In Zagreb, early morning has come again, men sporting man purses hurry to the tram, women bearing heavy purses, buses, taxis, cars and pedestrians scuttling. A city that wakes up on a Monday morning – the rhythm of the world (except Spain). Here an octogenarian with a full head of hair tells me that when they took out his thyroid, he applied a garlic paste to his head every night for two months. Another octogenarian…
Between the three year old and the 82 year old it is hard to tell the difference – they live for play and for drama. “We’re going out for a bit,” we say and suddenly, the old woman falls back on the sofa feeling faint, the little boy, naked, throws himself on the same sofa and demands cartoons while he pulls his pudding. Drama takes a hiatus in the middle years of getting and spending…
We go to meet the old man and his sister in the beer garden that was once a splendor filled with people on Sundays during the socialist period. Now we are one of two tables there, but the beer is creamy and cold from the tap and the service is fine. We talk about thyroids, hair, glaucoma, macro degenerative disease, heart failure, and mosquito bites. Everyone leaves happy.
There is an old woman who I met in 2008 in her underwear during a heat wave in Zagreb, four years later, and the woman walked slowly down the stairs in her underwear, another heat wave, excited to greet not her daughter, not me, but her grandson. In the tiny room in the tiny apartment, the old woman and the young boy make trains out of pillows that go from one end of the room…
We’ve been to Spain. Yes, that’s what the tickets say but it seems as if we have been living parallel lives from our regular one. There’s the getting used to each new place, there’s the schlepping baggage filled with god knows what – diapers, incense, books, computer, clothes, make-up, pills and such. There’s been different food, different routines, different people, different modes of being and at the end of it all – there we are.…
Tin regrouped with his summer friends and spent joyous days on the beach and hanging out with them. But at the end, he cried Gibraltar-size tears when he was parting from Pablo on the last day. Who could blame him – Pablo is simply irresitable. So on this last night in Zahara when tears were gushing out of Tin’s eyes, I took him to bed and comforted him that Pablo would come visit us in…
There is a restaurant in Zahara de los Atunes called Restaurante Pradillo but most people refer to it as “The Geishas” because Rodrigo and Oscar make you feel as if you are being pampered in regal style. Estefa is the bartender and she is solely to blame for hooking us on gin tonics. Her cocktails are made with love and with spices and with flare. Her new technique is to pour the tonic slowly through…
I have a friend in Spain who I met the first year we vacationed in Zahara de los Atunes. I looked forward this year to returning and walking on the beach with her to catch up. There are few people you meet at a certain point in your life who you truly feel connected to – as if they were always there just waiting for you to arrive. We took the ferry to Tangiers together…
The Spanish have a saying – te voy a comer de besos – I will eat you with kisses. And the our friends’ kids are just those types of kids – the ones you want to eat with kisses all day long.