Fluffy double bed with pressed sheets
balanced meals
social interactions that don’t involve retelling your life story
voices that match lip movement
soup when you are sick
friends of the same age
stapler, sewing kit, colouring supplies
clean air
company at lunch
expresso machine.
Usually it doesn’t bother me overmuch that my room here is intended for a child (with matching kiddy furniture and pastel blue walls) or that my treasured art supplies are split between a cupboard in Lisbon and a basement in Ottawa. Every once in a while, though, I am overcome with frustration and can think only of sleeping in a big-girl bed and making my own thank-you cards. The frustration hit big time in December – but dissipated as our plane landed in Abu Dhabi. For the next two weeks or so I positively reveled in the conveniences of permanent living, going to familiar places with familiar faces and making café au lait to excess.
I spent the long plane and automobile journey back to Spain in a bizarre state of disembodiment, in which my mind dragged its feet far behind those of my body. During the few days it took my mind to catch up with the rest of me, my empty head was full of mutinous thoughts. Wasn’t it nice to hang out with people your own age, they teased, and have a fully-stocked house, and have someone to look after you when you were sick?
Going home was a big fat reminder of the things I don’t have because I am here. But getting away also made it possible to stop obsessing about details and contemplate my Spain experience more generally. I decided, after taking a few big steps back, that the canvas is quite colourful (sunny days, good people, weekend escapades, an endless stimuli) and that those few dark brushstrokes (exhausting myself trying to be a good teacher, small town blues, missing people and things) provide necessary definition.
An appropriate epiphany to mark the half-way mark in this leg of the Iberian adventure, I thought.
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