Travels in Spain

Spain? my grandmother repeated, Why, the child's never even set foot off this island! Besides, I thought it was Paris.

Aunt Edie sighed and accepted a second glass of sherry. Paris was last month, she said sorrowfully, Now it's Spain. I declare, it's not easy raising a dreamer, the child was just naturally born with stars in her eyes. I can't imagine where she gets it from.

Such dreams were not nurtured in the small, close knit village - experience had taught the families to keep their expectations low - bring a child into the world, raise them with religion and hard work and a strong sense of family, hope for them to find a partner and repeat the cycle. It was not a philosophy that many questioned, tradition usually overcame the temptations of the outside world and practicality ruled - the need to procreate and maintain the community came first. New construction was as frowned upon as strangers, but now and again a child was born with dreams beyond the boundaries of the ocean - Edie's first born daughter was such a child, stars in her eyes and a natural restlessness that no one understood, a wanderlust for farwaway places and a deeply rooted discontent. It set her apart from her family, distanced her from the village's quiet and isolated ways. She grew up feeling out of time and place, straining at the leash and anxious to take her first steps toward an unknown world. Even her name, Delilah Marie, seemed to summon romantic images of mist covered mountains and faces in the clouds, faces that spoke in unfamiliar languages, softly musical and sweetly seductive.

Del grew to be a determined young woman, miserly with her wages, unconcerned about fitting in, oblivious to the attentions of the young island boys. She persuaded the schoolmaster to discreetly send for a book on learning Spanish and self taught herself the language while her small savings account grew and gained interest, as she made her weekly deposits as regular as clockwork and never withdrew a penny. By the time she was twenty, she judged, there was an adequate amount and she set about procuring a travel visa, a passport, a book of checks with her name imprinted in a flowery script. On her twenty first birthday, she announced her intent to leave for the summer and travel in Spain, leaving her stunned and shocked parents speechless.

Sometimes dreams disappoint, the anticipation being so much more than the reality but for Del, her Spanish summer was everything she had hoped for, a glory time and a rite of passage. She came home that October, tanned and long haired with silver hoops in her ears, a gypsy who was never the same again. During my travels in Spain .....she liked to begin and then tell stories of matadors and fiestas, cave paintings and shining cities, aristocrats and cowboys on magnificent Spanish horses, moonlit cantinas where music played all night long. She dazzled us with romantic tales and sometimes, if we didn't interrupt, she would teach us a Spanish word or phrase and we could make it our own.

Un idoma es suficiente, she liked to tell us at the end of a story, One language is never enough.