I'd never been so far from home, and the only thing I could see from the window of that airliner was a glimpse of the ocean between the clouds. It was desolate and scary looking. I ate breakfast and fed Joel then handed him back to the steward for another romp. I was too depressed to read, so I just stared out the window and thought about how I'd soon be seeing my husband in a new land. I must admit, that thought made me tingle with excitement, but for the most part, I felt depressed. Then suddenly I saw the jagged coastline of Portugal and Spain and two American Air Force jets that appeared out of the blue. They flew along side us for a couple minutes, then made a sharp right turn and disappeared from sight. When I saw "Old Glory" on their fan tails as they flew away, I laughed out loud. I felt "welcomed" as pride made my eyes fill with tears. Even so, when I glanced back down at the countryside of this strange new land, I felt a little lost and alone, thinking that this would be my home for the next three years.
After we landed in Madrid we spent a couple hours in the airport, trying to communicate enough to order a sandwich and a coke and buy a souvenir. I found myself wishing I could share this experience with my mom and dad and friends I'd left behind.
Soon we boarded the small airliner that took us on to Sevilla where me were met by Ted and there had the joyful reunion we'd been dreaming about for over a year. He kept hugging and kissing us, then he'd hold us at arms length and look at us to make sure he was really seeing us, then smother us with hugs and kisses again. Joel was a little shy because of course, he didn't know this exuberant man, but he slowly warmed up to him. I couldn't take my eyes or hands off him. With the help of a Spanish man at the airport, Ted loaded our luggage into the trunk of the car. I was so impressed with his Spanish, as he communicated with the man. When we arrived at our hotel in Sevilla I was glad that Joel had finally warmed up to his dad because he was a chunky little guy and my arms were numb from carrying him for so long. At the hotel we ate supper in our bedroom (my first taste of calamaris) and tried to get Joel to go to sleep. We fought with him until 2:00 a.m. because of jet lag, so when we started "up the mountain" the next morning to go to our base, Ted and I were bleary eyed from lack of sleep and Joel was bright eyed and bushy tailed.
Our "base" was a small radar site on top of a mountain, outside a small village called Constantina. It was beautiful, quaint and picturesque but the trip up was exciting too. I probably took three rolls of pictures.
The Spanish countryside was fascinating. The highway was lined on both sides with Spanish pines. They weren't your East Texas pines but tall bare trunks that were topped with a round bush of evergreen. They looked like the trees one would see in a Dr. Seuss book. Along the road we encountered overladen burros, stubborn beasts who would stop in the middle of the road when they got tired. Their masters would beat them with a stick and curse at them to get them to move. I, of course, was shocked, not by the curses because I couldn't understand them, but by the beatings. I wanted to get out and defend the burros. Ted said, "What would you have them do... let them stand in the road the rest of the day?"
"No, but maybe they could coax them across with food or something. They don't have to beat them!" I argued.
"Yes, as a matter of fact they do. The burros are tired and stubborn,... not hungry. Those men have been dealing with these animals for century's. Beating and cursing is the best they've come up with!"
Ted tried to be my tour guide, but I was so focused on the scenes before me that I missed half of what he said. One of the statements I did catch was... "One of the G.I.'s from the site came down to Lora Del Rio, (the little village through which we were driving) and took pictures to send home, of these mud huts and all the poverty they display. He wanted to show his family how destitute these people are. But when he got the pictures developed, he was shocked. Their white washed walls with baskets of red geraniums hanging on them made them look like tourist brochures. So unless you focus in on the naked little kids running around in the muddy yards, the truth won't be told."
After traveling a while in the heat we became thirsty, so Ted stopped at a little stucco bar for drinks. On one side of the door was a large Coca Cola sign and on the other side, a Cervesa sign. Coca Cola, I knew, Cervesa I had to guess, was beer because underneath the word was a large picture of a beer bottle. Thus I learned my first Spanish word... Cervesa!
In a few minutes Ted came out with three small, ice cold cokes. When he got in the car I said, "Ted, Joel is a baby. We can't give him Coca Cola. He needs water!"
He said "Well, he either has to drink coke or beer... that's our choice. We can't drink the water here."
I was astonished. I thought What have we gotten in to?
So began our life in Spain, which would hold for us many adventures. One of my most memorable adventures occurred just two weeks after we arrived.
Ted had rented an apartment in Constantina... a house really, but since most of the houses in town were connected, it seemed like an apartment to me. It was the strangest place I'd ever seen. The front door opened directly onto a narrow brick street. Then when you entered you were faced with a long flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs was the door to the house. Beyond that door was a long hallway with rooms that branched off, on both sides, like the hallway of a hotel. First came our kitchen, on the left, across from a spare room on the right. Then next to the kitchen on the left was a small bedroom for Joel, and across from his room on the right was a small dinning room. Next to Joel's room was a small bathroom. Then at the end of the hallway two large rooms were divided by a wall. The one on the right was the living room and the one on the left was our bedroom. Not only was it the strangest place I'd ever lived in, but I felt strange in it. The rooms were totally disconnected. I felt like we lived in a hotel. But it was within our budget and Ted had come every day during the building of it, to supervise the colors and other details. He was very proud of it and the gracious old man who built it, Don Jesus, lived next door and was proud of it too. We became close friends with his family and I still remember them fondly.
