BiCommunal

Jeni’s alarm goes off for work. I wonder if she will snooze it once and I can sleep for ten extra minutes before we prep for the morning.  My work week starts tomorrow, but I’m going to start my day early with my Monday routine.  She will head North out of central Madrid  and I will take a long walk through Casa de Campo.  A few minutes tick by and I get out of bed to find a message from my aunt.  I’ve been writing the family to ask for Thanksgiving recipes.  Tis the Turkey season.  I make the household coffee and my mother in law thanks me for the morning treat.  It’s a role I am happy to play since most weekdays I’m the first one up.  

The walk through the park is breathtaking - both from the sharp cold air and the color of the leaves as the sun rises.  Normally I use this time to worship, but today I call an old friend from Pennsylvania.  I’m surprised and happy to catch him.  I show up dark and shadowed on our screens but the sun is high before we finish sharing our hearts.  

I return on the metro, one long stop, and enter the cafeteria on my block.  I sip a deliciously hot coffee and munch on a split white bread topped with blended tomato.  I chat with Luis about my plans for the future: 4 years here in Spain, a span in Honduras, and my long awaited return to the USA.   He tells me his wife, who runs the cafeteria with him, is from Honduras as well and that they’ve been together for seven years now.  I pay him 2.90 for the breakfast and the Spanish tip and tell him it was a pleasure to see him.

I stop at home for a quick email check before my next project.  One teacher has asked me to prep a vocab based lesson for tomorrow.  I make a mental note and send another prof my outline of the lesson for our shared class.  I listen to Hamilton while I work, plowing through the album for the 20th time on Spotify.

Then I’m off to the polleria with instructions from a family friend to find a turkey for our Madrid-style Thanksgiving.  “Enter from calle Almazan, stop at the first polleria on your left, ask for Luis” ( a different Luis than this morning!).  “The World Was Wide Enough” plays as I wait for the bus and I skip 4 songs backwards to hear Eliza forgive Alexander before his death.  I find the meat stand and make a plan with the employee to take a fresh unfrozen Turkey home this Friday.  

Then I’m off to our grocery store Mercadona for a missing item. I grab it and pay because I’m not in a mood to shop nor to spend money.  I start digitally spinning the album Hadestown as I exit the store.  As Hermes explains his epic myth I begin to realize I’m clinging to pieces of my first home this week.  Looking for ways to feel close to my birth family and my first culture.  At the traffic light I notice the box is flashing “press to cross” and the lady next to me (apparently) hasn’t pressed it.  I press the button and laugh as I take the English lyrics off of my ears.  I chat with her in Spanish as she explains that she’s hit that button a few times but nothing has happened.  I tell her it was broken a week ago and that maybe it’s still not working.  We both laugh and decide we’ll need to cross without the traffic light.  

I think back over my morning which has been a strange mix of being present and seeking out my distant loved ones.  Other days I will be more centered but today I am delighted by the chance to reach back and reach out.  I’m a foreigner living in Madrid.  And I’m learning to embrace both of the truths in that statement.