BARCELONA HOME is a simple little vignette about one small family in Barcelona, Spain...not so long ago....

BARCELONA HOME

Barcelona is a beautiful city...at least the areas that the traveler sees....all white and pastels and architecturally as fanciful as can be...due to Gaudi and other visionaries and artists through hundreds of years, who created the idea of this city as if they were painting it on a canvas...
while we were there for a few days, I felt at home in the oddest way, as if I had lived in this colorful, delightful play set before, in some more graceful, intelligent time and life....

Somewhere in this city of dreams, lived a couple named Maita and Pere, and their son Mark...
we were going to have dinner with them one night...
they're friends of my good friend Barbara, from the time they lived in the Chicago area...
I had met them in the Dordogne region of France, in the villa Barbara had rented in the countryside... they had driven over the Pyrenees to vacation with us. I recalled them as a delightful couple and child. fun. good-hearted. bright. (both university professors in Barcelona). exotic, in an oddly down-to-earth style.

Maita works as a counsellor, as well. She, I recalled, had a good ear for listening. her questions were always kind, insightful. Her reflections on life were always wry, original, full of life and compassion...she is a small, wiry, ordinary-looking person, whose smile makes her instantly beautiful...

Pere I remembered as tall. professorial - until he too smiled! then, he looked like his son. like a boy out to see the castles on a vacation across the mountains into France. Also, kind. good to his family...
both were great cooks as well!

Mark. sweet. small. good imagination. shy. he could play well without one toy at all...

What we didn't know, was that their apartment flat was right around the corner from our hotel!....
had we known, I would have been over there day after day...because our dinner with them was so kind and happy. I fell in love with their family entirely by the end of the evening!

It was not the food, though it was simple and delicious and nourishing and served in many leisurely courses with rich conversation as its best sauce!
It was not even the conversation itself, wonderful though it was.

It was the spirit of this family....
they owned very little, and yet had a full life of ideas. fun. music. books. friends. meals shared. careful reflections about life and...actually...a philosophy of life. a way of looking at the world. refreshing. new, for me. so, even exciting!

And Mark! his sweet room. his few precious toys. the little gift we brought for him: so appreciative and gracious in his little boy way!

It's hard to explain...
for me, these three were among the best that the cultures of continental Europe give the world...they were, in truth:
European Old World peoples, in the best imagination of that phrase...
Now, they have even added a little adopted daughter from China to their gracious family....

Of all the times I "felt at home" in Europe, and there were many that offered such a relief to us strangers in strange lands, I was most comfortable in this little home in this magic city.

Maita and Pere and Mark made a real home for us one evening in Barcelona.

for that, they deserve my affection and loyal friendship for life.
And, they have that.

In return, I have a Home to go to...
in Barcelona!....