Making the Move, part 3

And then there was my nemesis, the washer/dryer. This devilish little machine could launder a small load of wash, but it took about 90 minutes to do so. Then you could, if you wanted, remove half the load and dry the rest in the same machine—if you had two hours to wait. The other half of the load would have to be hung out to dry in the air, which was the normal thing for Spanish people to do. The problem with this was that Spanish ladies or their maids would then iron every article of clothing that came off the line—and I had neither the skill nor the patience to do that. Marilu, the rental agent, had found me a lady to come in and clean two afternoons a week, and she was going to iron Mike’s shirts (the cost of commercial laundries was outrageous), but she wouldn’t have time to iron all our laundry. This was a problem that was going to have to be solved, by me, in all the free time I would have after everyone went off to work and to school, so I put it on my agenda.

At any rate, having inspected the house, dipped into the pool, and unpacked a little, we were running out of energy and lay down for a short midday nap, made easier by the heavy metal blinds—persianas—that could be lowered to cover every window. As an extra luxury, our house had electric persianas that were lowered by little motors instead of by muscle power. They made the rooms completely black, just the way I liked it.

After a little rest, I wanted to meet the neighbors. Living in the house the past few weeks, Mike had learned that there were two American families in the neighborhood, with kids who attended the American School. I was much too scared to think about meeting my Spanish neighbors, but I was eager to meet Americans who could say reassuring things about life in Spain.

“Across the street we have an American Air Force major married to a Spanish woman, Phil and Ana Douglas,” Mike had told me. “Their kids are older—maybe babysitting age. And around the corner are Frank and Lisa Mazzilli. Frank’s a Drug Enforcement Agency guy working at the American Embassy. Their kids are the same ages as our kids, more or less.”

I got Mike to take me to meet both families, jet-lagged as I was. Phil and Ana were sitting on their pool deck, enjoying the sun and some beers. Their kids, Carmen and Troy, were away at the beach for a couple more days till school started. Ana appeared to be in her early forties, maybe 5’5”, slim, with short red hair and a good tan. Phil was about the same age, short, without much hair, and he spoke with a strong Southern accent. They said they’d met when he was first stationed in Spain, and since getting married at age 18 they’d lived in Texas, Oklahoma, Korea and Germany, as well as having taken another tour of duty in Spain before this one.

Making the Move, part 2

There was a final round of goodbye dinners and lunches, and then it was time to go. We had a luxurious flight in TWA’s business-first class—awfully posh for two little girls, who were served whatever food they wanted by an attentive steward. We got some sleep, then arrived at Barajas airport, where Mike got us two taxis to take all of us and all of our luggage out to Pozuelo. There was some sign language required to direct the taxistas (taxi drivers) out to the suburb, but they were friendly and helpful, and Mike got his message across.

We pulled up to our new house, tired but excited. It was early in the morning of a sunny day, and the taxistas by now understood that we were moving in. They seemed to be excited for us as they helped us in with the bags, encouraging us with smiles and nods.

The kids ran upstairs to find their rooms, which they knew well from the photos. Julie’s room was white with green trim, and it boasted a skylight as well as a window. Lisa’s was all pink, with many built-in shelves. Mike and I had a nice-sized bedroom with a balcony. There were closets along one wall and a bathroom tiled from floor to ceiling. There was a sitting area outside the bedrooms with a television and a sofa.

The main floor had a living room, a dining area, and a small TV room as well as the kitchen. Sliding doors led onto a patio by the pool. The basement had a maid’s room, laundry room and storeroom, and the attic held the office and playroom.

The house had some quirks that we had to get used to. Like most Spanish residences, it had doors to close off every room—that was how Spaniards preserved their privacy in relatively close quarters, sometimes with maids sharing the same small space. We couldn’t stand all the doors closing the TV room off from the hall, the dining room from the kitchen, or the living room from the TV room, so we took several of them off their hinges and stored them in the basement. Mike showed me that the closets in our room weren’t deep enough to hold our clothes when they were hung up—the sliding closet doors pushed every single hanger on an angle as they closed. So we took those doors off, too.

This three-bedroom house had, all told, sleeping space for fourteen people. Beds were hidden inside sofas and under other beds. I eventually learned that when Spanish relatives visit one another, they always stay at the house—never at a hotel. To stay at a hotel would insult the family one was visiting, and to ask the visitor to stay at one would insult him. Hence there had to be plenty of room for guests.

The kids loved the front gate buzzer, which included a tiny video camera that showed us who was there. They ran in and out, taking turns pushing the buzzer and looking at each other on the little screen just inside the front door, making goofy faces at the camera. There was a miserable little oven in the kitchen, which was a hybrid convection/microwave oven—too small to hold a big chicken, and not very good at either microwaving or baking.

The carport was closed off from the street by a wide metal gate that rolled sideways, pulled by a small motor when you pushed the remote control. But the gate did not retract all the way—so while there was room for two cars side by side in the carport, the last one in had to be the first one out. There just wasn’t room for the car on the left to maneuver around the one on the right. It was a permanent annoyance.

