A Little Unwrinkled

My brain feels like plastic wrap. It is stretched, much too tightly wound over a large glass pan. There’s probably pie in the pan. Let’s say chocolate, just for gigs. The plastic wrap barely clings to the edges and trembles stressfully as the tension threatens to send it into a warm semi-sweet collision.

As I struggle to catch every word of Chichi’s Spanish, my brain stretches like plastic wrap. There is a dizzying combination of clausulas hipotéticas, and everything swims in various combinations of the past, present, possible future and future. But really the point is this: Spanish is hard. I glance around the classroom, and my three classmates sit looking both awestruck and dumbstruck.

However, I absolutely adore my Spanish teachers. Have you ever encountered people who make you feel as if they are dripping caramel into every inner crevice of your soul- leaving you a little buzzed with stickiness but also sweet like cinnamon? Beba is famous for her besas, as she enters every room with a kiss and wink. My favorite moment with Beba happened a few weeks ago. I was having one of those afternoons in which I was just totally delirious. All of my motor senses (the few I can normally muster) were completely done for and a permanent giggle waited at the base of my throat. I know you know this feeling. Think back to the horror of having math after lunch hour. Yeah, that kind of delirious. Anyways, Beba was searching for her reading glasses in her bag. She pulls out a pair with a victorious gruff and turns to walk toward the board, sliding on the lenses as she shifts. She looks over at me, and my sudden burst of laughter sends pieces of me shimmering like rebounding elastic throughout the room. I am snickering and giggling and snorting and huhaffing and hohohoing and everything in between.

Beba had put her sunglasses on instead of her reading glasses. SUNGLASSES!

Okay so I know this is not funny. And you might just stop reading here. But, I just want to let you know that I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard. I mean, I was crying and every teardrop was a waterfall (sorry not sorry Coldplay). Beba was shaking too, delaying class in the noble pursuit of silliness. Sunglasses!!! So classic. And for that little moment, my favorite moment, I may not have been speaking Spanish but I sure as hell was speaking joy.

Then there’s Chichi. Chichi always seems to be bursting with something. Our Spanish class is usually hardcore riding the struggle bus. I mean, most of the time it takes us a solid 5 minutes to spit out such gems as, “Dogs make me happy.” At least we are being painful together. But every struggle, every mishappened verb and every fumbling attempt at el pretérito is met with Chichi’s exuberance. She just bursts, one hand clenched to her heart and a fist in the air. She is proud of our little “Dogs make me happy”, and you know, it’s great to have someone on your team. I’m telling you, she’s my caramel.

Chichi eventually wraps up her overwhelming exploration of clausulas hipotéticas and opens up a poem for us to read out loud. Of course, everyone but Abby has forgotten their text books, so we cuddle close around her copy. The poem is about moments. It is about past pain. It is about dreams to live life a little recklessly.

I know you all have been bombarded with the YOLO discourse. So yeah, you go grab life by the horns. I encourage you to go live. Shout out a big L-I-V-E! But for me, the poem wasn’t really about this kind of life lesson.

Chichi’s reading glasses have large, thick lenses that transform her almond-colored eyes into a comical set of googly eyes. As we read, her googly eyes begin to well with tears and her glasses are being all filled up. She’s bursting, a little softer and a little stiller this time. I just want to smile back at her. Recently, I have been thinking a lot about how we heal ourselves. I mean, there is so much diversity in how we meet pain:

I fell apart.

I was shattered.

It hit me.

I held it all in and then I exploded.

It just hurt.

But how do we put ourselves back together again? Maybe we should say fuck it to the YOLO mentality here and stop our pursuit of the ever-changing ‘what happens next’. Let’s sit still instead. I am sitting and I am reading some poem in Spanish in Bolivia and I am huddled close with a body of arms around me. I sit still. I sit still with all my little wrinkles and let a pair of brown googly eyes drip some more caramel into me, smoothing them out just a touch. I sit still and just as I am about to really break into a full-fledged kumbaya, Chichi knocks over her glass of water, loudly clamoring, “Shit!”.

She ends the moment with: “I always curse in English.”