Chapter 15: Preparing for the Worst

Being risk-averse lawyers, readers of history, amateur political prognosticators, and heeders of science, we have come to Spain to live. The move’s justification is overdetermined by the Trump presidency, actuarial tables that make it absurd to call us “middle-aged,” and a desire to experience the Iberian Peninsula before climate change makes it inhospitable.

To hedge our bets still further, we decided to lay the groundwork to apply for Spanish citizenship, sadly aware that our rights as gay people could be stripped at any time in Donald Trump, Bill Barr, and Sam Alito’s America. Trump’s monstrous advisor Stephen Miller obviously reads history too.

Because my grandfather, Andrés Diaz, emigrated to the U.S. from Spain, we can apply for Spanish citizenship on an accelerated basis. Under Spain’s right-of-return doctrine, I can apply after one year of residency — instead of the standard ten years — and Kate, as my wife, can later follow. There have been many hurdles, not the least of which was locating my grandfather’s 1898 birth record in a small town in the northwest corner of Spain. We only succeeded because a mutual friend introduced us to Félix, a Spaniard stubborn in the best sense of the word, who took up the challenge as if it were his own, even naming the quest “Proyecto Andrés.” Félix put us in touch with a genealogical researcher who miraculously found the antiquated document in all its fountain-pen curlicue finery.

But we knew that the biggest hurdle for us on any prospective path to citizenship would be passing the Spanish proficiency exam, the “Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera” (DELE). The exam is administered by the Cervantes Institute, a governmental body that promotes Spanish language and culture abroad. All applicants not from a Spanish-speaking country (read: former colony) must pass the exam. The name Diaz means nothing. Not for me, in terms of some genetic “feel” for the language, and not to the government of Spain (which is already gently correcting Kate and me on forms as Díaz, with an accent over the i).

Pre COVID-19, we had grand plans to attend Spanish classes four to six hours a day. On vacation in early 2019, we trudged around Madrid to visit nine prospective schools in a single afternoon. “A causa de COVID” — which we learned to say soon after our March 2020 arrival in Madrid — we had to set aside our plans for intense, immersive learning. Schools were offering online classes, but there was no way we were going to be talking heads in Brady Bunch boxes on Zoom or Skype four or more hours a day. We decided to focus on getting acclimated to Spain, albeit under lockdown conditions, and start studying on our own.

By mid-April, however, with Trump getting more authoritarian by the day, shock troops at the ready, we decided that we better sign up for online classes with an eye towards taking the language proficiency exam sooner rather than later — when, exactly, we weren’t sure as the exams had been put on hold “a causa de COVID.” We reasoned that if Trump were reelected there might be a rush of emigres from the U.S., so we’d better be ready when the Spanish government started administering the tests again.

Lilia, our brilliant and engaging teacher from trips we had taken to Mexico years prior, had laid a good foundation in our weary frames. Then, in the months before we left, the Duolingo app, Coffee Break Spanish podcasts, and the McGraw Hill Practice Makes Perfect textbooks had done their jobs well enough so that we could join an “A2” class, the minimum level of proficiency required for citizenship. With nervous, back-to-school excitement, we bought notebooks, pens, pencils, highlighters, and file cards to make the all-important flash cards.

On the first day of school, we selected our spaces in the apartment to set up our computers and log on — Kate in the bedroom, I in the kitchen. As soon as we signed in via Zoom at 4:50 pm, we knew we had made the right choice. Our twenty-something professor, Irene, had bright green eyes and a broad smile that lit up our screens. As a teacher, she was always on task and organized but friendly and patient — a rare and effective combination. Her professionalism and linguistic and pedagogical and skills struck me as remarkable.

Our classmates included a retired IT manager in Brooklyn who spoke French and Haitian Creole fluently and brought us news of the weather and politics in New York; a newlywed from California who had moved to Madrid with her husband for his job, and seemed to be dealing with the stress of learning a new language while looking for employment in a new country with humor and resolve; and a young former GI, now a budding actor in Georgia, who dreamed of visiting Spain one day. Others rotated in and out. All were grappling with COVID confinement. All were trying to make the best of a bad situation. And each had a strong personality. But the classes worked surprisingly well under Irene’s invisible but stronger hand.