Making the Move

The actual move from Stamford to Pozuelo took some planning. Since our rental house was furnished, we didn’t have to send furniture or other large items to Spain, but we decided to put our things into storage and rent our own house unfurnished. (It rented easily to the first family that looked at it.) We figured we would load up our suitcases with everything we might need the first few weeks, and we sent just one small shipment of larger items we’d like to have—cooking equipment, winter clothes, the computer—that would come in six weeks. “I think we should ship our paintings,” Mike said. “We’ll feel more at home if we have them on our walls.” We also sent plenty of books and CDs and some of the girls’ toys.

Mike came home for a week to help with the moving. We didn’t have to do the packing ourselves, but the big job was dividing things up so they would get to the right places. There were clothes going in suitcases, kitchen items going in an air shipment to Spain, and furniture going to storage, and everything had to be marked. The dining room was the staging area for the air shipment stuff, which overflowed the table and started to pile up on the floor.

My friend Eileen Kinnaird came up from Washington to say goodbye. A great traveler herself, she was excited for me. “I have a chance to go with Mike on a business trip to Paris a few weeks after I get there if I can figure out the babysitting,” I told her.

“Okay, let’s strategize this,” she said. “You get to the school, you meet with the principal, you ask if any teachers like to do overnight sitting for extra money.”

“Sounds great,” I said sarcastically, dubious about my ability to get this done.

“You’ve got to do it,” Eileen said. “It’s Paris! You can do it!”

Before she left, Eileen took Mike aside. “Don’t run off to work the minute you get there,” she warned him. “You can’t leave her alone right away.” He nodded dutifully as he put her on the train. She had picked up on my state of terror. I was stuck on the fact that after a few days of adjustment Mike would be in his work routine, the girls would be in school all day—and I would have to invent a life for myself. An exciting prospect for many people, I’m sure—and I felt some of that—but I was full of fear.

I talked to my sister Sally. “I can’t figure out how things are going to work,” I said. “When we were there in April, it was cold, and Mike’s apartment had no clothes dryer. We didn’t have enough warm clothes, so we washed what we had and hung it out on the balcony to dry, but it was too cold and damp. It took days to dry, and we had nothing warm to wear.”

“Look,” she said, “it’s like when I lived in France. You get used to a different way of doing things. Maybe you’re going to lose your American standards about how clothes have to look. Maybe you’re going to wear something a second or third time and not worry if it’s wrinkled. You’re going to learn where to buy more warm clothes, or where to buy a dryer. The point is, you’re going to be living somewhere else, and you’re going to learn how to do things their way.” I was mystified about what she meant.

Just Visiting, part 12

Mike took photos of all parts of the house and brought them home for the kids to see. For them, the big selling point was that pool. “We’re going to have our own pool!” they shouted over the phone to their friends. “You’ve gotta come and visit! We can go swimming in our own back yard!” They took the pictures to school and became the envy of all their classmates when they showed them the little blue rectangle. It made everything okay for them.

The house was in a neighborhood of similar houses near a polideportivo (sports complex). Buses stopped at the corner, and there was a train station nearby in Aravaca.

Pozuelo itself had two main sections: Pozuelo Pueblo, the original village, and Pozuelo Estación, near another train station. Our house was considered to be part of Estación. There was a little village within walking distance that had restaurants, a grocery store, bakeries, and hardware and stationery stores. It looked like it could be home.

Just Visiting, part 11

I worked hard and did well in the class. I crammed my head full of vocabulary every night. I tried to use a Castilian accent in class, lisping the c’s and z’s, but most of the time I spoke Latin American-accented Spanish like everyone else. A lot of learning was packed into the first six weeks. Homework was at least as demanding as the class time itself. It took a lot of hours to memorize the amount of grammar and vocabulary needed to assimilate the course in six weeks. The 42-year-old brain, I found, did not take this stuff in as rapidly as the teenage one I’d had when I learned French in high school.

The second half of the summer was less useful. The teacher was not as good as Lourdes had been, and the material covered was no more than a review of what we’d learned in the first half. I was amazed to look back and see that we’d learned all the basics of the language in Spanish I.

As the summer went on I became more and more nervous about the move. I missed Mike, who was still away most of the time. The kids were enjoying their summer, as I had hoped they would, but I was pretty frazzled. I was afraid of being in Spain, and I was afraid of leaving behind my life in Connecticut. I worried about the kids’ school, about shipping our household goods, about tenants for our house in Stamford. I didn’t know how the money was going to work out. Since I was less busy with school, I had lots more time to worry.

My sister had gotten me started on America Online a few months earlier—the idea of online chat was new, at least to me, in 1994—and I began to stay up late at night playing in the Parlor Games area on AOL. It was a place where a “room” full of 26 people played word games and Jeopardy-style games, hosted by volunteer staffers. I “met” a lot of nice people there and told several of them about my move and my worries. It was certainly habit-forming, but it helped me with some of the loneliness and fear I was feeling.

Mike did find us a place to live during the late spring. He had continued to hunt with Marilu, and occasionally a PW colleague would give him a lead. He saw places that were too expensive, bigger than we needed, or not very nice.

“I don’t think I’m going to find what we want in an apartment here,” he said on the phone one night. “Everything is unfurnished, and I don’t want to have to deal with shipping all our furniture over here. I’ll look at houses, too.”