Ted was so excited as he showed off our home to Joel and I. He had saved enough money to buy furniture for most of the rooms and had furnished it sparsely but nicely. It just lacked one thing,... appliances. We lived without a stove for over a year (I cooked on a three burner kerosene stove.) and without a refrigerator for eighteen months. But we were together and I was grateful. Ted never knew, till the day he died, how much I hated the layout of that house.
The thing I disliked most about the place was the distance I felt from my baby at night. In reality we weren't that far apart, but at night, if the doors were closed, I could barely hear Joel. It was like being in separate hotel rooms.
 | |
| Constantina, Spain |
Ted would be sound asleep. I hated mids!
One day, about two weeks after we arrived in Constantina, we made a grocery run to the commissary in Seville. We arrived back at our house just in time to unload our groceries into the kitchen. Ted changed into his uniform and left for his mid shift at the radar site and I put Joel to bed. I was tired from the shopping trip and thought to myself, I'll leave the groceries in the bags and put them away in the morning. I think I may actually sleep tonight!
I put on my nightgown, excited by the thought.
Behind our kitchen was a washroom where we washed our clothes in a large double sink. It had a stairway that led up to the flat roof of our house known as the sotea. The sotea was like a patio on the roof. It had a low wall built around it for safety and most people had clothes lines on them, where they hung their laundry. We also had lawn chairs on ours where I sat and read while Joel played. Some of the American families had bar-b-ques and tables where they cooked out in the summer. They reminded me of the biblical pictures from the holy land. They were very practical and pleasant. We also sat there in the cool of the evening and visited with friends. We loved our convenient soteas.
The only time we closed the door from the kitchen to the sotea, was when we wanted to keep Joel from climbing the stairs without us. Otherwise it was always open. It allowed the cool air to come in. After all, only Spiderman or some other mythical creature could come in from the sotea.
About midnight, with my counters full of groceries and my baby asleep in his little room, between me and the kitchen, I closed the kitchen door, so I didn't have to look at the mess and went to bed.
I'd been asleep about an hour, when a noise woke me. I wasn't sure at first if I'd heard something or just dreamed it, so I lay quietly, listening in the dark. Then I heard another sound. Something crashed onto the tile floor of the kitchen. I immediately thought of the open door to the sotea.
My body went weak with fear and I couldn't move my arms or legs. I was paralyzed. My breath came in shallow gasps. I realized that I was on the verge of passing out and that scared me even more.
I really couldn't understand how anyone could come through the sotea.... but what else could it be? I remembered locking the door when Ted left and he always locked the door to the street, so we had two locked doors between us and the outside world.
I listened for Joel and couldn't hear a sound coming from his room. I'd made sure that both doors were opened to our bedrooms so I'd hear him if he woke up. Then I pictured the layout of the house and realized that whoever was in the kitchen would have to pass Joel's room before they got to mine. Lying in the dark, crying and praying, I was suddenly desperate to get to his room.
Across the hall from Joel's room was the dining room and on the wall above the buffet were a pair of Spanish swords. Ted had purchased them with the dining room suite just because he thought they were "cool". Now I was thinking of them as weapons! If only I can get to one of those swords, I thought, then I'll go into Joel's room and lock the door. I think I can protect us there. But first I had to get my legs to work.
The decision was made so I started trying to sit up in bed. I managed to push myself part way into a sitting position but I was shaking so badly that I couldn't sit up, so I just slid off the bed onto the floor. I began to crawl into the hallway and realized that I could see a little down the hallway, because the street lights gave it a soft glow. I saw that all the doors were open, except the kitchen and that made me feel a little better. I knew I'd have to be extremely quiet to get into the dinning room, retrieve the sword, then get back to Joel's room.
I continued my crawl into the dinning room, finally made to through the door and to the buffet. I pulled myself up beside it and slid one of the swords smoothly and silently from it's sheath. My heart, pounding so hard that it seemed to me to be audible. I still couldn't breath well but I realized that I now had some strength in my legs. I cradled the sword in my arms and tiptoed back across the hall to Joel's room, slipped in, closed the door and locked it. I checked on him and found him still sound asleep so I sat down on the floor, by his little bed with the sword in my lap.
The sounds continued coming from the kitchen... sounds of things being moved around on the floor,... thumps when something else fell. I was petrified with fear. I sat there alternately dozing and being startled, until the sun came up. Soon after sunrise I heard Ted's key turn in the entrance door, then I heard him walking down the hall and into our bedroom, calling my name... "Laura, where are you?" he asked.
As soon as I heard his voice, I sprang for the door and unlocked it. Ted came in and I dropped the sword and began crying.
The story spilled out of me in incoherent babbles and when I was done he said, "Stay here while I check everything out."
After a few minutes he called from the kitchen. I went in cautiously and saw him standing by the counter smiling.
"What?" I asked.
"Well, the intruder left tracks but they aren't man tracks... look!" he said, pointing to the floor.
I looked at the floor where a bag of flour had fallen and burst open. There were tracks there, alright. Leading from the little hill of flour toward the sotea stairs were paw prints!
"I think you had a neighborhood cat pay you a visit." said Ted.
The kitchen was a mess with groceries and flour strewn all over the place. We laughed and started cleaning it up.
Before we went to bed that night we moved Joel's little crib into a corner of our bedroom then hung the swords on the wall above our bed. I never again slept with the door open to the sotea.
copyright by lauragehrke 20014 (c)
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