Characters: Abuelita/Clara (Host Grandmother), Rosario/Chaya/Doña Rosario/DoRo (Host Mom), and La Clarita/Clara (Host Sister)

Here I sit in my sunny apartment in Santa Clara. I’m learning that language isn’t perfect, it’s never perfect even when you’re fluent, but it’s not learning Spanish that makes me know these people and sit in their kitchens and spend quiet moments alone. It’s their humanity behind the language that I can actually reach because I have enough words in Spanish to get me by.

The details below might sound like minutia but to me it is my every day now.

I’m finally ready to unpack my Mary Poppins’ bag of reflections on this thing called Learning Spanish. You see: any good experience can be told through a carpet bag of mysterious lamps and unexpected treasures with a spoonful of sugar to help the grammar flaws go down.

I’ll tap my conductor’s brush and paint the picture with golden chorus: I sat over a fire this morning as my 88 year old host grandmother had a conversation with me in words I do not know. She said things in Spanish at first, and I responded by yelling in Spanish (her hearing is naturally not good). But as every conversation with her tends to go, her words flowed into K’iche’ leaving me behind with Spanish sprinkled in to give me hints and we started playing linguistic chutes and ladders. We ended up somewhere and while the object is to win, does anyone really win in that game of lethargic vicissitudes?

As is instantly recounted in my posts about the training weeks, everything was new: learning a new language, living with a host family and sitting through security sessions every day. Break up into groups, answer questions, share results, eat dinner with host family: reheated tortillas and beans and other vegetables, maybe soup, open your lunch box to find chicken gizzards, dump them out for the street dogs who actually pay no attention, spray your legs with Ben’s Bug and Tick Spray shimmy into your sleep pants pray to God your thighs aren’t nibbled into oblivion in the next eight hours and wake up a new woman hoping the hot water heater instantly fixed itself overnight and you can wash these mongrels off your skin without goosebumps accompanying you. That was training. Also lots of choco-bananos.

So when I talked to my real mom after one month and she asked “Are you dreaming yet in Spanish?” I thought: Am I even awake?

The answer to her question was a resounding NO. No I was not dreaming in Spanish, I was hoping in English that I could find the words to explain “I need to buy a flea bomb. Where can I do that?” without offending my wonderful host family.

I want to reemphasize the current picture of language learning: Me projecting Spanish with all my might across the plancha of crackling flames and my host Grandmother responding with K’iche’. But actually it was the opposite: she would say something: K’iche’ word K’iche’ word K’iche’ word K’iche’ word la capital K’iche’ word K’iche’ word K’iche’ word La Chaya K’iche’ word K’iche’ word K’iche’ word a las cuatro.” Aaaahhhh She’s talking about when her daughter Rosario, Chaya, is coming back today. “Sí” I shout over the cackling flames. “Sí abuelita!” And then I wait. She either laughs, continues, or laughs then continues. “K’iche’ word K’iche’ word K’iche’ word K’iche’ word [gesture signifying something far away] K’iche’ word K’iche’ word José K’iche’ word K’iche’ word K’iche’ word.” Ohhhhh she’s talking about José and when is he coming back? “Oh I don’t know!” I say to her in Spanish. “Sí.” She pulls her head back and makes an expression: “JeeeeesUUUuuuuus” she responds. And we actually cover a lot of topics in Spanish-K’iche’-gesturetown: When is Anthony going to leave? October. Diosiiiiito. But will another volunteer come? Sí en Marzo! Maria Santisimo! Another one is coming in March? Sí Abuelita! And then there are sometimes the moments when she asks me a question but I think it’s a statement. I respond with “Síiiiiii” but then I realize I need to tender a response. Hmm. A response. Well I simply don’t know what to respond. She repeats: I either guess what she’s asking and go with a response, figure it out, or I retreat to my last resort: “No intiendo.” My host sister told me that she has a hard time saying “Natalia.” I didn’t pick up until yesterday that she’s been saying “Tylia” and I think that’s really cute. I sound like a recurring character on Smart Guy.

So there we sit, our silence accompanied by the fire and my cooking food. She wants to talk more in the morning than at lunch, and the least at dinner. But usually her daughter, my host mom, is with us at dinner. DoRo and I usually crack jokes (depending on how tired she is after working the land all day) and if Abuelita understands she laughs too.

What I’ve learned from Abuelita, as it applies to language and as it applies to life, laughter is truly the universal tongue.

From her frame she exhales these effortless laughs and they roll across the room like glorious tumbleweed. I’m so grateful for it that I come to expect it, like an exclamation point after a curse word. It’s omission changes the meaning.

Abuelita doesn’t much go for hugs, definitely not kisses on the cheek, but I give them to her anyway. She’s come to expect that I will touch her and hug her but I think it hurts her to touch with esfuerzo.

So she usually responds “Vaya, Vaya,” and pats rapidly on my back. I think she’s secretly hoping to pat me enough that I’ll be satisfied and won’t go in for the hug.

One more thing before I kiss your cheek and go: what amazes me the most is how much I learn from her that no one else tells me. She’s the one who tells me how much it cost Chaya to build this house, that La Clarita is the one who paid for the apartment upstairs, how long Chaya worked in the capital and how old she was when her husband died. Because of her I know how much Chaya pays her helper, Candelaria, to pick coffee beans all day (25q- a little over 3 USD) and I really like to know that stuff. It’s not stuff that I can ask Rosario without feeling weird. But it’s interesting and it’s stuff I like to know.

Sometimes, like yesterday at lunch, her eyes start to well up with tears as she speaks but I don’t know what she’s talking about. I can see in her face, the skin folds that gracefully adorn her features, and her fighter eyes that she has losses. She has a lifetime of losses to remember in her sharp mind of 88 years and a lifetime of happinesses. That must be why she cries, she laughs, and she works without ceasing.

Of all the languages I’ve been trying to learn I’m fluent in the language of silence, and I’m grateful to at least know that much.

My own grandmother cannot talk to me anymore but I like to think that her spirit is perhaps visiting in the crackling flames that fill the space between Abuelita and I. Somehow this is comforting but not nearly comforting enough. And maybe that is why we have tears, laughter, and work to fill the space in between the language barriers, communication barriers and the spaces in between myself and the ones whose spirits have ascended to some other sky.