Sueños con España

Blame the nisperos, but Spain has been on my mind this week, even moreso after reading Lucy McCauley's "Lesson from the Road" essay on mothering.com. She wrote about traveling in Europe with her kiddo and how wonderfully different (and challenging) it was. I can only imagine, but what I wouldn't give to try. Here's her take:

On our final day in Madrid, when I was trying to get us out the door to see some last sites, my daughter stopped me mid-motion. Unceremoniously plopping her little bum on my lap, she sat looking out the balcony windows, contentedly drinking from her sippy cup, as if we had nothing else to do. When I tried to move and get us both up and going, I was stopped by the sheer pressure of her body—and by the view in front of me, which I hadn't taken time to really notice before.

Two windows opened onto a wrought-iron balcony and a clear-skied fall morning in Madrid. Sunlight played on an ancient, five-story, ochre-stained building across the way. Each floor had balconies, and the shades were pulled out and over them—how the Spanish let in the air and keep out the sun. The scent of café con leche wafted up from the streets below, and I could hear people greeting one another in staccato phrases as they passed by.

We sat a long time gazing out that window, my baby and I, taking it all in as if we had nowhere else in the world to be, as if we had come all the way to Spain for just that moment. And in a way, I guess you could say we had.

Alicante, Spain, September 2003