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We left Zahara de los Atunes on Thursday and dragging the baggage to the car, I lost my Wonder Woman panties.

About time.

I find myself thinking about death frequently, or more frequently than in the past, not in any specific terms.

I ask myself is that person dead or did I dream it? I think about the dead ones, often enough. I think about my death and other’s. I no longer am shocked about celebrity deaths. On and on.

I read that after 50 thoughts of death come much more often.

A friend who is a nurse says that the old folk’s home he works at got a parrot. But the residents stressed the parrot out so much it almost died and had to be hospitalized for two months. Now the parrot pecks anyone who comes near him. Later that same day, I’m walking on a street alone and there is a dead parrot on the sidewalk.

Riding in the train, I made bird shadows on the wall for Tin, showing him how to lock his thumbs to make the wings fly. He is fascinated at first but then throws his hands down on his lap in frustration and I ask him what’s wrong. He says, “The bird’s dead.”

I sit in the back of the car, my dear friend in front in the driver’s seat, waiting for Tatjana to come out of the apartment. It is dark, the shadows of the linden trees make the street lights twinkle inside the parked car. He is speaking …

It’s like the passion has gone out of me, for exercise, for my new job, for many things. I’m not sure where I am supposed to be or what I’m supposed to do. Perhaps this is simply a reflection of the times. There is so much uncertainty and little hope for what is going to happen.

Am I dreaming? Am I speaking? Are we all one time specific cliche?

In Zagreb, early morning has come again, men sporting man purses hurry to the tram, women bearing heavy purses, buses, taxis, cars and pedestrians scuttling. A city that wakes up on a Monday morning – the rhythm of the world (except Spain).

Here an octogenarian with a full head of hair tells me that when they took out his thyroid, he applied a garlic paste to his head every night for two months. Another octogenarian shows me her muscles from carrying grocery bags to and fro.

We arrive late at night and find Tin covered in Plum Brandy to stop the mosquito bites from itching.

There is a tea for everything from constipation to arthritis. And now honey is the panacea.

I sit outside on the terrace enjoying the fresh morning air and listening to the sounds of groggy Monday life and see in the sunshine one blonde hair on my arm.

Morning has broken.

Between the three year old and the 82 year old it is hard to tell the difference – they live for play and for drama. “We’re going out for a bit,” we say and suddenly, the old woman falls back on the sofa feeling faint, the little boy, naked, throws himself on the same sofa and demands cartoons while he pulls his pudding.

Drama takes a hiatus in the middle years of getting and spending – it is only when you are doing neither that you can entertain flair for real.

We go to meet the old man and his sister in the beer garden that was once a splendor filled with people on Sundays during the socialist period. Now we are one of two tables there, but the beer is creamy and cold from the tap and the service is fine.

We talk about thyroids, hair, glaucoma, macro degenerative disease, heart failure, and mosquito bites.

Everyone leaves happy.

There is an old woman who I met in 2008 in her underwear during a heat wave in Zagreb, four years later, and the woman walked slowly down the stairs in her underwear, another heat wave, excited to greet not her daughter, not me, but her grandson.

In the tiny room in the tiny apartment, the old woman and the young boy make trains out of pillows that go from one end of the room to the other.

He asks her, “Why is it dark outside?” She says, “It’s natural.”

I step out on the balcony with her to smoke a cigarette (she smokes seven and counts them out each day in a jar), and she lifts her face to the wind and says, “Not good. Wind. Means hot tomorrow.”

We step back inside and she tells me about her mother who died in this apartment, bleeding in the brain, and how only two decades ago no one was cremated in Croatia, and from America, expatriate families sent ashes back to be scattered here and no one knew what they were – seasoning? They sprinkled the ashes on roast and ate it all up. “This is not an anecdote,” she tells me.

Now cremation has come to Zagreb, but you must bury the urn, it’s the law. The families conspire to take home ashes in plastic baggies to spread them where they will. It’s their law.

We walk back inside to the house that is stifling and I leave the door open. “NO,” she says, “The draft.” (The godforsaken draft that bedevils Europeans.) Tanja puts the fan on #3, and the old woman says, “No, not number 3, it will explode.”

And later, hooched down against the wall as she likes to sit, the old woman tells me that when Tanja was a little girl, she was always telling her you can’t touch this, you can’t touch that, and Tanja said, “Mami, when you die, I will touch everything.”

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

Tin Ujevic was a famous Croatian poet and one of his best yet misunderstood verses was simply: How can I be old when I am young.

Yesterday, steps from Josip Jelacica Square, Tin played at the foot of the famous poet’s statue, known simply as Tin here in Zagreb.

We’ve been to Spain. Yes, that’s what the tickets say but it seems as if we have been living parallel lives from our regular one. There’s the getting used to each new place, there’s the schlepping baggage filled with god knows what – diapers, incense, books, computer, clothes, make-up, pills and such. There’s been different food, different routines, different people, different modes of being and at the end of it all – there we are.

I keep saying to myself – don’t worry, don’t concern yourself with what is waiting for you on your return. People in Spain are indeed feeling the crisis – they have overbought, overspent, over imagined their material world – they’re like us in that way – but they didn’t change their lifestyle. Ask a Spaniard what they have for breakfast and they will say – one cup of coffee with milk, one piece of toast with olive oil and tomato that has been shuzzed in the blender, a little salt. “I love my breakfast.” “It’s my favorite.” Very simple, very sparse, very Spanish – but they take the time to sit down and savor each sip and each bite.

I am still pushing through my own nervous energy – trying to find a way to relax and to be. I walk by stores filled with all sorts of new shirts, dresses, shoes, and jewelry and I have no desire for any of it. Sure, I don’t have any money to buy any of it, but I wonder who was that person who was getting and spending – I am relieved to see her go.

Again, a cliche, is it the times (crisis), my age (50s), or just the whole impression that I occupied too much of my time in a lifestyle that was not about enjoying but about pursuing – everything – I was always searching, longing, desiring, and spent little time in my own skin, just being.

When I arrived in Morocco with my friend and her friends for a day trip – one had made a list of all she wanted – a hand of Fatima, a scarf, a jilaba … – I walked through the medina, remembering my earlier trip there and thought, “Me,” I said to myself, “I don’t want anything. Everything I have been looking for I’ve found, and now I am.”

I am, I said, to the gods that were already there.

Tin regrouped with his summer friends and spent joyous days on the beach and hanging out with them. But at the end, he cried Gibraltar-size tears when he was parting from Pablo on the last day. Who could blame him – Pablo is simply irresitable.

So on this last night in Zahara when tears were gushing out of Tin’s eyes, I took him to bed and comforted him that Pablo would come visit us in New Orleans (we’ve been asking his parents to let him visit for two years now). Suddenly the crying stopped, and Tin turned to me stone faced and said, “No! I want CARMEN to come to New Orleans.” Carmen from Sevilla – how appropriate to have a summer girlfriend named Carmen who is from Sevilla.

But see, Carmen is not only cute, she and her mother and sister are in his band. Natch.