“Okay,” I said, “but no pool. I don’t want to have to take care of a pool.” Then Marilu found him the perfect place—a medium-size house (similar in interior space to the 2,500 square feet we were used to), furnished, near the American School. It was just a few years old, had a nice kitchen, and—unusual for a Spanish house—had wall-to-wall carpeting throughout. Made of brown brick with a tile roof, it was contemporary in style. The interior walls were covered with white stucco on which I ended up scraping my knuckles hundreds of times while carrying laundry upstairs. There were three bedrooms on the second floor and a playroom and office on the third floor. There was a small carport in front and a little yard in back with a small swimming pool.

“Wait a minute. I said no pool!” I told Mike.

“Look,” he replied, “we don’t even have to fill it if we don’t want to. But this house is a great deal. The owner is moving to Mexico for two years, and he’s asking $2,500 a month, furnished. Most of the places I’ve seen are $3,500 a month unfurnished!” Obviously, it was too good a deal to pass up.

Just Visiting, part 10

Mike and I told our parents and friends the news, and most everyone was excited for us. And finally I had to tell the newspaper that I’d be leaving at the end of May to study Spanish. People there were lovely to me—accepting my decision but regretful about losing me and gracious about how I’d be missed. They even talked to me about coming back to work when I returned; they wanted to do more coverage of the large Latino community in Stamford, and they thought I could help. Privately I wondered how a Jewish woman speaking Castilian Spanish would go over at the Puerto Rican Community Center, but it was nice for me to think about. I had plenty of regrets about leaving the best work situation I’d ever had, but I was going on faith that I was about to have a special experience.

The Spanish class I found was wonderful. The professor, Lourdes Morales, was a great teacher for me—demanding and fair. She was the daughter of a Puerto Rican and a Colombian, and she was married to an opera singer from Iceland.

Most of my classmates were college kids, but there were a couple women my age taking the first half of the course. Though the younger people were not too friendly at the beginning, those of us who went all the way through the twelve weeks got close through the shared experience. There was an interesting guy from a Sephardic Jewish family that spoke Ladino, the language of the Sephardim, at home. There was a tall, thin redheaded kid who was about to go to work for a big accounting firm. He was a triathlete—and he smoked. In fact, nearly all the kids in the class smoked, which surprised me. I had assumed that the college kids of the 90s were smarter than we had been.

My best friend in the class, incongruously, was a 22-year-old who was trying to finish his B.A. so he could apply to become a Connecticut state trooper. A big bear of a guy, his nickname was Tiny. He was struggling through the class, but somehow we always partnered up when there was a dialogue or a group project to do.

One day Tiny’s car was in the shop, and he asked me if I could take him to pick it up. He got into my car, and I turned on my usual radio station—WXRK, the alternative rock station in New York. “You listen to K Rock?” he said incredulously. I realized with a start that to him I was an old lady. “What did you think I listened to?” I asked. “Whitney Houston?” He kept his mouth shut after that.

Just Visiting, part 9

One weekday during the visit Mike took the kids to lunch so I could go look at the housing possibilities. My guide was Marilu, a Spanish lady who’d been married to an American and who caught all the real estate referrals from the American School of Madrid. She showed me around a couple of the neighborhoods near the school that I would come to know well—Somosaguas and Húmera, where there were large, luxurious houses. “I’m not sure I understand what kind of a place you want,” she said. I got the feeling that she wasn’t clear how important Mike’s job was, that she didn’t know if we’d be able to afford a big house, a little adosado or townhouse, or a piso (apartment). But she was full of helpful advice: “Bring lots of nylons,” she said. “The quality here is terrible. And be sure to call me when you get in. I will get you a maid, a gardener—whatever you need.”

I was interested in having an apartment so that there would be no security worries if we went away for a weekend, and I thought it would be nice to have a shared pool, as opposed to having a house with a private pool. I figured this would open opportunities to meet Spaniards.

Mike had told me about one apartment he’d seen and liked. It was on the edge of the park that formed the western boundary of Madrid. I had a vision of a lovely old limestone-faced building overlooking something like the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. But the actual building was very different. The park, Casa de Campo, was a big, dry, dusty place with smallish green-gray trees. Like most of the Spanish landscape, it wasn’t very appealing to me at first. It took me many months of living in Madrid before I came to appreciate the desertlike appearance of my surroundings. The building was modern, brick, three stories high. The apartment was spacious, with lovely wood floors and a view onto the pool and soccer field behind the building.

What I learned from a couple hours of house hunting was that most of the houses and apartments had tile floors and small kitchens. The only request I made of Mike, who was going to take care of actually choosing a place for us, was that he look for a better-than-average kitchen, because we were enthusiastic cooks and needed a bit of space to stretch out in.

At any rate, I had decided that indeed I could and wanted to live in Madrid, so I went home excited. I looked for an intensive Spanish class and found the perfect thing—twelve weeks at the local University of Connecticut branch. The class would cover two years’ worth of college-level Spanish, meeting daily for four hours. I knew I’d do better with a regular classroom approach than with the Berlitz method, since I tended to learn a language more by reading and writing than by speaking and listening.

