Spain

The last time I spent a substantive time in Madrid, in 1998 and 1999, the Mexican foods I missed the most were chips and salsa. I couldn’t even find tortilla chips in the grocery store, which boggled my California mind. When my mom came to visit, she smuggled me in a few bags, along with tortillas and canned enchilada sauce. One night we cooked enchiladas for my Madrid host mom, a loving, generous woman named Maria Rosa.

A few weeks ago I went back to Madrid, and I was lucky enough to stay with Maria Rosa for a few nights. I told her about Eat Mexico and showed her my blog. She said: “You’ll cook us a Mexican meal then!” I nodded vigorously. Of course I would.

Crayton looked at me like I was insane, because what woman cooks a huge meal on her vacation? But I couldn’t think of a better gift than cooking for this person who looked after me during a key period in my life.

So one afternoon, I went to the Mexican grocery store in Madrid called La Canasta Mexicana. I spent $25 Euro on masa harina, dried chiles, tortillas, queso fresco, canned black beans, chipotles enlatados, and canned whole cactus paddles. I went to a separate grocery store and bought cilantro, white onion, chicken and oregano. Then I came back to her house and cooked — chicken tinga, refried black beans, chipotle-cascabel salsa, and tlacoyos.

The latter gave me some trouble. I didn’t know how to use masa harina, and I didn’t follow the directions. I tried to remember how the tlacoyo ladies folded them but I couldn’t get it quite right. The dough was too thin in some parts, and beans spilled out. “The tlacoyos might be a toss up,” I told Crayton. (Which in itself was very Maria Rosa — she always used to worry that her dishes lacked salt or seasoning, when in all actuality they were fabulous.)

When it was time to eat, at the madrileño hour of 11 p.m., I plated the tlacoyos with their diced nopal, cilantro, onion and crumbled queso fresco. I heated the tortillas and wrapped them in a dish towel. Put the salsa in a little bowl, and the extra refried beans in another bowl. Maria Rosa uncorked a bottle of cava and I introduced each dish. Everyone was wide-eyed. Tla-whats? Tinga?

In the end I shouldn’t have sweated the taste, because I was surrounded by people I loved and it showed in every bite.

Do you ever have one of those meals where you feel like your heart is going to burst when you sit down? That was me. I wish I would have taken more pictures, because I don’t want to forget that meal.

In 2002, Crayton and I had just started dating, and I convinced him to take a trip to Spain with me.

I studied abroad there for two semesters in college and I think I won him over by telling him I’d show him around my old Madrid haunts — and that there was this thing called a botellón, a concept now outlawed, that enabled anyone to drink outside, anywhere.

We went for a week and botellón-ed and saw the sites. But it wasn’t a good trip. My Spanish had atrophied. I couldn’t understand anyone. I hated the madrileños’ brusqueness and their lack of patience with foreigners. The food, which I loved when I lived there, suddenly seemed complex and intimidating, and I hated that there wasn’t more variety.

The real problem was that I was terrified I’d become a failure. When I lived in Madrid, I thought I would graduate college and travel the world, and I’d have a job where I could use my Spanish every day. I would live in Mexico and be a freelance writer. Four years later, none of it had come true, and I wasn’t sure it ever would. I spent a lot of my time on that trip crying and willing myself to leave our hotel room, and tearfully asking Crayton if he’d go buy me McDonald’s. (I’m wincing as I type that.)

Last week, we went back to Spain together and the difference between then and now was astounding.

I wish I could have told the 23-year-old me who cried and thought she wasn’t good enough that everything was going to be fine. I will live in Mexico, and I will speak Spanish, and my next visit to Spain in 2012 will be when I’m happy and healthy and confident. I’ll order sepia and chocolate palmeras and pulpo with gusto, and take pictures of everything on my iPhone.

In 2012, I will love the guttural, garbled way Spanish men say “hasta luego” because it reminds me of a time when I was just stepping out in the world. I’ll love that they serve me a fork and knife with my pan tostado, because that’s what they did 14 years ago and they still do it now. I’ll love the shops piled with sweets, because they remind me of sweets in Mexico. And I’ll actually find myself looking up at my surroundings, not down at my feet, and realizing: whoa. Madrid has gorgeous architecture.

When I was 23, I wanted to be exactly where I am now — bilingual, happy and at peace. A woman in a job she loves, and who made the excellent decision to marry the man she went to Spain with in 2002.

The dreams will come true. It just takes time.