Perhaps the one person who made me the most comfortable while in Madrid was my host mom, Ana. I was lucky enough to receive the continual support from my mother back in the states while enjoying the motherly attention of this wonderful woman in Spain. [Ironically enough I spent Spanish Mother’s Day (May 4th) with my host mom and Mother’s Day in the U.S. with my American mom]. Though she was paid for providing me with food and shelter, Ana was the best combination of tenant, mother and friend. She respected me as a young adult, every boundary of privacy and liberty you could ever want as a twenty-something. At the same time, I was a girl whose laundry was washed, dried, and folded and who could grab her sack lunch off the kitchen counter before catching the metro. On weekends when guests came over for a late and hearty lunch, I was expected to set the table with Gonzalo—a menial task that I couldn’t possibly tell her how much that made me feel at home. The mornings leading up to one of my excursions around Europe, I would find a sandwich with snacks waiting for me on the table with a little sticky note inside—“Que lo pases bien, Stephanie,”—wishing me well on my travels. Sitting on the couch watching daytime soap operas, Ana would reach into her private stash of chocolate and offer me a square, because cada día hay que comerlo. That cold day in February when I woke up with a fever was the moment I realized how much of a mom Ana had become for me—attentively, she brought me a damp washcloth and pressed it against my forehead as any caring and concerned woman would do for su hija. She adopted me as her daughter as much as I adopted her as my mother and I couldn’t have loved her more for it.
Not once was I homesick staying with the Villamor family. In some ways, it was because of how similar they were to what I had left behind in the states. I left my Spanish family only to find myself with their American counterparts: a mom who comes home from work and just wants to watch her shows and who becomes a bit flustered and dissatisfied with the size of their living space; a brother who is just exercising his independence and who will be graduating from high school in no time; the constant bickering between mother and brother over why the dog hasn’t gone for its walk yet and por el amor de Dios, get off the computer because you’ve been playing games for two hours; a Dad who inevitably sides with the mother but can at least sympathize with his son whose disorganized room is never up to par. Subtle differences will still go noticed and what I consider normal will be replaced by what I considered normal. I will trade Wednesday nights of watching House dubbed in Spanish for reruns of The Office and large weekend lunches for Sunday morning family brunch.
It was their striking differences, however, that enamored me with my familia española. The things that I came to appreciate while living in the Villamor household—the value of family, the sanctity of traditions, the importance of togetherness—I know I will translate into a family of my own in the future. I had a life-changing experience in Spain, made all the more incredible and memorable because of my stay with them. And every time I experienced something amazing, I returned back to our apartment at Joaquín María Lopez, No. 28 and shared my world with my family over dinner while they shared theirs with me. And even though I’ve lived in a suburban house in Washington for nearly sixteen years, I feel as if I did a lot of growing up in Madrid with Ana, Pepo, Gonzalo and our dog, Caña.
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