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

Strawberry Wine

Country music has a very dear purpose in my life: to remind me of going to high school in Aurora. Who I was there. What I felt was important. What I loved. What I thought my life would be.

At least once during every trip home, I find myself at a country station, singing along to Faith Hill or Martina McBride. I was a full-fledged country fan between the years of 1998 and 2001. You name a Top 10 hit during that time and I could probably give you a lyric. I saw Alan Jackson, folks. So now, a few years on, I'm completely out of touch with popular country, but I catch a glimpse when no one is looking. Car rides back home. And in Austin, late night TV when Ian's fallen asleep on the couch before I get home.

I saw last night Brad Paisley has this song "Letter to Me" that's all about not thinking that high school was the best time of your life. I haven't had any doubt about that for a long time, but watching that video takes me back to when I was the one who couldn't live past Friday nights. And breaking up after a few months felt like I'd never breathe again. Front porches, tail gates, mom and pop shops. First loves, first losses. Unanswered prayers for God's sake.

The nostalgia that kind of music, with those kinds of lyrics, stirs up is why it's so popular, I think. For people who thrive on budding adulthood rather than the real thick of it, that is. For people who have not much more, "Seventeen" by Tim McGraw (which I thoroughly enjoyed when I was 17) really hits home. I embrace a token amount of nostalgia, but I've spent so many years distancing myself from that life, who I was then. I can only take so much before it feels too close to home. I start to feel the holey fabric of Rawley's red and black #12 jersey. I see the digital readout of the Subaru GL10. I smell the mill, the band room. I hear my lockers slam and Coach Heman yelling at us to hit the court. Small town high school life is rife with succulent cliches.

I guess it's no wonder, then, that there is an entire genre of music dedicated to rekindling your memory of this period of your life. When you didn't really have a clue, but you didn't really have to.

Anybody got any Deanna Carter?