Next we had to tell Julie and Lisa about our move. “Do we have to go?” Julie moaned. “I want to stay here.”

Lisa joined in: “I like it here. I don’t want to go away from my friends.”

“Look, we’ve made this decision, and we’re going to do this together. It’s so we can be with Dad,” I explained. “It’s hard for all of us when he travels so much. I think it’s better when we’re all together. Besides, we can stay in Stamford for the summer, so you can still go to day camp. You have lots of time to be with your friends, and we’ll be back at Christmas for a visit.” They seemed to understand the point about being together, since Mike’s travel was hard on all of us. They accepted the idea without too much difficulty.

Just Visiting, part 8

The next day we went to see the unique mosque of Córdoba—a huge structure filled with hundreds of red-and-white-painted Moorish arches. Andalucía had been fully Moorish for centuries; this was what the Crusades were about, as far as Spain was concerned. In the 1400s the Spanish monarchs, proud of their reconquest of Andalucía, built an entire cathedral within the mosque, making for a disconcerting contrast. You walked through rows and rows of the Moorish arches, and suddenly you came upon the intricate carvings of a Gothic cathedral’s choir. It was a typically Spanish contrast. Medieval Spain was built by a polyglot society of Catholics, Muslims and Jews, but after the Muslims and Jews were expelled in 1492, the Spanish striving for ethnic purity was relentless. Nevertheless, the dark physical appearance of many Spaniards showed the mixed heritage they had as a people.

We also went to the Jewish quarter, where we stopped to eat at a little bar near the bust of the Jewish thinker Maimonides, who was a Córdoban. I really felt like a foreigner in this situation. It was 11 in the morning, but I knew the girls wouldn’t make it until 2 p.m., the normal Spanish lunchtime. Would it be okay to order some food? I wondered. What could you ask for? Would they be irritated if I did the wrong thing?

I asked Mike, “What can a person order now?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, as unsure as I was. “I’ll see if they have tortilla española.” This Spanish potato omelet was something the kids had tried and liked, so it seemed like a good bet.

As it happened, in a Spanish bar or cafeteria you could order anything on the menu anytime and nobody would think a thing about it, but we didn’t know that yet. We had a tortilla in this bar, freshly made and delicious. It was so good, we ordered a second one. But it took me a few months in Spain before I understood how accommodating Spanish restaurants were.

We went to a large Córdoban house museum famous for having fourteen patios, or interior courtyards. The house was lovely, but the tour was only in Spanish. This was a frustration we experienced often in Spain. No one seemed to have the sense that it might be profitable to make allowances for foreigners, such as translations at tourist sites. Afterward we had a terrible time finding a taxi stand—we were far from the center of town. Still feeling unsure and easily scared, I feared we were going to be stuck there forever, but eventually Mike was able to muster enough Spanish to ask for and comprehend directions to a taxi stand. We got back to the train station and eventually to Madrid.

Just Visiting, part 7

We got a taxi to the fairgrounds, passing many men on horses in splendid traditional costumes and fringed flat-brimmed hats, and many horse-drawn carriages filled with costumed Sevillanos.

Once we reached the fairgrounds we were stunned by the sights. Acres of land were laid out in intersecting avenues, all lined with casetas—tentlike huts made of striped canvas, filled with people and music and dancing and drinking. Strings of lights hung over every street, and horsemen and costumed participants filled the way. Later we learned that the partying at the Feria goes on all week, virtually all day and night, with different societies inviting guests to their casetas and providing food, drink, music and dance. It was breathtaking. “This must look incredible at night,” Mike said.

It felt strange to be left out of the action. But even the uninvited, like us, had a place to be at the Feria, and that was at the amusement area next to where the casetas were located. It was as big as a permanent amusement park, and the kids were delighted to be there. “This is a great birthday celebration!” Lisa said, because she was turning seven that day. “I love this!”

Each ride had its own ticket booth, and each had its own barker and sound system, so the cacophony was unbelievable. We had a screaming, laughing ride on a Ferris wheel that would never have made it in the U.S.—the car doors were open, not barred in any way. Mike teasingly inched Julie over toward the door, saying, “Just move a little further that way . . . I’m trying to see over there,” and she giggled and squirmed to stay away from the gap. And we watched a pony ride with a relentless barker who kept announcing: “Los caballitos ponies (the “little horse” ponies) . . . los caballitos ponies . . . los caballitos ponies!” Those poor, tired-looking animals were tied to a slow-moving carousel; they had to go around and around endlessly. It seemed amazingly cruel.

Eventually we returned to the train station and took an hour ride up to Córdoba. There the hotel was particularly foreign and depressing, with ugly beige furnishings, a musty smell, and nothing but bullfighting on the TV. “Isn’t there anything else to watch?” Julie asked.

“This is boring!” Lisa added. She couldn’t stand to watch the savage bullfights at all.

Just Visiting, part 6

In Madrid we visited the Plaza Mayor, the central square, which was beautifully colonnaded. Dating from the 15th century, the plaza was surrounded by three floors of apartments, stuccoed and decoratively painted. Outdoor cafes lined the perimeter of the square, and bars and shops occupied the ground floor of the buildings. It was a great place for people-watching, like Piazza San Marco in Venice, though it was once the site of Inquisition tortures.

