Watch this short video and just try to keep a dry eye. I had tears running down both cheeks, casi a moco tendido. And I work closely with pregnant women (and men) every day! How sweet that they were able to share some of the intimate thrills of pregnancy with the fathers.
Here’s a picture of my parents when they were pregnant with me.
I really wish my parents didn’t live so far away on days like today so I could give them a big hug. If you remember, they live in Nicaragua. I’m going to visit them in December, though, and I can’t wait. I long to see them, and I long to be in Latin America again. And exploring a new country! (Too bad relations between Colombia and Nicaragua these days are getting thornier.) I know I talk about my adopted Colombian families on this blog significantly more than my own, but that’s only because my blog is focused on Spanish and, as you can imagine, time with my family is 99.9% in English. All that being said, my family is wonderful. My siblings are all such talented, deep, colorful and good-hearted people, and my parents are too cool for words. Mm, let’s see: they live in Nicaragua, and they’re about to buy land in the countryside to start a sustainable farm where they’ll raise tilapia, chickens, plantains, and tomatoes. What else do you need to know? Having grown up in Venezuela, my mom speaks Spanish, and my dad is a very, very, very juicioso learner. I’m so proud of his progress and his efforts. I know that the first year thrown into an all-Spanish environment can be dizzying, discouraging, and daunting, but the second year gets so much better. Soon I’ll be asking him to remind me how to say words. I hope he rubs it in.
What is my dad like? Here, I found an old chat where I told my mom that an old boyfriend reminded me of my dad, probably the highest compliment I could pay anyone. When she pressed me about what I meant, I said this:
well, he reminds me of dad because he’s really calm and coolheaded. quieter, very creative and “zany,” affectionate, makes me laugh like a little girl (exactly the way that dad makes you laugh), and laughs uproariously at everything I have to say
Yes, my dad is all of those fantastic things. We can also throw in fair, gentle, serving, smart, humble, and adoring/uxorious. Sure, he’s not perfect, but he has always been an encouragement and a source of support to me. Here’s a picture of the two of us at the beach and pictures of him playing with Nicaraguan kids at the burn hospital where he and my mom volunteer. I think it’s obvious how loving, fun, and kind he is.
I thought for a long time about how to incorporate Valentine’s Day into a post. Last year I wrote about an anti-Valentine’s Day backlash in Colombia, and that old post has been peered at by many fresh pairs of eyes in the last week or so. If you want to learn Valentine’s Day or love vocabulary, I’m certain that lists abound on the internet. The world doesn’t need another post on any of that, though. I suppose, then, that I wanted to say something explicit and non-evasive for once about love. The fact is that there is love brimming over in every one of my posts here; each one is an encrypted love letter, some of those valentines more thinly veiled than others. You probably just don’t catch the allusions, quotes, or entreaties. Raised very religiously, I always find myself wanting to confess. I guess I wanted to come clean with my motives. Maybe all writers, though, have their secret reasons for writing. Perhaps a great deal of us write to many what we wish we had the courage to say to one. Like Gabriel García Márquez, soy escritora por timidez.
Speaking of García Márquez, I started to reread El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera) yesterday. Does there exist a book that is more romantic than this one? No? I rest my case. Not that I’ve read every book out there ni mucho menos, but I still feel secure in making that bold statement. For me, its romanticism can’t be topped. To be sure, I mean all the meanings of romantic, both good and bad. However, I don’t mean romantic as in mushy, kiss-kiss, chocolate and flowers and stuffed animals and all that other cursilería. For better or for worse, this book is romance par excellence. If you’re the romantic type like I am, it may be somewhat of a dangerous read. Of course, I discovered that when it was already far too late. In any case, I already had all of those silly notions safely dwelling in me, so it’s not like the book put them there. It certainly didn’t disabuse me of any of them, though. Ojo, let no one read it as a how-to on love or happiness unless you’re content to wait several decades.
I’ve written once before about rereading Cien años de soledad. A difference with this reread, however, is that I’m reading the same copy of El amor en los tiempos del cólera that I read the first time. (I chose to leave my beautiful copy of Cien años de soledad in Colombia.) The book’s certainly seen its better days. It’s battered and stained, the spine has fallen off, and you can pluck certain pages right out, but it has love and character and a story. I bought it at a used bookstore in downtown Medellín the day before I decided to move back to the U.S. In fact, I bought two books that day, and it was directly because of one very specific word on the first page of the other book that my ex and I decided to call it quits. Of course, I left that book behind as well. We’d gone to that bookstore specifically to look for El amor en los tiempos del cólera, and I just chanced upon the other book while browsing solo in the very cramped and low-ceilinged upstairs section of the bookstore. Who knows, maybe I’d still be living in Colombia if I hadn’t decided to read GGM’s second most popular book or hadn’t wandered up that creaky staircase to curiosear. La curiosidad mató al gato; just like in English, curious cats in Latin America meet a very lamentable fate. What if, what if, what if . . .
