1.Stay up late following your husband on FlightAware as he travels from Miami to Madrid. Imagine him on a half-full Iberia jumbo jet drinking red wine, easing into chat in his native tongue, dozing off to the quiet sounds of Spanish as the plane crosses the Atlantic Ocean through empty skies.
2.Stare at pictures of a gorgeous Basque Mountain retreat where a few of your Donosti friends are spending the week hiking, doing yoga, having group meals, relaxing, because they are in a country that locked itself down so seriously for seven weeks they are now free to move around with a strong measure of confidence. Second guess your decision to return to the states, given that the EU has banned Americans indefinitely.
3. Put on your playlist of Ultimo de la Fila, one of the best Spanish rock bands. When the song Aviones Plateados sounds from the speakers, flashback to the first time you heard this song, this group: San Sebastian, 1987, you sprawled in bed with your limbs wrapped around your new lover, a young Basque man of 22. Recall how you spent hours listening to this hot new band that had exploded onto the scene that summer, the two of you in love with every song on their debut album. Recall how he patiently translated the lyrics so you could follow along with the poetry in Spanish, the meaning in English, how loving this album together made it easier to love each other. Recall the unbridled and seemingly infinite passion that led to a life together that over the last 33 years has produced two children and included sixteen moves, five cats, three hamsters (all deceased), one guinea pig and now, one home here, and one there.
4. Use Find my Friend on your iPhone to check in on that lover-husband who spent lockdown in Washington D.C., from March to June, while you were in Donosti, that same lover-husband who you saw for two weeks in D.C. before you swapped places and he left to go to Donosti. Peek in as his bus makes its way from Barajas to San Sebastian via the high plateaus of central Spain into Burgos and then Vitoria. Watch as he exits the bus station in San Sebastian and walks through the local neighborhoods, the very ones where you spent four months, where people cooperated by staying home, by wearing masks, by reaching out to help neighbors. Notice as he arrives to the flat around 9 pm, and then, how after a 28 hour journey with what you suspect has entailed very little sleep, he drops his bags (so you assume) and heads out through the park to visit his mother, Loli, famous resistor and cooker of hundreds of pandemic croquetas, who he has not seen in 10 months. Admire him for being a good man and a good son. Cry a little because you feel lucky to have him; cry because he’s not here with you. Cry because it’s mostly a good marriage, but one that’s always infused with an element of sadness because he’s from there and you’re from here, and no matter where the two of you are together, one of you is always very far from family.
5. Indulge more Ultimo de la Fila, this time, Llanto de Pasion, a song that is both upbeat and melancholy. Recall the first time you heard it: 1988. Recall that after this young man followed you back to the states in 1987, married you in a green card quickie at the Oakland courthouse when his visa expired six months later, he then returned home to visit his parents. Remember how that visit did not go well; his parents were not happy he had abandoned them for America, and even worse, una Americana! Recall how happy he was to return to you in Oakland and how he presented this new Ultimo de la Fila album to you like a precious wedding gift for a wedding the two of you never had, a fact that his mother, Loli of the croquetas, kindly reminded you about over her birthday lunch at La Guinda, in San Sebastian, only a few weeks ago.
6. Engage in some silly banter on whatsapp about whether one of your friends can still have a crush on the wild-haired Fernando Simon, Spain’s revered and reviled health emergency chief, after a new book by an ICU doctor claimed that Simon lied for political purposes about testing availability. Make a stupid little joke about not crushing your friend’s crush, which may sound weird to non-English speakers, but here’s what’s truly weird: America, a country of 300,000,000 people is being run by a federal government that doesn’t give a shit about its citizens dying, 130,000 of them since January. Acknowledge that weird isn’t the right word, that criminal, despicable, dereliction of duty are more accurate, that even those don’t cut it, that there are no adjectives in the English language to describe what has been unfolding here. Worry that you will sound bitter and petty when you contemplate making a suggestion to people who are unhappy with how their country has handled the pandemic. Go ahead and make it anyway: if you are unhappy with how your government has managed the pandemic, go somewhere a lot worse; Brazil, Venezuela, the U.S. See and feel what’s happening there. Then go home. You’ll feel better.
7. Startle when Joaquin Sabina breaks into your Ultimo de la Fila playlist. Forgive him, since he’s singing Quien me ha robado el mes de abril, a sweet tune about heartbreak. Note that even though April 2020 was one of the strangest months of your life, you did not feel robbed at all, rather the opposite, that lock down gave you the time to slow your thoughts, to watch from your windows the changing seasons, the starlings dive-bombing the eaves under your roof each twilight, the neighbors you’d never seen who appeared at their windows every night to clap for the health care workers.
8.Scroll through your photo gallery of pictures taken from March to May, photos that marked the passing of time, from the first panicked days where you had to find ways to distract yourself, including making your first sourdough bread and watching your obsessive neighbor in the building behind you organize her washing not just by color but type and size of clothing, to the signs that things were getting better, such as the reappearance of hand sanitizer,
the first night you were allowed out for exercise, a night where lightening flashed against the sunset just past where the river Urumea meets the sea.
the messages of hope flashing on the outside of el Kursaal, whose backdrop matched the color of the sunset.
Try to be happy you’ve had years to enjoy this landscape; that you are privileged to have landed there by accident and been accepted into another culture; how the time you have spent there has expanded your life in a way that nothing in the U.S ever could. Go to bed and promise to stop following your husband on Find my Friend.