At the start of class each day, Irene would say, “¡Hola chicos!,” which made Kate and I giggle because it has been a long time since we were chicas. “¿Qué tal?” We would then, in horrible, broken Spanish attempt to state what we had done after class the night before and before class that day. Given the Groundhog Day nature of life under lockdown, you’d think I would have gotten better at this particular exercise; and however inconsequential that seemed at first, this was a harbinger of how hard the DELE exam was going to be. Irene was preparing us.

©2021 Kay Diaz

Chapter 14: Thinking Like a Dog

“I never get bored; I just think like a dog,” I said one late-June morning to my table partner Jayne as we sat sipping coffee. It was the early 1980s, and we were counselors at a sleepaway camp, presiding for eight weeks over a long family-style wooden dining table. The campers rotated every week, but the counselors anchored tables for the duration. “How do you know dogs don’t get bored?” the more worldly Jayne replied, probably questioning the wisdom of the camp director thinking we’d be a good match for the whole summer.

Jayne had grown up in a rural state and had actually studied animal science in college. I, on the other hand, had grown up in a milieu in which my father rejected essential suburban norms, proclaiming, “Pets? Barbecues? Didn’t we dispense with sleeping with animals and cooking outside ages ago?” In sum, I had no basis for my assertion. And yet, although I have never had and will never have a dog, thinking like a dog has served me well in life.

The (human) trick is to observe calmly and accept that, in that moment or in those hours, you are powerless; you cannot change what is going on around you. Of course, you do retain agency over your thoughts, but there is really no point in trying to control those either.

And I categorically reject the notion that age debilitates the mind’s flexibility in this particular exercise. Now, well north of 50, there’s just so much more to draw on; points of reference tumble about, a telescoping kaleidoscope of memories. On a recent long flight, a knob cover in the cabin brought me back to the plastic ring that was always popping out of the umbrella hole in the patio table we had when I was a child. This, in turn, brought back some poignant memories of summer nights with my family not barbecuing.

The COVID-19 lockdown has provided far too many opportunities to test my dog-thinking skills. When I go out onto the balcony of our Madrid apartment, where we moved in March, my eyes involuntarily follow the same zig-zag pattern of checking from building to building and terrace to terrace. I don’t have to look outside our window to describe the view: confection-like edifices in pastel colors with decorative wrought-iron balcony rails. And if put to the test, I could match the figures and faces of a dozen or more neighbors to the windows or balconies at which they regularly appear. This is true even though Kate and I haven’t actually met any of our neighbors, instead marking the progress of our “belonging” by waves and smiles. When we missed two evenings on the balcony, for instance, a woman one floor down and to the right gestured to us inquiring whether we were all right.

Feeling but not knowing — perhaps like a dog — is an apt description I once read about the experience of being in a country without understanding its language. A few weeks ago, genial enterprising neighbors strung colorful string pennants all across the street. There was a bustle of organizing activity, ropes being tossed over, lines being threaded and lowered. It was our excitement for the day. We knew that the government would be permitting children to go out onto the street that afternoon for the first time since the lockdown began. We felt as if the grownups had decorated our street to welcome the children on their first steps outdoors in months, but we didn’t know for sure. When we saw the look of wonder and delight on children’s faces later that day, it didn’t matter. We were all cheered.

Now, little triangles in primary colors still flutter about in all directions, up, down, and diagonally. For this adult, it is a very pleasant challenge to my eyes’ preferred pattern of looking across and up and down the street. And now, surrounded by the colored pennants, the tall, curly-haired, bandy-legged man across the street, who often gesticulates toward and cheerfully chats with neighbors on our side of the block, suddenly reminds me of a floppy balloon sky dancer at a car wash.