For shopping, we went to the terrific department store Mike had found, El Corte Inglés, which meant The English Cut. He had told us a lot about the store, which had several branches in Madrid. “It’s a regular department store,” he said, “but it also has lots of services that aren’t available in American stores—a travel agency, a dry cleaner, an optician, a food store.” There was a large branch right next to the Banco Santander office where he was working, and its convenience was unbeatable. Even more important, El Corte Inglés stayed open during the Spanish lunch hour, from 2 to 4, when virtually all other shops were closed. “It’s one of the mysteries of this place,” he said. “I don’t understand how else anyone gets their dry cleaning done.”

Mike took us south to Toledo one weekend day. The ancient capital of Spain, Toledo was a typical day-tripper’s destination because of its well-preserved medieval buildings and its status as the Spanish home of the painter El Greco. The day was very cold, and we took a taxi from the train station to the old part of the city. We saw the Alcázar (the old fortress), which had been attacked during the Spanish Civil War. The cathedral was low-ceilinged and dark, with many huge El Greco portraits of the saints. But between the low light and the height of the paintings themselves, we had to crane our necks and squint to see them. The kids were getting restless. “I want something to eat,” said Julie, “and it’s freezing in here.” So we went in search of a restaurant—and struck gold when we bumped into a McDonald’s. “Finally a good lunch!” Lisa said, cheering right up. They had their burgers, and then Lisa played with a couple of dogs on the sidewalk outside.

We also went to Segovia, north of Madrid. This was another common day trip for visitors, who went to see the remains of a huge Roman aqueduct. Madrileños—Madrid residents—loved to go up to Segovia on a Sunday for a long lunch of roast suckling pig or lamb. There was a soaring Gothic cathedral to see, and a castle that had been reconstructed in the 1900s. Disney’s Snow White castle was supposed to have been based on it. There were tapestries and suits of armor on display.

When we left we found a restaurant on the town’s Plaza Mayor for lunch. The food was still strange to us, but Mike managed to order several different dishes, and the girls filled up on the bread. When we left the restaurant and stepped into the cold air, Lisa yelled, “Mom, it’s snowing!”

“Great spring vacation,” Julie grumbled.

Our trip the next weekend was to Sevilla and Córdoba in Andalucía. Mike had booked tickets on the high-speed Ave train, but there were no hotel rooms available in Sevilla, as the annual Feria de Abril—a huge traditional fair—was taking place. So the plan was to spend the day in Sevilla, take the train up to Córdoba in the evening, sleep there, and see Córdoba the next day. We would return to Madrid by train that night.

The Ave was fast and pleasant, with a roomy, airplane-like interior and a movie to watch. The landscape outside the windows was brown and barren-looking as we passed through farmland. But when we arrived in Sevilla, it was wonderful. We saw the main sights—the Gothic cathedral, the landmark Torre de Oro, and the Alcázar, a palace dripping with the elaborate plaster ornamentation of the Moors. The architecture was sunny and welcoming, with whitewashed houses trimmed in ocher. There were palm trees and orange trees and cobblestone streets.

As we finished our sightseeing we were astonished to see groups of women dressed in bright-colored, polka-dotted Sevillana dresses, with the traditional combs and mantillas and lots of jewelry. We were confused. “What do you think this is?” I asked Mike. “Is this normal?” He wasn’t sure. It was dreamlike to find ourselves in the midst of the costumed populace of Sevilla, all of whom were leaving their ordinary chores to make their way out to the Feria. “This is unbelievable,” I told Mike. “I’d say it’s like being in Disneyland, but it’s so real—not plastic like Disneyland would be.” Indeed, these were clearly regular people walking through the dirty streets of the town—but in costumes that came straight out of a picture book.

Just Visiting, part 5

We did get a babysitter one night so we could go to Botín, the famous Madrid restaurant where Hemingway dined and where roasted suckling pig and lamb were the specialties. The sitter was Begoña Domínguez, the younger sister of Mike’s new colleague, Chema. Chema, Begoña and their several siblings had all gone to the American School of Madrid, and Begoña had encouraging things to say about the place. Her English was great, but she said I was mispronouncing her name. “Beh-goh-nia?” I tried. Then I thought maybe the g was supposed to be pronounced gutturally. “Be-choh-nia?” She laughed and shook her head. I never did understand what I was doing wrong.

I had trouble with that guttural “ch” sound. The kids and I flagged down a taxi one time to get back to the apartment, located on Juan Ramón Jimenez (the name of an important Spanish poet). “Wan Ramón Heeménez, número dos,” I told the driver, trying my feeble approximation of a Spanish accent.

“Eh?” he said.

“Hwan Ramón Heeménez, número dos,” I tried, expelling a little more breath.

“Oh, Chwan RRRRamón Cheeménez,” the driver said with a strong throat-clearing “ch” and a richly rolling R, as recognition dawned on him.

I hated the feeling of not being able to communicate.

