At Home, part 7

Our next new experience was Thanksgiving—a holiday for the American School, but not, of course, for anyone else in the country. For them it was just another Thursday.

My cousin Howie and his wife Gail came to visit us. Howie was about six years older than I was, and Gail was my age. They lived in Cleveland, where Howie worked for a consulting firm and Gail was a member of a dance company. They were great travelers, especially Howie, who in his youth had lived in an Indian ashram for several years, arriving there overland from Israel.

They came the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and we set them up in the basement guest room. Being such good travelers, they required little help from me during the beginning of the week—I told them how to get to and from the major sights in Madrid, and they happily took themselves around. We all spent our evenings together, and the girls quickly got to know and enjoy them.

Because of Gail’s interest in dance, we had decided to buy tickets for a folkloric dance show that toured the country every year. It was supposed to showcase most of the traditional types of Spanish dance, including the sevillana and flamenco.

It was our first theatrical outing in Spain, and I enjoyed it more for the adventure than for the show itself. The theater was in the old part of Madrid, and we met Mike for tapas at a nearby restaurant first.

“What’s good to eat here?” Howie asked the girls.

“Tortilla is okay,” Lisa said.

“How about meatballs?” Julie suggested.

We ordered a good selection of tapas, ate quickly, and walked to the theater. It was crowded, even though it was a weeknight, and looked like a Broadway theater inside, richly decorated. We had seats in the balcony.

I enjoyed the dances at first—there was much color and spectacle, with lavish costumes and dramatic lighting. But as number after number ticked by, I thought it was going awfully long.

“What do you think?” I asked Howie and Gail at intermission.

“Well, you can tell the dances are interesting, but the dancers just aren’t committed,” Howie said. He was more of a dance aficionado than I had realized.

“What do you mean?” Mike asked.

“Well, there’s no artistry here—they’re just doing steps they’ve done a million times,” Gail explained.

“Do you want to stay?” I asked, seeing that it was getting late.

“It would be okay if we left,” Howie said, and we all departed with relief.