In the building next door to the happy sky dancer man, is a young woman who frequently works on her laptop on a tiny table on her balcony. On our first morning in our apartment, she was already working by the time I made a bumbling attempt to tie a proper sailor’s knot and latch the rope of our very heavy and very squeaky window blinds. Each time that the knot fell through and the blinds crashed down, I felt sure I’d meet her disapproving gaze. But she never looked up, at least not that I could see.

That seems so long ago. Now I see her and her partner or roommate exercising in their living room with the windows wide open and sunning themselves on the balcony, just like us. And I am touched daily by the care that went into their homemade balcony banner that reads: “¡Todo saldrá bien!” It has a rainbow emanating from the lower left corner up towards the words, which mean, “Everything will be all right!”

For three days now, there’s been no sign of sky dancer man on his balcony. Kate asks what I am thinking. I say, “I’m just looking around. You know, doing my thinking like a dog thing.”

But the truth is, I’m worried and trying to stay calm. Where is the man? I just want everything to be all right.

©2020 Kay Diaz

Chapter 13: Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

“¡Buenas tardes!” exclaimed the cheerful radio announcer as I made the bed in our Madrid apartment. I did a double-take at the radio, and then looked at my watch on the nightstand. It was indeed noon. How did that happen?

We moved to Spain within days of my retirement, and arrived just in time for a global pandemic and lockdown; thus, I have no first-hand experience of a “normal” retirement. But I had been warned by Kate over the past year — and by my father many years prior — that the days go faster, not slower, in retirement.

Kate, who retired two years ago, spent her waking hours honing her photography skills and taking care of the apartment and me (including packing brown bag lunches so fabulous they were mentioned in an official NYC Commendation). In between, she acted as the de facto tour guide for our many out-of-town visitors, bursting with enthusiasm for The City’s subways and ferries, museums and historic sites, farmers markets and cheap eats (the native Chicagoan proving there’s no proselytizer like a convert). So, Kate’s experience of her days vanishing made perfect sense.

As for my father’s description of the passage of time, he’d taken up with a tennis instructor 38 years his junior when he retired, so while his warning about the ticking clock was wise, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to listen to him.

Over the past 10 years, though, in preparation for my retirement, I had invested considerable energy into thinking about the concept of time. Though it is not uncommon for people “of a certain age” to become obsessed with the brevity of life, my own obsession was channeled into trying to learn to play the piano — a lifelong dream. While I have no talent for the instrument and still cannot play a single song, I loved my lessons and daily practice sessions. And the three teachers with whom I studied over the years changed my life by instilling in me a new understanding of time. No longer a passive listener but an active would-be player, I began to internalize how music bends, elongates, or compresses time, and I finally began to absorb that time really is relative (something three physics courses in my youth failed to teach me).

My piano studies had to be suspended, however, when we moved to Spain; the public-health emergency precluded me from shopping for a new keyboard. I miss my lessons, but I also wonder how I ever found the time for practice. The truth is that both Kate and I — once highly functioning professionals who thought nothing of managing scores of people and projects at a time — were now struggling with time management.

So, being the high-capacity leaders that we once were, we rolled up our sleeves to solve the problem. Did our “retirement enterprise” have competing interests or values? Is it really possible to sleep 10 hours a night, communicate with dozens of friends in numerous time zones, prepare wonderful meals and work out long enough to keep off the pounds, binge-watch multiple Netflix and PBS shows, read the classics, and become fluent in a language we’d never seriously studied?

No. It isn’t.

Tomorrow, for the first time in 50 days, Kate and I will be able to leave the apartment together, but only for an hour a day, only between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., and only to travel within a one-kilometer radius of our apartment. When the Spanish government announced the relaxed confinement measures last night, we were by turns elated and apprehensive. We want to stay safe, and we want the downward trajectories in Spain’s infection and mortality rates to continue.

But as today slipped away, the morning rapidly turning to afternoon, our worries shifted. How will we ever find the time to go outside for an hour a day?

©2020 Kay Diaz