptance of mourning and sadness, acknowledgement that life and its travails are a messy business that sometimes needs time to be processed and never wholly goes away – the good or the bad.

Nine Years Ago Today

It was nine years ago today that my life as I knew it and envisioned it came to an end.

It was the day my husband became my ex-husband. It was the day he packed up his stuff and left home.

When these life-changing events happen, like death, we can hardly process them they’re so immense. It’s only after the fact as we live and relive them that they begin to make sense.

The indelible image engraved on my mind is this: he took our daughter for the weekend, so he wouldn’t be alone. She was three; she had no idea what was happening, bless her innocent, trusting heart. They left, taking the elevator to the street while I went out on the balcony, invisible to them, to witness the final departure. They crossed the street, holding hands, a man with a tiny, tow-headed girl, and I watched them walk away until they were out of sight. My life and everything I had imagined it would be vanished with them.

When my mother died, I remember my father walking down the stairs at home in his suit, ready to go to her funeral, laughing at the patchwork tie he was wearing – a gift from my mother and a running family joke – using merriment to hide our grief. That day, I had no one to conceal the grief with, no one to process it with; that might have been a blessing.

I will never forget that day, or the date. I can never remember whether I was married on June 27^th or 28^th, but January 26^th is etched in my mind forever as the day a new life began, unbidden. The day I had to reinvent my future, the day I had to learn to stand on my own two feet for two of us, Cecilia and myself, and try my best not to topple over.

I’m still processing it.

Abu Omar

I think I’d like to rename this blog Um Cecilia’s American Adventure. Let me explain:

New Year, new students. As an introductory exercise, my students have to write about each other. One of my Saudi students, Riyadh – who by the way, was not named after the city; rather his name means “many gardens”, he told me – was consistently referred to by fellow Saudis as Abu Omar. In fact, on his own paper he signed his name Abu Omar/Riyadh. So I asked him about it.

“My son is named Omar, so I am called Abu Omar, father of Omar.”

Abu Omar/Riyadh is a professor back in Saudi Arabia. So I asked him whether at work he is also called Abu Omar or whether it is a private, personal name.

“At work, too, everyone calls me Abu Omar.”

“You’re called Abu Omar everywhere?”

“Yes, I and all fathers are called ‘Father of’ by anyone who knows us.”

“So what is your wife called? Is there a counterpart for women?”

“Yes, she is Um Omar.”

In Saudi society greetings are not “How are you?” but “How are you? How is your family?”, even if you don’t know the family. The family defines you; it is not only your pride and joy but who you are. You, alone, do not exist; you are part of your clan. You exist in relation to your family, and Abu and Um reflect this primacy of the family.

So I began to wonder: what happens to people who have no children? Are they not entitled to such an affectionate form of address? Are they left out of this tradition? So I asked Abu Omar and another Saudi student. They said, “No, they decide what they’d like to be called. Abu whatever they choose. And sometimes they choose their father’s or mother’s name if they have no children.” So maybe I was Um Katherine before I became Um Cecilia. Or maybe I would have randomly chosen Um Priscilla or Um Mildred or Um Gertrude. Then again, maybe I would have chosen more tastefully (my apologies to all the Priscillas, Mildreds, and Gertrudes out there)! My students went on to explain that there are certain Abu/Um names associated with certain first names because of associations from the Prophet Mohammed’s time.

I like this. It is warm and familiar and emphasizes personal, familial relationships over professional accomplishments and power. It brings everyone back – or up – to the same level.

When we meet someone new in our country, usually one of the first questions is, “What do you do?”, so we can define, or pigeonhole, our new acquaintances into some predetermined hierarchical mental schema. In Germany, Abu Omar would be Herr Doktor Professor Riyadh. His family would merit neither mention nor interest. It is a separate realm, one that has no place in professional life.

In his society, one’s crowning achievement is not degrees or professorships or riches earned but parenthood, or kinship, something we all share. And how wonderful that families, personhood, and warmth come before accomplishments, at least in the way they address each other.

So Um Cecilia’s American Adventure it is!

The Nostalgic Prowler

I lurk, I peer, I eavesdrop, I close my eyes and inhale deeply.

I reclaim the streets of Barcelona furtively, privately, like a prowler on a secret mission. Or a Baudelairean flâneur, walking the streets for no other purpose than to experience them. To privately enjoy the personal pleasure of checking in on them, checking in with them. Back on a visit to Barcelona, I am like a dog who once marked her territory all over the city and town, now revisiting my old haunts to make sure they’re still there, to make sure they’re still mine.

I walk through the Gothic Quarter. I close my eyes and smell the wet paving stones, the savory and sweet pastries tempting me in the glass cases of the bakeries mingled with the putrefaction of centuries of densely occupied streets. I hear snippets of conversations: Catalan grandparents with toddlers warning them to be careful as they joyfully bounce around a square; tourists from all over the world trying to figure out where on earth they are amid the narrow, winding streets; young Catalans out on the adventure of trolling their city on their own and claiming it as theirs the way I once claimed it as mine.

I gaze at the stone slabs of the buildings and the ornate metalwork of the balconies, some hung with laundry, many with hanging plants, colorful geraniums enlivening the ancient cityscape. I stop into the shops where I once bought Christmas presents and decorated my home; I note the ancient markings on certain hard-to-find buildings nestled deep in the narrow, chaotic streets indicating the Call, the ancient Jewish quarter, an eerie, moving relic of the past. I remember being shown these streets decades ago by old friends on a quiet, rainy night and feeling the palpable presence of the tragic past.

