I’ve had this fear for the last few weeks that I’m going to return to Colorado, and the first time I meet up with one of my Spanish-speaking friends, they’ll start a conversation in Spanish and I’ll have to say “Me repites, por favor?” And then they’ll start over, speaking slower and using smaller words, and I still won’t really understand, but I’ll guess what they’re asking and respond in Spanish and when I do, it will be completely, terribly wrong, and they’ll smile and switch to English while thinking “WTF has Maggie been doing for the last four months?” And I’ll be wondering the exact same thing.
Because here is the thing. If I were getting on a plane tomorrow, that would definitely happen. I’m at the place right now where it feels like progress has slowed to a crawl, like I’m wading through a swamp of conjugated verbs and tenses and as soon as I get a step forward I realize I’ve dropped a few nouns in the effort and have to retrace my steps as they’re being filled in by inconsistent colloquialisms and my chronic misuse of the word that means, of all things, to be. And then I try to curse but can’t even do that right. Is it punt@ or pin$#@!??! P’ing Spanish!
But here is the other, better thing. I’m learning to love Spanish. Specifically Mexican Spanish. It’s as sweet as a cold glass bottle of Coka on the beach. It’s as fluid as the tienda shop hours. It’s as surprising as Tecate in a giant styrofoam cup rimmed with chili salt on a summer evening on the Malecon. It’s the dirty, windy calle where there are no addresses or stop signs or minimum driving age requirements (definitely not that!) and no one’s going to stop you or ask how fast you’re going. No matter which route you take you’ll end up at the beach, you just have to decide how you’re gonna get there and whether or not you want to stop for a coconut at Pancho’s first. And all this from someone who understands nothing and speaks even less! What a language. What a world.
And here’s the best thing. Each new word, phrase, tense (this only happens on the absolute best days) that sticks is like discovering this short cut that leads to somebody else. Somebody that maybe, one day, you could start to know outside of gestures (though there is a whole lot more about a person communicated with these than I’ve previously given credit to) and textbook phrases. Someone that beforehand was just this category of person, a character in the next episode of Disney’s Violetta, that begins to fill in with personality and complexity and really just human beingness. This is the gift that Spanish is giving me everyday that I don’t give up and decide to sit alone at the beach with my English-speaking husband and Stephen King novel (it’s happened).
And that’s the crazy thing. That words, leaky vessels though they are (thank my girl Marilyn McIntyre for that one), seem to be the best keys I’m offered to to know and to be known – my deepest desire, the ultimate gift already given by the first and final Word.
shaferpress 