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Spain adopted a motto for tourism that said simply Spain Is Different and it is. We are now in Zagreb, in Croatia, in Eastern Europe – difference is everywhere, but I digress.

I was with a friend in Spain and we walked into a boutique to look at the new fall line of clothes. The shopkeeper who I knew from before was chatting with us and she asked my Spanish friend, “Do you only have one child” and without blinking my friend said, “I have two sons, but one died with my husband in a car accident.” Pause. We continued looking at the clothes and my friend bought a few pieces.

Later, walking on the beach together, my friend said it had been nine years and this year, on the anniversary of the accident, she hadn’t noticed the date and it went by. This was the first time this had happened. She said afterwards she felt guilty. I said take it as a positive sign rather than not.

And this is something I have noticed with all Spaniards, how their challenges and tragedies are incorporated into the fabric of their lives, unlike in the U.S. where we place our tragedies, our loss, our regrets, outside of our vision of what our life is about – as if they don’t belong to us, as if they don’t have a place in our perfect lives, and there my dear readers is the difference in Spain.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 18th, 2012 at 8:52 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.