We were the recipients of great hospitality that week from one of Mike’s colleagues, Marino Sánchez-Cid. Marino was Mike’s counterpart in the Madrid office of PW. He and his wife, Pilar, had four children, including a new baby, in a small (by U.S. standards) apartment in Madrid, but they invited us over for dinner one night. This was a pretty big deal, Mike explained, as Spaniards didn’t often entertain at home. But Marino and Pilar had done a tour of duty in L.A., and they knew that an American would appreciate an invitation to a Spanish home. Further, they knew we were taking an early train down south the next morning, so they advanced their normal dinner time by several hours for our benefit.

This was one of the nicest and yet most awkward evenings of my life. Though Pilar had lived in L.A., she hadn’t really learned English, and I couldn’t speak any Spanish. Though I felt warmth toward her, and was grateful for her kindness, I couldn’t talk to her at all, and I hated that. I smiled feebly at her, used sign language where I could, and miserably asked Marino to translate for me from time to time. “Please tell Pilar that I promise I’ll be able to speak to her in Spanish the next time I see her,” I told him.

Just Visiting, part 4

As for the $25,000 a year I was making, it was an amount that we couldn’t afford to just let go. But as it turned out, Juan had a little more flexibility than we had realized. The policy was that if PW paid for your overseas housing, and you rented out your home in the U.S., that rent went to PW as a partial reimbursement. Our house was going to rent for about $25,000 a year. Juan had the power to allow us to keep that, offsetting my income loss, and he agreed to do it. So in April we decided to go.
I had made plans to take the kids to visit Mike in Spain during their spring vacation. They didn’t know that we had even been thinking about moving there, much less that we’d made a deal. For me, the trip had become a chance to take a quick look around and make sure I felt we could live there. Mike had arranged an appointment for me with a rental agent who would show me some of the housing possibilities. I was to sneak out for that; he’d keep the girls busy.
We took a Continental flight from Newark. It was unpleasant, with a lot of noisy college kids going on a school trip to Spain. They talked and laughed all through the flight, so none of us could sleep.
Mike met us at Barajas airport when we arrived, tired and cranky. We took a taxi into Madrid, passing through a dry and barren landscape till we started to see the outskirts of the city. There was a memorable view of two modern towers, still under construction, which leaned toward each other at an angle at the north end of the city.
Mike was by then living in a three-bedroom apartment just off the broad Paseo de la Castellana in northern Madrid. He thought it was perfect, but to me it was a dreadful, musty old place with dark, worn furniture and ugly bathrooms. We had hit a spell of cold, damp weather and hadn’t brought enough warm clothing. We were miserable and went right to sleep for a while, then got up and went to lunch nearby at Bob’s, a chain restaurant that sold some American-type food—burgers and such. It was an unfortunate introduction to Spain. People blew cigarette smoke in our faces, and we were exhausted.
It was a scary week for me. Mike had been chaperoned throughout his stay in Spain by one Spanish speaker or another, but now he was in charge of us. When a waiter came over for an order, Mike’s first reaction was to look around for the person who was going to do the talking—but now he was the one who had to do it. That took some adjustment. He fumbled with the menu and struggled with the order.
He had made plans for us to visit some of the most important sights in Spain, which we would reach by train. “You can take yourselves around Madrid during the week,” he added. “The subway system is great, and taxis are cheap.”
We went to the Palacio Real, a spectacular 17th-century palace; the Royal Tapestry Factory, where we decided the handmade tapestries were pre-smoked, since the craftsmen smoked while working; and the Prado. Our Prado visit, much anticipated by me, was a disaster. No sooner did we walk through the first gallery of gory crucifixion art than the kids balked.
“I don’t like it, Mom,” Lisa said. “I want to go.” I couldn’t believe it.
“It’s disgusting,” Julie said. “Can’t we go back to the park?” I was furious. This was the thing I’d been looking forward to from the first moment Madrid was mentioned, and it wasn’t going to happen.
So I had a big tantrum. “I try so hard to make this fun for all of us,” I hissed at the girls. “I try to do some things that you want, like riding the Teleférico (funicular), and I think it’s only fair that you do some things I like, like going through the Prado.”
“But we hate it,” Julie said.
“I want to go,” said Lisa.
“This is so unfair,” I whispered, again feeling a mixture of rage and tears rising. “This is the one thing I really want to do. Can’t you be a little patient and spend an hour in here with me?” But it was clear that they weren’t going to cooperate, so I took them out, feeling angry and defeated.
We had Mike’s laptop to use, and I e-mailed my parents that day in utter frustration about the kids and my missed Prado tour. E-mail was a great savior throughout our time in Spain, making quick and cheap communication possible without worrying about the time difference. That day we exchanged e-mails twice.
“I am so angry at the kids! They were horrible brats about going to the Prado. We got in there, and they just rebelled and made it clear it wouldn’t be worth staying. I’m so disappointed! I hate them! Love, Susie.”
“It’s awful when the kids do that, but you know they’re tired and everything is strange to them. Why don’t you get a sitter and go back tomorrow? Love, Mom and Dad.”
“I’ve got a sitter for tomorrow night so we can go out for dinner alone, but she’s in school during the day. I don’t know how to find somebody who can sit with the kids while the Prado’s open. Love, Susie.”
“Well, it looks like you’re going to have to move to Spain if you ever want to see the Prado. Hang in there, honey. Love, Mom and Dad.”

