Our last week in Spain the sun came out, just in time for Semana Santa, the holy week preceding Easter Sunday. Apparently holidays in Spain don’t get any bigger than this one; sleepy villages spring to life with festivals, processionals, and even more eating and drinking than usual. The village that we were staying at, Jimena de la Frontera, was no exception. I woke up in the middle of the night terrified that a marching band had broken into our house. Okay, terrified seems like a bit of a strong word to use when it comes to intruding flautists, but it was disorienting. Turns out, the brass processional was just advancing slowly beneath our window. The music was melancholic and eerie, almost mournful, like a sad midnight prayer. I should’ve joined them or at least taken a damn picture. Instead, I climbed back under the covers and let them lull to me sleep.
For our last week in Spain we went big, trying to cram in all the plans that kept getting rained out earlier in the month. We went on more hikes (or whatever you call trying to corral wandering toddlers in the woods), swam in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, we even saw Africa again (from afar), but more on all that next time. One of the most beautiful days was spent in Zahara de la Sierra, another pueblo blanco (white village) two hours up the road from our own.
Although I usually stay away from writing anything that could be misconstrued as practical information here, a few things about the pueblo blancos of Andalusia: They’re (mostly) scattered in and around Sierra de Grazalema national park, amongst hills so alive that they make the slopes of The Sound of Music look like they’re merely surviving. Built by the Moors atop imposing peaks for their strategic position before being taken over by the Christians, driving through these glittering whitewashed beauties is a vacation in and of itself (even more so, I assume, without a carsick toddler). The cobblestone streets are steep and the white limestone facades of the houses will blind you without sunglasses (Billy got some just in time) but all of this is a small price to pay for bearing witness to the jaw-dropping flawlessness of these towns. We grabbed lunch at the bustling square and made the hike up to the castle, the kids actually did the whole thing by themselves.
I don’t know if it’s like this for other parents, but when my kids are sick I can’t remember that they were ever any other way. I always forget that it gets better. That they are sweet children momentarily controlled by feeling shitty and not sadistic monsters who feed off the kindness of others. The kids were so crabby for a week (or was it two, a month, I can’t remember) that when they finally got better I had pretty much resigned myself to the new nightmare normal. But suddenly, they’re awesome again! And I don’t want to write too much about that because, well, YAWN, but two things: when Nakota came out of the bath tonight she looked at her fingers and said, “Look mama, they’re all wrinkly…” and then, with a suspicious eyebrow raised said, “are they still my hands or not?” And then Wilder, while walking down the street apropos of nothing turned to me and said, “When I grow up like you I’m going to have a big dangerous knife.” I asked him to repeat himself three times, desperately attempting a casual line of questioning before I realized it was because we were on our way to buy child-safe scissors. I laughed all the way there. I'm still laughing now. Hopefully we'll be laughing all the way home. Ha.
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