Mi Spanish Madre

For those who don’t know Spanish- it means my ‘My Spanish Mother’ - she was gracious enough to let me live with her for my semester abroad in Spain. I won’t lie, it was amazing- and her cooking can’t actually be beat. I sometimes feel guilty I will never be the amazing woman that she is- but let me get to the best part (flan and tortilia espanola aside)

We still keep in touch, in fact we talk about once a month- and its a huge joke that she has a huge crush on my dad- Like one day Lucy, maybe one day (Editors Note: he is not moving to Sevilla)- But Lucy lived through a revolution- one that is very different from anything we are reading in the headlines today. Franco was a dictator that I tried to figure out, well actually I am still trying to figure out (and I wrote my thesis on him in Spanish).

But what Lucy said to me today, when I wanted her opinion on what was happening in the headlines made me realize she might actually be the wisest woman in the world. I will translate it to English: ‘You can’t change life, you can only do whatever you can to make it better’. I am nearly 40 years old, haven’t lived with her since I was 21- but its nice to be reminded of that lesson.