Of Fathers & Frisbees

by Kayra Malhotra (India)

Making a local connection Spain

I wince as the chilly air hits my face when I step out of the airport. I try to hail a taxi, and when none of the drivers I speak to are able to understand me, it hits me that the Duolingo Owl was right: I really should’ve been serious about my Spanish lessons. I groan, pulling out my phone to take an Uber. When I reach, I ring the bell outside my new home and someone from my host family comes down to help me with my luggage. He introduces himself as Juan and looks to be in his mid-forties – old enough to be my father, and while he admits as much himself, Juan insists that I treat him like my older brother because ‘he has enough children, but not enough sisters’. I laugh in agreement, pushing back memories that are threatening to surface. Memories, I decide, are like frisbees on a hot summer day at the beach; they hit you out of nowhere, and often; they leave a bruise in their wake. The mention of my father does the same; I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. I try to shake off the feelings of abandonment that go hand in hand with thinking about my father and try to distract myself. I succeed. Well, sort of. I think about how my prosopagnosia means I probably won’t remember how he looks like as more time passes by. Then I remember, I’m better off that way; what good would it do to think about someone who hasn’t spoken to me in years? Spending my formative years without a father figure in my life has been interesting. On the one hand, I’m not caught in an endless loop of having to ask the other parent for permission to do something; but on the other; navigating life without a father is kind of like purchasing a laptop without the appropriate technical knowledge: you manage, and you do a decent job for the most part, but you can’t help but think that others have it better than you. I manage to bury these feelings underneath a (genuine) layer of excitement about being in Spain and as the days pass, I begin to form a relationship with my host mom, who I converse with in my broken Spanish, but I don’t interact much with Juan. My host mom tells me she’s going to get away to Galicia for a little while, and I nod, too engrossed in my book to fully register what she’s saying. It’s when I go for lunch that I realize that I must now bond with Juan more, a thought that scares me a little. Even though Juan is nothing like my father; I inevitably end up comparing the two; I’ve always felt like the reason my father doesn’t talk to me in the first place, is because I probably have nothing worth talking about; and assumed that the same would stand true for everyone else in the same demographic. With Juan, however, it is different: After lunch, I spend time with Juan learning about Spanish wines and tapas. When I compliment his cooking, Juan springs out of his chair, and very animatedly, starts to show me the nuances of making a perfect “tortillas de patatas”. “The key” he says, “is being choosy about your ingredients, no matter what you’re cooking”, he declares as he starts to make another one. I burst out laughing when he gets some yolk on t-shirt and starts cursing in rapid Spanish, realizing that I’m feeling happier than I have in days. Juan’s handpicked ingredients definitely seem to have made a difference – the omelette is the best one I’ve ever had. It dawns on me that I did not need a father; certainly not mine – I just needed to feel like someone’s daughter. And knowingly or unknowingly – Juan helped me feel that way. It was one of the only instances where I felt ‘fatherly’ love and I know I will always treasure it. While I did not learn a lot about cooking that day, I did learn the impact of being selective. And from then on, I never choose my father again.