Under the Umbrella of Paradise

That sensation lasted only seconds, though, before things began to clear up and look normal. I thought I was experiencing some kind of vertigo, but I didn’t feel dizzy. I was ready to let it go as a fluke until a few seconds later, something even weirder happened.

The throne, a symbolic place,

Shiny, gold-plated, and gleaming,

Beckons thee to sit upon it with grace,

That thou art forever dreaming.

This is an adventure story, not a political statement. But the meaning behind ‘All the Bullshit at Home’ should need no definition or explanation. I think that everyone living in the States at this time has got to be sick of all the grumbling, demands, changes of policies — right or wrong — the dissention and bitterness felt, the name calling, the daily questions, the uncertainty of nearly everything, except death and taxes, as the saying goes.

In October, when we flew into the Madrid airport for the second time, the airport felt comfortable and familiar, even though I didn’t remember much about the layout from the year before, except where the taxis were and the protocol for getting one. That first time in mid-January of ’24, it was raining and we had to wait our turn for a cab while trying to stay dry. It wasn’t raining this year, but then it was October, a much more pleasant time to travel.

Spending Christmas by yourself can be a very lonely, sad time, or it can be an adventure. I should know because I spent many Christmas holidays alone after my divorce many years ago. The first Christmas was spent crying a lot while I opened presents from my grown-up kids, who had gone to another state with their dad to work.

In my mind, the misty end to our bus ride when we arrived at the parking lot near Toledo, promised to be magical. We disembarked from the bus, rode the escalator up the covered space along the wall of the Alcázar, then climbed a bunch of steps to finally get to the street level of the once-walled city of Toledo. When we walked across a road and around a corner to the plaza, I saw that it was surrounded by buildings that had been there for centuries.

In mid-October, ’24, we flew to Madrid for a ten-week tour of Spain in a rental car. Last year, we flew into Madrid with our daughter and son-in-law as a hub for a five-week tour to see some of Spain’s great cities: Barcelona, Zaragoza, Valencia, Cartagena, Granada, Sevilla, Cádiz, and then a dip into Portugal for a week in Lisbon. This year, we wanted to see more of the country we didn’t have time for last year, making central Madrid our starting point once again.

I watched him reach up on top of a shelf and take hold of something long and brown to bring down just as I heard Karen say, “Hi! I’m here,” as she opened the screened door to step in.

I turned to look at her with a big smile when I heard a loud noise like a car muffler’s pop and then saw Karen fall back onto the cement, never getting inside the door.

While sitting at my desk writing about the vivid memories of my childhood — specifically when I was seven, almost eight, when I lost my friend Charlotte — I can’t stop crying. Why am I sobbing about the loss of my friend so many years later, when I didn’t shed a tear at the time? I kept asking myself.

In retrospect, it seemed that when the ball of death started rolling, it wasn’t going to stop. But we didn’t realize the ball started rolling with Charlotte, and it would gain such disastrous momentum.