I’m not a big celebrant of Christmas. Organized religion and I parted ways many decades ago. But I’m still a believer in the family, friendship, and community aspect of the season. And the joy of solitude. I made a point to experience each of these this month.

Family

James and I took the train to Madrid on December 23 to meet up with two of my Spanish cousins, Beatrice and Alejandro, for wine, tapas, and fun conversation in the effervescent atmosphere of Alimentación Quiroga (Go if you’re ever in Madrid).

We first visited Madrid in 1985 when Alejandro was eleven. I (not pictured) was thirty-two and James thirty-three. I leave the math to you. You might recognize Beatrice on the right. Elena on the left would soon marry and move to the U.S. with her American husband. The young girl up front is a cousin of my cousins. And there in the middle, so young and beautiful, are my aunt and uncle.

I last saw my cousins in September when my uncle died. He was my mother’s youngest sibling. Only fifteen years separated him and me in age. (In the photo above, he was a youthful forty-seven.) He lived most of his adult life in Europe, marrying a Spanish woman in the early sixties, an event which I fictionalized in my story “When Danny Got Married,” first published in Bluestem and eventually published as part of my story collection Hola and Goodbye (Blair Publishing, 2016). My uncle was absent from our lives in America and yet he remained a favorite among us. He had seen more of the world than most of us. He saw both its horrors—he served in both Korea and Vietnam—and its splendors. History fascinated him and so did people. When I visited in 2007, he took me to El Escorial to see the monastery. He struck up conversations with strangers on the train platform, on the train, in the restaurant where we had a two-hour lunch, and on the train back again. He had a great laugh. He was kind and caring. As my cousin said of her father, “He was a very good man.”

Before moving to Spain in 2023, James and I stopped briefly in Madrid while vacationing in the country in 2019 and were able to see my uncle, at age 81, and Alejandro.

Solitude

That evening after tapas with my cousins, I walked alone in Madrid, though one is never alone in Madrid Centro. The streets always teem with tourists as well as locals. But there is a solitude among the masses that I enjoy. Being an anonymous observer, undifferentiated from the teeming masses, is sort of like being alone, which doesn’t mean lonely. Especially amid the festive holiday lights, Christmas markets, and street musicians. It struck me how in love I am with my life and how thankful I am for whatever forces of fate, circumstance, luck, and a husband’s diligence in securing visas for us combined to transport me to this life in Spain.

Friends

This section could also be titled “How to be the least interesting person in the room” since it seems that despite being one of the oldest in the room, I have done the least amount of living.

Back in Málaga on Christmas Day, I attended a small get-together hosted by a radiant American friend who, before moving to Málaga, spent ten years working in Nairobi. Other guests were another American, an energetic former university professor who has traveled extensively, including having spent a Fulbright year in Moscow; a charming and funny, young Lithuanian woman who was once a dancer and is now a tech business owner who speaks three languages; my ever-adorable Spanish teacher from Chile who speaks four languages and lived in Russia for six years as well as in Germany and Austria for shorter stints; a multilingual Portuguese woman who works as a translator and is versed in astrology. When she spoke of the aura of one of the guests. I, who had been bowled over when she first arrived, wondered: Is she not aware of her own magnetic presence? And I, the introvert, whose existence now primarily consists of reading books and writing stuff, could only take mental notes for future fictional use.

This is not the best photo since absolutely no one is in focus, plus I apologize for blocking part of Julia’s face.

Community

When I lived in Seattle, I was lucky to be part of a vibrant and supportive writing community. I’m thankful to still be nourished (via Zoom) by a long-running writing group that had its start in 2005, which means that next year will mark twenty years.  Members have come and gone. Two of us, Allison Green and I were in at the start, along with Wendy Call, Sasha Welland, and Pramila Jayapal. Alma Garcia and Jennifer Munro joined a few years later. For a short time, we had the honor of E. Lily Yu and Jen Soriano as members. Even those who are no longer members of this group continue to influence me with their work. We have had poems, stories, essays, and full-length books published, most recently Alma’s novel All That Rises. And there will be more! This screenshot is from our December meeting.

The year is almost gone. I hope it’s been a good one for you. I hope the new year brings you more highs than the inevitable lows, and in this world of loss and sorrow, I hold on to hope for a saner, just tomorrow. I leave you with this moment when the holiday lights were turned on in Calle Larios for the first time this season.