The Woman of Seville

( Note to brothers: I know that in this picture I look like I'm from the matrix and also that I'm holding my skirt weird.)

I am to live with a 70-year-old woman who is a friend of a family friend for 10 days; I get to the house (just outside of Seville) and see it’s basically the rectory of a church; I go to my bedroom and I find baby Jesus asleep on my bed. A life size baby Jesus and when I pick it up I find that it’s made of heavy porcelain: basically it’s a manger Jesus with a crown on his head. See picture. What am I supposed to do with baby Jesus and why did she place it here? My dad asked me if I considered sleeping with baby Jesus. No, I laid his heavy little body on the floor next to my suitcase and then felt guilty and laid him on a soft pillow on the shelf while I occupy the bed.





This lady is a real character. I could go on and on about her. She talks about the “Good Lord” and the “Blessed Mother” very unselfconsciously as if they’re her family and I can tell you that they are astonished at a good many things that are going on the world today.

Basically unbeknownst to me, I have walked into an apparition site. The story is that around 80 years ago Mary appeared up on a hill only a few minute’s walk from where I’m staying. It was a big deal for the first 40 years or so and during that time some people decided to make this small town just outside of Seville their permanent home and to live basically celibately it sounds like to commemorate the apparitions. Every night at 8 o’clock, around 12-15 people from the village go up to a grotto and pray 3 rosaries. Only a few of them are expats though.

Anyway, she has this Irish friend named Jimmie who is just priceless. Seriously the gentlest stuttering soul around and he eats a big meal with her every day and they go to mass in the morning together and the rosaries at night. He’s maybe 8 years younger than she is and they are clearly as close as brother and sister. So sweet. And you can tell he likes having someone new and younger around because this lady is quite acerbic, so he’s started slyly teasing me in his cute Irish way. It’s hard to imitate, but the cute thing is that when he’s around she ends all her sentences with “Jimmy.” So she’ll be like, “There’s a new kind of bread at the store with anise seed, Jimmy.” And he’ll always seem very awed and very serious and lift his white eyebrows up and say, “Oh, oh.” And then she’ll point something else out, Jimmie. And he’ll raise his eyebrows up again. Very sweet and very pure I think.

So my knees hurt from kneeling. I know, it’s hilarious. When I said you should assume my travels are racier than I’m indicating, it did not apply to my timer here. This old lady is being really cool about not making me feel guilty if I don’t want to be her little Catholic sidekick, but I’m going up there every night because it’s actually really a relaxing way to end the evening. I say one English rosary and then reflect for awhile. Then we come back to the house and she pours me liberal doses of sherry and talks my ear off until, say, 1:30 or 2 in the morning.

The chattering is basically the thing that is the worst for me, not the excessive religiousness (i.e. there’s a chapel attached to the house and one day she went to mass twice). But I’ve found a way to get around the chattering. At first I was charmed by this lady’s conversation because she tells very interesting anecdotes about the villagers in a very pure and shocked voice (like that the pensioner upstairs peed himself when they were “downtown” and when I asked her how she could tell, she said “When he walked away I saw his back end was wet, though I didn’t see the front part because I didn’t care to look at it.”) But then I noticed that as old ladies do she tends to repeat stories and drag them on a bit. So now I’ve told her I only want to talk to her in French, so it’s a bit of an intellectual exercise instead and I’m forced to concentrate when she talks. It’s really less annoying.

So anyways, as soon as I get her trained a bit, I should be able to get some writing done and then go up the hill to pray at the end of the day which actually feels nice once you get the hang of it.

Oh, and this morning a nearby town got up to say the rosary in a procession in the streets at 7 a.m. because it’s the patron saint’s feast day. I mean, can you imagine that happening in Canada as a civic event? I’m really starting to get the flavour of Southern Spain after these 4 weeks.

I’m really getting a taste of small town Spain here and I’ve been invited into a few of the houses for some authentic Andalucian food, which I really like. The food is the good thing about hanging out with old people while on vacation.

Also, I was so mortified today because I saw this dead bird on the steps that was so tiny and so hairless basically embryonic that it looked like a dried up violet or something. I went in to tell her because I thought she would share my sensitivity for the poor and the unprotected. She happened to be taking an axe to her chicken for the delicious paella we had for dinner (see picture). She looked up at me and said, “We’ll give it to the dog.”

Anyway, gotta run. You’d have no idea what I had to go through to get access to the internet in this small town. Word on the street was that Rapheal’s son had internet. So the lady who I’m staying with’s friend Hugo had to ride his bicycle with me to Rapheal’s, who introduced me to the son.
Haha. Well, miss you all!