I’m headed to California today to see friends and play a couple shows
I’m headed to California today to see friends and play a couple shows. My cab gets stuck in traffic, and the driver and I have a 30-minute conversation in Spanish. We talk about his kids in Ohio, the drought in Oaxaca, Mexican food, and the peso vs the dollar.
I don’t really speak Spanish, and he doesn’t speak any English, so I’m not sure how it happens.
I miss some things he says, and some of our perceived conversation is probably him just nodding politely at the garble coming out of my mouth, but for a moment all my hopeless study of Spanish seems to bear fruit: I am having a conversation with another human.
I feel a bit stunned when we arrive, and exit the cab into another world. It’s not so much a new confidence as a sense of connection and possibility, like, this is happening. I am learning another language.
If anything, acquiring a second language in midlife has provided an erosion of confidence, a steady diet of humility, spiced with humiliation. Like the time I felt moved to tell a teenage girl how beautiful the fresh tortillas she was making looked. She stared back like a deer in headlights as June dragged me away, giggling. “She thinks you’re telling her she’s pretty.” Shudder.
But now I’m headed back to the English speaking world for a couple weeks, where groceries and taxis and restaurants are effortless. I feel motivated to double down on my lessons. I want very much to connect with this place and its people — or rather, I AM connecting, I just want to go deeper. ¡Hasta pronto!
