July 28, 2018 — We descended upon the surfing town of San Sebastian from the Western slopes of the Pyrrenes after a 6 hour car ride from Barcelona. We had rented a Fiat station wagon in the city after we learned that apparently people reserve trains earlier than the morning of travel. A quick change of plans, a Metro (subway) ride to the train station and it’s succulent pintxos and (bitchy) male server where the Europcar rental office was located and we were handed the keys to our freedom. A quick jaunt back to the Jaz Hostal (yes, we took our kids to a youth hostal) and packed our year’s belongings into the back, a Tetris puzzle of maximum capacity. And then, onward, North across the Iberian penninsula.
In the middle third of the vehicle were stuffed our three children, equally brimming to their limits of confinement, tickling, giggling, harassing, punching, and altogether grating at one another’s nerves with the skilled expertise that only siblings achieve. Their annoyance spilled into the front seat where my wife and I equally prodded at the sensitive parts as we wound along a river as sky blue as a crayola. Hairpin curves on a one lane highway, sheer cliffs dropping down to certain death (declining the rental insurance would be irrelevant), contra-flow lorries crossing the center line and barreling down, their practiced confidence contrasting our trepidation.
Anxious and nauseated, our tribe was again migrating, motoring from place to place across lands about which we had no clue. We passed ancient forts and castles, crumbling walls built by the Romans perhaps 1500 years ago with nary a sign or an explanation, red rock spires shooting up from the green shrubs 1000’s of feet into the clouds, no less magnificent than Ayers Rock in Australia. Winding left and right and forth and bag, each kid traded turns at car sick or the victim as the they laid on each other and played jelly bodies. Their emotions mirrored the twists and turns of the roads, flowing non-sequitur from glee to frustration to boredom to irate. “Look, kids, France,” I felt like Chevy Chase in European Vacation, an entire country my Big Ben. The snow capped mountains of France scrolled back and forth across our windshield like the slowest metronome ever tick-tocking, an entire year abroad. Finally, we were headed to our anticipated new home.
But so too was their was hesitation, anxiety, fear even, as we climbed up and then around and down toward Donostia-San Sebastian as the sun shifted from East to West across an entire day. This was the name we had all been programmed to answer literally hundreds of times, at Pau Hana Bakery or in the outside corridor of the kids’ school at pick-up or drop-off or inside the sealed doors of the clinic. This elongated preamble to our departure mimicked my nightmare of routine exemplified best at high school reunions, how are you leaving, who will watch the clinic, where are you going? This last question irked me the most, the confused look in the eyes after receiving my answer even more so. How could any other reply have been possible? How could anyone be sure of where they wanted to be if they knew absolutely nothing of the place they were going? It would do as well to ask a blind man his favorite color.
It turns out that people hold onto names, present company included. And thus, “San Sebastian” had been our programmed response. It appeased the curiosity in he who posed the query, and, in a very real way, eased our own troubled minds. It is easier to leave when you have a destination. An arrow now drawn needs a target before its release. To stare the raw truth down is too much too often, queasy and skittish as we already were. Because the truth was that we had no idea where we were going, where we would be living, what we were doing. And the name San Sebastian offered an anchor upon which to tie solid our line as the ocean rolled and the winds whipped.
There is a game my wife and I play that is in the realm of passive-aggressive land in which we communicate our disagreement with the other’s decisions by continually poking around the subject without saying what we really mean. Had I not been playing a round now, perhaps I would have told my wife I was disappointed that the AirBnB to which our AppleMaps now navigated us was not even in San Sebastian but 20 minutes outside of the city in a place whose name is as difficult to pronounce as it is to write, Oiartzun. Instead, I enjoyed the aggressive nature of the return, sat staring out the window as her kettle of tolerance approached a boil. As it turned out, such games in contempt were wasted emotions.