Just Visiting, part 3

For the kids and me, life continued as usual. Julie was in fourth grade and Lisa in first grade at Westover School in Stamford, CT. We lived in a three-bedroom, seventy-year-old Tudor house on a busy street, which we’d bought in 1983. I was working as a part-time general assignment reporter for the local newspaper, the Advocate, covering community news, writing a weekly article on the nearby town of New Canaan, and doing theater reviews. I had made a nice deal for myself, getting about $400 a week for about ten hours of work, because I worked fast. Reviews were an extra $50 apiece.
Before having children I had worked as an admissions officer at Pace University in Pleasantville, NY, and as a sales rep for Mobil Chemical Company, but once I had Julie I decided to stay home. While raising the kids I had always done some kind of freelance work—copy editing, proofreading or writing. I’d started doing reviews for the Advocate in 1989. After a while they gave me an occasional additional assignment, and this part-time job had evolved in just the past few months. It was exciting for me. I was not a trained reporter, but I grew up in a newspaper family, and I was having a great time. I had a mentor on the paper, an experienced reporter who was thinking of becoming an editor. My boss, the city editor, was nice to me and appreciative of my work. But I was using babysitters to watch the kids more than I had meant to do, and I missed the occasional school play, which I had meant never to do. I was often nervous about the work I was doing, because I hadn’t been to journalism school.
Mike was enjoying Madrid, taking Berlitz lessons, chauffeured around town by Spanish-speaking PW colleagues. He had two junior consultants working with him, Raul and José. They were from Nicaragua, and they did all the talking for him at the restaurants they visited nightly. “It’s weird,” Mike told me. “Even they don’t understand the menus, because the words for foods aren’t the same here.” For instance, he said, the names of most fish in Nicaragua were different from their names in Spain.
Mike called daily and told me about the late dinners. “They really eat at ten p.m.,” he said incredulously. Raul and Jose tried to sample the local nightlife, too. They knew the nightclubs started late, so they tried going out at midnight. “Nothing was happening,” Mike related. “Then at 2 a.m.—still pretty quiet. But when they went out at 3 a.m., the clubs were packed. They almost couldn’t get their coats out of the coat check because of the crush of people coming in!”
It was not long before Juan started to talk to Mike about taking a two-year tour of duty in Madrid. The client was pleased with his work, Juan said, and the Madrid partners believed they could sell some risk management business if they had an experienced American to lead the effort. Mike told me about Juan’s approach, but we didn’t take it seriously. Though I’d always wanted to live in another country, I’d been thinking of France or England—not Spain.
As it turned out, Spain was a much better place to live than England or France would have been. We did end up living in a suburb of Madrid for two years. It was the first good-weather place I ever lived in. I grew up outside Chicago and lived in the Northeast as an adult. Though Spaniards thought the Madrid weather was awful—too hot in summer, too cold in winter—it was much milder than the American midwest or northeast. Snow might fall, but it didn’t stick. I had no idea how much psychic energy we had spent fighting winter and cold. Madrid was sunny and pleasant much of the year, while London and Paris were notoriously gray and damp. And Madrid, a lively and cosmopolitan city, was much less expensive than London or Paris. But I didn’t know that.
Though we didn’t pay much attention to Juan’s offer, he was pretty persistent, and he kept adding incentives to get us to go. It turned into a long negotiation as the deal got sweeter. PW would pay for housing, he said, and there would be a living allowance. They’d give Mike a company car—any fancy kind he’d like. They’d pay for the girls to attend a private school, the American School of Madrid. They’d equalize the taxes so we wouldn’t get hit too hard in either country. They’d pay for us to fly business class to and from Madrid, and to make a yearly trip home.
But for me, a sticking point was my job. I had just started it, it was going well, and I was reluctant to leave it. It was a big step up from the freelancing I had done. I’d been used to working in my freezing-cold basement late into the night, copyediting other people’s work. Now I worked in a lively newsroom, and I saw my stories land on the front page much of the time. I had bright and funny colleagues. I interviewed fascinating people—sometimes entertainers who were in town to perform at the arts center, sometimes local politicos. I did a story on a whole family that escaped from Somalia and was happily blending into the city’s life, and I did a story on the first bone marrow transplant recipient at the local hospital. It felt great. I was happy about what I was doing and about the recognition I was getting.
“It’s going to kill me to leave this job,” I told Mike. “I love it. It’s the perfect job for me. I can’t leave now! Six months ago I would have jumped at this move, but not now.”
“You always told me you wanted to live abroad,” he said. “You can’t turn this down. You can write while you’re in Spain. You can do travel writing, or you can find a paper there to work for.”
“I’ll never find a paper there! I can’t write in Spanish.”
“Well, maybe there are English papers there to work for. See if anyone at the Advocate has a contact.”
I agonized over this for weeks. I talked to my parents, who thought the move sounded wonderful, and to my friends, who wanted me to stay. My friend Amy Greenberg, a divorce lawyer, warned me against going. “I’ve seen this before,” she said. “It’s not safe to let go of your income. Don’t let yourself be completely dependent on Mike.”
But I wanted to go. My younger sister, Sally, had gone to France twice as an exchange student—for a year in high school and for a year in college. I had never had the guts to do that, much as I had wanted to. But now I had the chance to live in another place—and I could take my whole family with me!

