I wasn’t sure I wanted to come back to Spain this year.
Most of that had to do with the fact that I felt like it made my trip even more frenetic than it already was due to my back and forth to San Francisco.
Perhaps had I planned a little better and tried to organize both my trips to SF and the stints of time in different counties, I wouldn’t feel like I had been zipping around the globe like some sort of jet setter.
And it's not travel like being in Nepal or some place I've never been before.
But there something about arriving in Sevilla that’s a lot like going home. Like when I land in NY or Philly or SF. It’s a different feeling than going to some place new. I don’t get online to see what I should go see or experience. I don’t look for a place to stay. I don’t worry about bus lines or how to get places.
Because in Sevilla I have friends. More than friends, I have family. After twenty years of back and forth, that’s what they are now. That’s why I came back this time. That’s why I spent the time and money to fly across the globe to witness Ines marry Xabi.
That's why when I saw Israel standing at the intersection near the plaza de armas where my blah blah car had left me, I felt a sigh of relief. I knew he and Houda would take me home where they would spoil me in their new apartment with food and the clothes I needed while I was there. They would kiss both my cheeks and call me Guapa and mean it.
Then I would settle into my routine at Ana and Barbas house of sleeping in their smoke filled living room with Waky, their dog. We would stay up to late and eat lunch at 4 or 5 in the afternoon and meet the others in the street at the bodega next door to Ana’s hair salon. And Barbas and his son, Ismael, would say, “Cuando te vas? No te vayas. Guidi tonta.”
From the moment I arrive until I leave and they would tell me that my Spanish has gotten worse. Which it likely has. But all of it would be said with a love that only friends that are now family can say. This line of family-friends that is so blurred that you know that they would lay down and die for you if you needed.
Ines got married on a brisk Saturday morning and Ana and I had stayed out until at least three in the morning the night before. A decision I was sorely regretting as she woke me at 7 am to take the bus to the center where Ines lives. She was on hair and make up duty and apparently I was on “emotional support” duty – if I have to be up then you have to be up. We showered and dressed for the wedding and stumbled over to wait for the bus messing with Ines’s head telling her that we were still inebriated from the night before and had just come home. I wondered if I would ever really get used to the constant sarcasm of the sevillanos, but did my best to keep pace with the jokes.
We boarded the bus where Ana was dumbfounded by my ability to travel independently alone around the world as I stood motionless in front of the driver. “Give him the money Jenny!” She laughed her deep smoker’s cough laugh, “I don’t know how you do it – you travel all over the world and here you don’t know to give the fare to the bus driver.” I shrugged and knew that would become one of the stories of the day to prove that I really was the “guiri tonta.”
Ines had gone non traditional with her dress adding a white lace ruffle to the bottom of a black strapless dress she had worn more than 15 years earlier when Ana and Barbas had gotten married. She had made a bouquet of black and white flowers from cloth and her nails were extended and painted black and white as well. After Ana applied her makeup up and styled her hair, she placed a small black hat with a white veil atop her head and Inca, Ana and I stood around her oohing and ahhing the bride to be.
I’ve never been to city hall in Sevilla and it really is a sight to behold with a large staircase going up to a series of large rooms that look they are used for hearings as well as civil ceremonies.
The hundred or so invitees hooped and hollered at all the right moments as Ines and Xabi came down the aisle accompanied by their parents and Metallica and sat at the benches in front of the the officiant.
Rather than rings, Ines and Xabi exchanged pendants, everyone cracking up as Ines stood on her tiptoes to try to attach Xabi’s necklace unsuccessfully until finally his mother came around to help her.
In true Sevillano style, the wedding reception was held at Cerveceria la Cruz from 1:30 in the afternoon till the wee hours of the morning when the last of us finally staggered out of the closing pub into the streets to find our way home.
I later heard that a group continued on to another neighborhood where the bars stay open later and the bride and groom didn’t actually arrive back home till almost 3:00 the next day! Now that's a group that knows how to party!
There was courses upon courses of food that I couldn’t eat (as only the cheese and tortilla was vegetarian), a cake that they spoon fed one another and of course people danced sevillana, artfully raising their arms as they spun around one another, preparing themselves for the la feria de abril scheduled to start the following week.
Thinking about it now, I was glad I had made the effort to be their with Ines and Xabi. To witness their tying of the knot; I think after missing Christina’s wedding this summer, I realize how special it is to be there for people in their important moments. Friendships are like plants that need to be tended to, watered and loved.
I was happy I spent the time to stay a night in Madrid and see Kristia.
And my only regret about my trip up to see Javi in Alicante is that it was too fast to really get to know his life.
And Sevilla, my love, I leave you as always with a little longing in my heart for a life that wasn’t meant to be forever.
Now I leave again, loving my group of friends, feeling as though it is hard to distinguish the difference between the love of friendship and the love of family.
Hasta la próxima Sevilla. Te dejo siempre con un cachito de mi corazón.
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Post note: the other day I connected my friends daughter, a Californian studying this semester in Sevilla with two of my Sevillan friends' kids. As I watched them make plans via the group whatssap text I sent, I thought, "They're the next generation... Life is a circle."
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