Mailings
I just moved to Madrid and I’m sitting in front of Cafeteria Europa at an outdoor table on Calle del Carmen where the street is too narrow for cars, so the cobblestone is filled with pedestrians and mopeding couples as I drink café con leche and enjoy an added luxury: my water has ICE in it!
Actually, I’m sitting there trying to enjoy myself, but I’m pissed off. I’m not so much culture shocked, as I am confused.
See I thought after years of Spanish classes, after memorizing and reciting and practicing freakin’ dialogues, I thought I spoke Spanish. I thought I had earned the ability to speak better than, say, a kindergartener. But it seems that there are 5 year-old Spaniards who have a bigger vocabulary than me. There are some I can barely understand. Seriously. I mean, the language makes sense to me, but you can’t really learn culture in a classroom. So now I have to learn a new humor and slang and curse words and to use them appropriately, and it’s like learning Spanish all over again.
So what do I do? I look at El Pais, the Spanish newspaper I brought with me. Am I reading it? Not so much. I’m kind studying it… I’ve got my trusty Spanish/English dictionary next to me, but after awhile all the politics and the economics and the royal family exhaust me, and I need a break.
Okay, the truth of the matter is: I hate the newspaper. I hate how it gets my hands dirty. I hate how hard it is to manage with the folding and unfolding and dropping sections. And I hate how you can never really finish it, no matter how hard you try.
So I put the paper down and open a package I just got in the mail from my dad. Yes, I save my mail and bring it to the café so I can savor it like candy. It’s so rare to get REAL mail these days and it means so much to have someone actually sit down and spend the time typing a letter or—god forbid-- writing it by hand, then getting an envelope, an address, a stamp and taking it to the mailbox, or in my case mailing it to me internationally, they have to go all the way to the post office and stand in line just for me. It’s a process, an errand, an effort, a sacrifice, you know?
Anyway, I finally open this manila envelope from Dad. In it, there are newspaper clippings and comic strips from the Wisconsin State Journal, a Time magazine.
I laugh.
See, the funny thing about my father’s clipping-and-sending is that he’s becoming his mother. My Grandma Oaks used to do the same thing. She’d mail my brother and I random articles and comics. Addressed to us individually. And never more than one or two items, like a “Dear Abby” and an OpEd, or a political cartoon and a book review. Always with a scribbled note on top, like: “Isn’t the world a marvelous place?” or “Did you know the universe is expanding?” or “What do you think about that?”
I always figured that’s just what old people do, but it’s not, I don’t think. In fact, I’m afraid it might be genetic. I could just picture Grandma on her white-washed sunporch with a cup of tea in one hand and a pair of sewing shears in the other, making little piles to send to everyone she knew. But that wasn’t it. She just did it for my brother and me. Back then, I did really understood why. Was she trying to lecture me long-distance from New Jersey? What was she trying to tell me? By the time I started high school, they kind of irritated me and by college I didn’t really give them a second glance. I couldn’t be bothered with her sending me her old newspaper so she didn’t have to recycle it. The thing is: those clippings and cartoons were her communication with us, her connecting and the way she told us she loved us.
So I sit in the café and carefully read what my dad has sent me. A couple of the cartoons, I don’t really get. I never really do. Especially the political ones. American politics confuse me now that they’re across an entire ocean. I do love the one he sent me last week. I hung it on my fridge. It’s got a angry woman— No, you know what, you gotta see it to get it. But you’d laugh, I guarantee it.
So then I pick up the Time magazine. Dad’s stuck a post-it on the front. It says: “Interesting article about Andrew Jackson on page 37!” Weird, I think, but no weirder than some of the articles he’s sent me with scribbled notes on the top just like Grandma used to. So I flip to page 37 and laugh, because he’s taped 20 dollar bill to page.
“Okay, Dad, Grandma, I’ve got it. Alright?”
I take a deep breath, I pick up El Pais again, and I sift through to find the comics section. I’ve got my dictionary ready. And I study each image box by box by box.