Just Visiting, part 2

For many years I’d told my husband Mike, a financial services consultant, “If you ever get an opportunity to live overseas, talk to me before you turn it down!” And finally it had happened: He’d been asked to move to Spain for two years. Though I was not the kind of parent who thought it would be great to take her kids on a European vacation, I was doing just that—in an effort to see if I thought we could be happy in Madrid.
Mike had been working for the consulting practice of Price Waterhouse for two years. He spent the first year in Chicago, consulting for a Japanese bank, flying out each Monday morning and returning on Friday night. This, coming after six months of unemployment for him, was a real hardship for me. We’d tightened our belts a good bit while he was out of work. Suddenly he was gone during the week, enjoying fancy hotels and lavish dinners every night while I struggled to take care of two little girls by myself. It also took me a while to get used to having an income again—I’d become accustomed to self-denial as far as spending was concerned.
The second year he worked mainly in Manhattan with a Dutch bank—a real relief for me. He was eager to become a partner of PW, and it was a little unclear how that was going to happen. If you’re a business-getter you can make partner, but he wasn’t one. If you have a unique specialty you can make partner, so he was trying to specialize. But in the New York office, he told me, “If you’re available, you get pulled onto any consulting assignment that comes up,” which made it difficult to become a specialist.
I had lots of doubts about whether Mike would ever make partner. I thought he was a very talented consultant, but he was no salesman. I worried that he wouldn’t make it, and that the resulting disappointment would crush him. When he lost his job at GE Capital in 1991 it was like a kick in the gut, but he’d done wonderfully in outplacement and had found his way back to consulting, which he’d done years before. If that didn’t work out for him, I was afraid he’d lose his confidence completely.
It was at the 1993 Christmas party of Mike’s department that Juan Pujadas, a young (early 30s) partner originally from the Dominican Republic said to Mike, “Be ready to take an assignment in Madrid.” The Madrid office of PW had won a consulting assignment with Banco Santander, Spain’s largest bank, to work on risk management, the area in which Mike was trying to specialize. Normally such a job would be staffed by the London office, as Madrid had no one qualified to do it. But the London office had a condescending attitude toward the rest of Europe, and the consultants there were unwilling to travel to Spain.
Because Juan was a Spanish speaker he had formed a relationship with the partners in the Madrid office, and he offered to staff the job for them. Mike was indeed available—“on the beach,” as they said in the firm—an unenviable condition that left him subject to the needs of partners filling assignments. Though he had not a word of Spanish, he was the guy for the job, because it looked like he had the next four months free.
I wasn’t happy about Mike’s going to Europe for four months (I knew he’d be able to come home every other weekend), but after a year of having him home I knew my days were numbered. “Consultants travel,” he always said. “That is the nature of the business.” And I was excited about the possibility of getting myself a trip to Madrid somewhere along the line. I wanted to see the city’s great art museum, the Prado.
As the next few weeks went by, the assignment firmed up, and I resigned myself to Mike’s being away for a good long while. He started Spanish lessons at Berlitz, and we went away on a previously planned Caribbean vacation with two other couples. Then in mid-January he left for Madrid, housed first in a hotel, then in a sort of apartment-hotel, and later in a rented apartment.

Just Visiting

I had a bad attitude toward Spain. I loved Europe and had been there several times, but it had never occurred to me to consider a vacation in Spain. I had no interest.
But in 1994, when I was 42, I found myself in Madrid, trying to shepherd my two daughters through the city by myself. Julie, age nine, was at a stage where she wasn’t interested in complying with my wishes, and besides that she was tired and cranky from jet lag. So when we set out on the streets of the city she insisted on walking ten yards ahead of Lisa, age six, and me. Since we were in an unfamiliar place and didn’t know the language, this seemed dangerous to me, not to mention unnecessary.
“Julie,” I said sternly, “I need you to stay by me.” She shot me a sullen look and lumbered back to where I was, and we resumed walking. Then she went out ahead again. This went on a couple more times, till I sat us all down on a bench. “Look,” I said, “I’ve never been here before. I don’t speak Spanish. I don’t get the way the traffic works here, and I know they drive fast. I can’t let you get lost. You have to stay with me.” We started off, but again Julie walked on ahead. I felt my blood rising. I was furious; I was close to tears. She was intractable.
“That’s it,” I said. “We’re going back to the apartment.” We turned around and retraced our steps.
When we got back inside, I got the kids to sit down. I tried to calm myself by breathing slowly. “I’ve got to have you walk with me,” I said. “I don’t know my way around. I don’t know any Spanish. We could be separated in the crowd, and I’d have no way to find you again. If you can’t find a way to walk with me, we will have to sit in this apartment all week. Is that what you want?” There was a pause. “No,” Julie said at last. We headed out again, and this time she grudgingly walked with Lisa and me. After we’d gone a couple blocks I paused and whispered, “Would you like to hold the subway tickets for us?” “Okay,” she said, lightening up a bit. She put the little tickets in her breast pocket, and I started to relax.