Our Oiartzun was nothing short of magic. Contxi and Xabi met us at the gate, their 6 year old Nora whose uniform for our visit consisted solely of a pair of underwear and right arm cast and sling succeeded in maintaining her shyness for exactly five minutes before inviting the girls to draw chalk. Every day a new piece of art would appear, the driveway our Guggenheim, hot air balloon filled with pink hearts, a Medusa jelly fish with wispy legs and then another artist’s rendition on day 2 , rainbows and butterflies and sunshines and flowers. Backflips on the trampoline, a tea party one morning, basketball games of Horse (I remain undefeated), skate boards and scooters, stilts on which to walk, stiff legged clunk-clunk-clunks as the flickers and scooters and skateboards swim all around. “Feel free to use the bikes,” Contxi said, the eternal host sending me links to restaurants and activities and train schedules and watching my kids for the 3 hours it took us to complete the 11 courses at the Michelin star restaurant that happens to be in this tiny little-known town. There was a bike path fronting their lush property that overlooked the community’s shared garden. Hang a right at the bottom of the hill and it passed through villages and eventually to the port city of San Sebastian. Hang a left and it wound up through UNESCO protected greenery, darkness and then emerging from eternally dripping tunnels, winding up eventually to ancient Roman mines that I one morning discovered while trying to get my heart rate up.
“There is a fiesta tonight, it is our town’s yearly celebration.” We took Contxi and Xabi up on their offer over three separate nights (the “fiesta” is at least a week long before moving to another plaza uphill). 12 year old children with giant papier-mâché heads chased the littler children and whipped them with brooms. (They used to use “the insides of animals,” by which I believe Contxi meant intestines). These were the Cabezuras. Adults wore similar but larger adornments on their bodies and were transformed into Gigantes. (“Just stay steady and don’t move too much,” was Xabi’s advice after volunteering 4 years ago.) And on the final night, a stage-mounted cannon shot globs of white foam into the air and filled the floor in a sea 4 feet high as 50 half-naked kids went subterranean, some with goggles. Without the hesitation of adult social norms, our three quickly joined the frenzy and swam in the clouds, a childhood dream thus fulfilled. As night fell, the townspeople, all acutely aware of each detail of one another’s lives, their parents’ and parents’ lives, their childrens’ and would-be children of childrens’ lives, set up tables in the tree scattered square on by one, gathered chairs for their friends and family. Many never leave this place. Homemade cider in tall green bottles came out of picnic-packed satchels seemingly without end, jamon and cheese, grilled hake and “tortillas” made of eggs and potatoes. They shared their food and drink as did my Jewish grandmother ages ago, not accepting “No” as a valid reply. The kids ran around as I learned these selfless people’s difficult language over more food from more satchels, my fluency in Spanish minimized to novice in this new realm of Basque with it’s X’s and TK’s that roll of the tongue like the bastard child of Yiddish and Russian. The cider helped grease the wheels, but I have no doubt the scholars are correct, that the Basque language has no known descendant point and stands alone in its unique quality in such a way as to make some believe it was humanity’s first language.
This is our final morning. We will gather our bikes and ride the trail to the skate park where the kids will pedal and push up and around and down the cement walls. As for me, after bags are packed and these words are done, I will sit on the grass aside the skate park and watch them pedal and push back and forth in cadence this pueblo’s metronome, breathing in and out and sucking the juice from this present like the dripping deliciousness of a pintxo, trying with all my might to etch this place and these experiences into the shifting sands of my memory.
Oh, we visited San Sebastian as well. Drove to the neighboring ancient city of Hondarribiri and entered its medieval walls, took a ferry to France, another to Isla Santa Clara to the “beach” that the upcoming tide had swallowed. We may in fact move here, not to Oiartzun but to San Sebastian. We already met a rental agent and visited a few long term “pisos” yesterday, navigated the town hall and government buildings more than once, learned that to buy a car one must clear it with the “gastoria,” that to clear the gastoria one must be “empatronized,” that to empatronize one must have a long term rental “contracto”, that to qualify for a contracto one must show sufficient funds, and to show sufficient funds….
But the skate park beckons. And I forgot the breathing. In and out. The etching of shifting sands as the tug on the anchor line softens, the seas and the winds calming all around.