9. Wake up and break your promise. Tell yourself it’s all right: your husband has shared his phone with you and it’s normal to want to be sure he’s okay. Watch as he walks along the beach at La Concha and then appears to stop and take a swim at Ondarreta. Peek an hour later to see him double back through the Tabakalera where you wonder if he’s at the bar with a full-bodied tinto and plate of olives, which is what you would do if you were with him. Feel so sad that you think you will implode, and then hit yourself on the head with a fat wooden plank because this self-pitying is getting old.
10. Commit to ending your pity party by replacing said pity party with a real party: a fourth of July socially-distancing-planet-friendly-bathroom-available-pandemic party. Invite people who, like you, enjoy getting together and eating good vegetarian skewers and corn on the cob and plant-based burgers, and who, also like you, do not care for the patriotic nonsense about the fourth of July, because how can anyone celebrate this annual self-indulgent wallowing in the glory of independence for a country that was founded on such blatant hypocrisy: the dehumanization and enslavement of other human beings? Wait, back that up a bit. Give yourself permission to celebrate the part about the U.S. being free of the British because you have been watching a LOT of Outlander, a story set first in the Scottish Highlands just before the battle of Culloden, and then the American colonies just before the Revolutionary War, and those redcoats were truly fucking awful. Be glad they’re gone.
11. Open up Find my Friend again. Concede that the word find should be replaced with the word stalk. Do it anyway. Stalk your husband as he makes his way to the beach at la Zurriola. Wonder if it’s a glitch or if Apple is now intentionally torturing you by showing him– not on the beach–but actually in the water. Confess to him that you are, um, overusing the tracking app. Feel better when he tells you it’s okay. Feel worse when he, trying to be kind, sends you a happy video of children jumping and laughing in the waves on a beautifully sunny day.
12. Retreat to your bedroom, pull the shades down to darken your room to match your mood and consider various strategies to get back to Spain. Could you chain yourself to the Spanish consulate in Foggy Bottom until the staff escorts you to a plane? Make up a heartbreakingly sad story of a sick relative? Ask for a special “I behaved really well during lockdown and helped my elderly mother-in-law a lot” visa? Give up, lift the shades and get ready for your real party.
13. Welcome your friends around 1 PM in the afternoon to your backyard. Don’t hug them and remind them to keep six feet away. Drink gallons of iced tea because it’s like 177 gazillion degrees outside and none of you can keep cool. Feel momentarily supported when one friend inquires what it was like to be in Spain during lock down and another asks how it feels to be back. Worry that you sound like a Debbie Downer and have turned your pandemic party right back into a pity party when you say a little too emphatically: it’s really hard coming from a country where the government cares about the lives of its citizens, to a country where the government doesn’t give a flying fuck. See by their reactions that your friends can understand this intellectually, but not emotionally, not the way it lives in your body. Suspect that after this outburst, each time they ask you something about Spain, your answers sound whiny. Give up altogether and reach for that bottle of white wine that’s been chilling in the cooler.
“You still think you’re in Spain, don’t you,” says one friend with a kind smile, because it’s 5:30 in the afternoon, the time when an American party would be wrapping up and a Spanish one segueing into its second wind.
Respond with a resounding Yes!
Realize then that even though you like this idea of pretending you are still in Spain, you are not, and therefore you will have to drink most of this bottle yourself. When you have consumed three-quarters of it, close your eyes for a second and acknowledge that you are on your own with this. Know that although you love your friends here and they love you, that you are filled with gratitude toward them for spending the whole day with you, acknowledge that your life not just in Donosti, but with Donosti, the experience of being there during lockdown, is a bridge none of them will be able to cross.
And that’s okay.
Know also that your life with a man who comes from another country, 3,790 miles away, is framed by a difference of language and culture, a chasm between you two that can also never be fully crossed.
And that’s okay too. Because this difference–his connection there, yours here–is what sustains you both, provides a fullness and richness to your lives.
Understand that even though you are here, sweating it out in the oppressive humidity of the D.C swamp, a humidity so heavy it makes you want to melt into grass, your other life exists there. It’s yours too. Someday you’ll be back.
And until then, you’ll be okay.
I loved this essay, the gorgeous writing and the color-drenched pictures. Although what I’ve been going through differs in huge ways, I found the piece to be both comforting and uplifting in its honesty and detail. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the feedback, Mary. The purpose of this space is for anyone who wants, to name their experience, no matter what, even if it’s raw or painful. Glad it was somehow comforting!
Most of us feel very lucky to live here Diana .. although living on top of my mountain I too dream of a place in Donosti but at least it is just a mountain range away, not a continent. And not in these times. Your comments about your marriage with someone of a different language and culture are so interesting …I have not quite got it to work, not longterm. Maybe some day. And so thank you for your honesty and sharing your sadness – you are right, it makes it so much easier for others to share theirs. You will return … and Donosti will still be here xxx
Long term international relationships are a topic for another post, maybe a whole other blog!! (although there might be a few contributors here who could tackle that topic, I’m sure:)). And I was fascinated to read in YOUR book that clotheslines were used to send secret signals across the valley by smugglers. Made me wonder if my neighbor was a descendant of one? Or maybe signaling secretly to someone in another building :))