Making the Move, part 9

I also thought long and hard about how to form some friendships. I decided that my friend Eileen, who had advised me so well on getting a babysitter, was a good role model for me, and I tried to imagine what she would do in my place. “She’d call Ana Douglas and ask her to be her walking partner,” I decided. So I did that.

“Sure,” Ana said. “I could really use the exercise. What time would you want to go?”

We worked out a time and started the next morning. I walked across the street and rang the bell on her gate. She came out into the chilly morning air, and we took a brisk walk all around the neighborhood, past the many townhouses under construction nearby. And we talked. In the way people learn about each other over time, I learned that her parents came from a little town in the mountains outside Granada. Her dad was from a modest family, but her mom had been a rich girl. They had three sons and two daughters. “My parents moved us all to Madrid because my older sister, Maricarmen, had heart trouble when she was little,” she told me. “You couldn’t get the right type of medical care where we were, so we had to come here for her treatment.” Sr. Romera, Ana’s father, became a traffic cop, and the family lived in an apartment on the east side of the city. As a city kid she had learned to navigate the Metro and the streets at an early age, and she remembered when a single peseta—now worth less than a penny—was a wonderful Sunday gift that could buy you a good amount of candy.

Ana had been working as a store clerk downtown when she met Phil at age 18. After they got married they moved in with his family in Texas, where she learned English by listening to the radio and watching TV as well as taking classes. She worked in retail stores there, too, before having Troy, who was a junior at ASM, and Carmen, who was now in 8th grade. The family’s years of world travel had yielded many stories that Ana shared with me during our walks. Most of the time, when we were done walking, we sat in her kitchen for another half hour just talking.

“When we moved here last year from Germany,” she said in her Spanish-Texas twang, “I thought we’d live in Aravaca, near the school. I’d never lived in this part of Madrid. I looked like crazy for a good house, and I found a real mansion—a great big house with a beautiful patio and pool. I bargained the owner down and got a good rental price, but right away we started having problems. There was a crack in the pool, and the water was always leaking out. And the house had damp walls, so there was mildew all the time. I had to keep calling the owner for repairs, and it was just driving me crazy! So even though it was a huge pain in the neck, I went looking for another house, and I found this one in Pozuelo. It’s much smaller, but we’ll be fine here. I don’t need such a grand place.”