I stop at my favorite xocolateria, El Pallarès on Petritxol Street, where early summer mornings I once breakfasted on spoonfuls of viscous liquid chocolate topped with a thick slab of whipped cream, a suizo, with an ensaimada dipped in, with my boyfriend, now my ex-husband. Today I eat my suizo with churros, fried dough rolled in sugar, the crunchy sugar and saltiness of the dough offsetting the creaminess of the chocolate and whipped cream. After wolfing it down I quickly pay so that the customers lined up by the door can sit down, and then I head to the paper shop down the street where I used to buy beautiful wrapping paper and ribbons to festively wrap Cecilia’s childhood presents awaiting her under the tree on a Christmas morning.

I stop in the cathedral, sit in the prayer chapel, breathe in the cold, damp air, and note that in this quiet oasis set aside for prayer I am only accompanied by the elderly and the foreign. I look at the side chapels, with their mysterious, flat Romanesque figures, the blues and reds still brilliant and the gilding still lending them a hallowed air. I go on to Santa Maria del Mar, sit in a pew, close my eyes and once again smell the rosemary and thyme strewn on the floor and warmly scenting the chill air for that midnight mass on Christmas Eve so many years ago.

I stroll down the Rambla – you have to stroll the Rambla, ramble along it; no American-style rushing! The only ones moving quickly are the artful pickpockets. I get lost in the bustling, chaotic mix of locals and tourists, the street performers, the flower stalls, the Liceu opera house where my friend Steve initiated me into this lovely art, and far down below it all, Columbus pointing to America as the Rambla hits the sea, my beloved Mediterranean. I pass the wax museum, I place I have never stopped into, fearful of its seaminess, although I should... I walk by the university where I once taught, where heading there one day I witnessed the old opera house burn down. I catch a glimpse of Plaça Reial, my first wild, exhilarating experience of Barcelona over 30 years ago, on a summer Eurrail pass with my friend Christa. That trip is the reason my life took me here – as a friend once told me, an entire life course hinges on the most minor of details.

I take a walk along the sea, smelling the fried seafood that wafts up from the exhaust chimneys in the Olympic Port, remembering when that same boyfriend, now ex-husband, worked there to earn money for college and I would visit him on summer evenings and sip a cool beer. I head further away from civilization and pass the chic chill-out bars with elegant tapas and cocktails set to smooth music with the gently breaking waves as the backdrop, barely audible as night falls and they vanish into the darkness, and even further on to the rope jungle gym that Cecilia used to climb and to the jetties where old men set out their fishing poles as night falls and the beachgoers in their sunburned weariness dress and gather up their gear for the day.

I go to my favorite restaurants: Flo for the crepes Suzette, as delicious as always, the tartness of the Cointreau and orange peel contrasting with the sweet crunch of the unmelted sugar. I remember the time the chef accidentally used salt instead of sugar and the horrified waiter quickly whisked away the plates before we noticed… although it was too late and our sighs of delight turned into “yucks” of horror as we spit out the vile imposter. Santa Maria for the foie with figs that melts in your mouth; it has always rendered me momentarily speechless as it once did my friend Jamie and I, Jamie, who introduced me to the arty-cool Santa Maria. Da Greco for the parmesan risotto poured into an enormous, half-empty wheel of parmesan cheese and then scraped out with thick shavings that half-melt in the rice. Dos Palillos for the oysters in sake: the oyster explodes in your mouth – close your eyes and you’re swimming in the sea in the middle of a hot summer day – then the shot of oyster-flavored sake awaiting in the shell to wash it down. My friend Paola and I never miss a trip there and are always dismayed in the summertime when there are no oysters (as per the Catalan saying that seafood is only good in the months with “r” in their names). Flavors etched on my memory that I yearn for when I’m far away, and that are far too fleeting when I get to savor them.

In our hometown outside Barcelona I go to the park a few blocks away. The park that was the scene of so many warm afternoons of my daughter’s childhood, playing in the grass with her plastic horses after lunch; watching her learn how to ride a bicycle and then gleefully racing around the park with her, both of us on our cool new mountain bikes; her first taste of freedom on her scooter or roller skates as I let her circle the entire park by herself (secure in the knowledge that the entire town knew who she was and would help her and find me if she fell); sitting by the rocks at the edge of the pond looking at the lily pads and any fish we could spot, catching any frogs unfortunate enough to be in our pathway (which were later, mercifully, released); her favorite climbing tree, still there. Night-time picnics with our friends, drenched in champagne, picnics lasting until late into the night thanks to the indulgence of the night watchman who didn’t have the heart to kick us out (yet dutifully refused our offer of a glass for himself!). And even earlier, Cecilia in the sandbox playing and then fighting with other children over the plastic shovels and rakes and buckets (palas and rastrillos and cubos – my Spanish vocabulary expanded…), the parents sorting out the implements and gradually civilizing their wild little ones. And now as I go visit the park, I lay in the grass, I look up at the sky through the leafy trees, I close my eyes and hear the next generation of children and parents doing the same. I cry for this past, I miss it as I recall all the wonderful, heady times I’ve had here, and even, or especially, as all the despair and sadness that life in Barcelona brought me comes washing back over me.

Do we leave a smattering of cells behind us as we go through life? Do I leave a trail of the stardust that I’m made of as I make my way through the world? Do the places I’ve been to leave their DNA on me? If so, Catalonia is marked on my soul, and I like to think a little of my soul is marked on it as well.