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.