Lunch with 2 Iaias (pronounced ya ya)

We were invited over to Filomena´s house for lunch, so we had 2 grandmothers at the same table and one interpreter between us, poor Joaquim missing most of his meal, translating between the two of us seventy year olds. Filomena and her son, Albert, live closer to the beach than we do, on the main floor of an apartment building half way there.

After all of the times I have walked streets of apartment buildings in Europe and London, now I sat inside of one, main floor, watching the people walk by on the narrow sidewalks outside. I was trying to imagine what this view would be like in high tourist season when body after body would go by your window, within a foot of where you were sitting.

They had a beautiful meal prepared and I tasted for the first time a thick crab sauce on top of pasta. Yum to that. Albert showed me food videos, a set of them that they tape, and I thought of my interest in America´s Test Kitchen and how I like to tape it, and then watch it each week at my leisure. Both grandmothers have that in common – a love of watching the food network, though in different languages.

David played with his uncle´s Wild West Lego, collected many years ago by Uncle Albert. When it was time for David to choose a grandmother to play legos with, he choose his Catalan grandmother, a fact that pleased Ya Ya and David.

Just one note about the language difficulties for me. Everyone in the house speaks Catalan and Spanish, except for Bonnie and me. Bonnie speaks no Spanish, only a halting Catalan, always reaching for words that are not in her lexicon. She can be understood.

No one speaks English. I reach for words and when pantomiming won´t work.  I want to talk with someone and am having excellent success retrieving my French verbs, nouns and idioms. They are now there in a flash for me.  Unfortunately, no one speaks French.

Fun for me to discover how many of the old French words I learned are still there.

Arta