Family in Spain

We find home in the strangest of places. The foreign is made familiar, and suddenly, our attitudes change. That is what I am experiencing right now as I write from Spain, where I am volunteering for three weeks at an English Camp for kids.

On a Saturday evening, I drive with my host family into Madrid, to a Catholic church to attend the choir concert of a friend. That’s something I love about families here, especially mine—neighbors and friends are like family. They experience community over meals and on the benches next to the pool and at choir concerts. I think it must be because here, they live in apartments. “Houses” (apartment buildings) arranged in a block with a courtyard and pool in the center, where the families gather in the afternoon to swim, to play cards, to chat. This is the meaning of close-knit.

The church is beautiful. Stained glass windows—a mosaic of blue, yellow, and red. A giant relief of Christ at the front, his gaze resting softly on the wooden pews, his hand raised in a sign of benediction. So no, not beautiful in a conventional way, but in a historically and culturally beautiful way. These are symbols of my faith.

Of course, the concert begins with so much talking. Everyone knows everyone. Or at least it seems that way as they greet each other with besos and begin speaking in Spanish so fast, I don’t even attempt to listen. But still, Arantxa, my host mom, introduces me to everyone, and many of them, despite knowing I am an American, knowing I don’t speak Spanish, greet me, kissing me on both cheeks and saying, “Hola!” Around us, Silvia and Sara play hide and seek with their friends, the daughters of the man singing in the choir. They erupt in laughter, and Arantxa says, “Chicas!” even though it does no good.

After standing in the dry heat of the evening, we move into the church, sit down on the pews, our feet resting on the kneeling benches. Shortly after, the choir walks in. The songs they sing are in Spanish, Italian, Latin, English, Russian, French. The first notes fill the sanctuary so fully, I get chills. And the rest follows in the same way.

I only wish I could describe how beautiful the music was.

The best part of it all was that regardless of the language the choir sang in, the entire concert sounded familiar. I knew those sounds because I had gone to similar concerts all my life (though few as amazing as this). I knew “Ave Maria,” of course, but I also knew “Laudate nomen Domini” because my sister and I had sung it as a duet in high school, and “Odi et amo” was familiar because I knew Carl Orff’s opera “O Fortuna.”

For those forty-five minutes, I was home.