Earlier today I reread a fabulous, prize-winning essay out there on rayar libros–writing in books. Do our marginal scribblings give us away? Are the passages that we passionately underline emblems of our souls? What can you learn about a person by reading a book they’ve read? Can you communicate with someone through a book? What about a blog? Why do we spill our hearts in the most ineffectual places? Vaya usted a saber . . .
I’ve always loved “Marginalia” by Billy Collins, a poem exalting the art of peripheral commentary. Here’s the last part:
Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- “Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.
“How vastly my loneliness was deepened, / how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed . . .” Yes. If this isn’t an effective apologia for marginalia, I don’t know what would be.
What does one find in my books? If they’re in Spanish, hundreds of definitions. Are these the most representative messengers of who I am? Maybe so. Besides vocabulary words, what did I underline in El amor en los tiempos del cólera? ¿Qué me movió muchas fibras? Where did I feel myself most compenetrada, most aludida?
–Aprovecha ahora que eres joven para sufrir todo lo que puedas–le decía–, que estas cosas no duran toda la vida.*
Hoy, al verlo, me di cuenta que lo nuestro no es más que una ilusión.
–Es feo y triste–le dijo a Fermina Daza–pero es todo amor.*
. . . se consagraba a la pérdida del tiempo.
. . . nunca hubiera admitido la realidad de que Florentino Ariza, para bien o para mal, era lo único que le había ocurrido en la vida.
–Rico no–dijo–: soy un pobre con plata, que no es lo mismo.*
Florentino Ariza escribía cualquier cosa con tanta pasión, que hasta los documentos oficiales parecían de amor. Los manifiestos de embarque le salían rimados por mucho que se esforzara en evitarlo . . .*
Fermina Daza había rechazado a Florentino Ariza en un destello de madurez que pagó de inmediato con una crisis de lástima, pero nunca dudó de que su decisión había sido certera.
. . . la seguridad, el orden, la felicidad, cifras inmediatas que una vez sumadas podrían tal vez parecerse al amor: casi el amor. Pero no lo eran . . .
Esta cuca es mía.
Quería ser otra vez ella misma, recuperar todo cuanto había tenido que ceder en medio siglo de una servidumbre que no la había hecho feliz, sin duda, pero que una vez muerto el esposo no le dejaba a ella ni los vestigios de su identidad . . . quién estaba más muerto: el que había muerto o la que se había quedado.
. . . aquel amor irreal.
¿Por qué te empeñas en hablar de lo que no existe?
I put stars next to my favorite lines. People, don’t you see that you need to drop everything and read this book as soon as humanly possible?
Previous owners of the book had written a few things as well. Doña Duque G. is written in neat, feminine cursive in the margin of page 73, and pages 173, 273, and 373 say D ² G. at the top. While this initially seemed bewildering, I now see that my copy of the book has 473 pages. I guess that from these mile markers, Doña Duque could say to herself, Only four hundred more pages to go . . . only three hundred more pages . . . only two hundred more pages, ¡ya casi! Was this a punishment meted out to her by someone? Doña Duque G., the state will pardon your crime if you read this horribly schmaltzy mamotreto. Or did she shed a tear every time she reached the 73 mark as she was forced to realize that her time with the amazing book was rapidly running out and, similarly, she would one day cease as well?
On the title page, you can see that a name was once written in pencil before being erased. Oh, what wretched instruments erasers are! The same goes for White-out. They should be banned, rounded up, and destroyed. The last name looks like Posaada. No idea about the rest of it. One of the pages has also been ripped out. Naturally, this literary vandalism also speaks volumes. On the back of the book is an old yellow sticker that $15000←SET. As you can see, I clearly need to go back to Medellín to claim the rest of the set that was never given to me. I also want to buy more books and find more stories tucked inside stories.
So many people travel from country to country and spend so much money on counseling to find themselves, but maybe they would discover just as much, if not more, were they to pore through the books they’ve read and loved and see what stirred them in lives past. Perhaps life is too short to reread books when there are so many wonderful books out there, but it’s also far too long not to remember. And if books can be revisited and relived, then maybe certain times of life can also be returned to and even edited and reissued. If nothing else, marginalia lets us speak out of our loneliness and possibly right into that of a stranger who may even have something to shyly say back to us. Will anyone ever find our navel-gazing blog posts or heated Facebook comment discussions in 3013? Most likely not. Instead, immortalize yourself and emblazon your being on the future with a book and a pen. Someone will tenderly scrutinize it, someone will wonder, surely someone will read your barbaric yawp and care.
You’ve all clammed up! Am I blogging to an empty room? A void? A mirror? Are the hundred plus daily visits due to nothing more than a pack of hungry spam bots descending on my blog? Hmm. Well, spammers need to learn Spanish, too, I guess. I know, you’re all scrambling for Valentine’s dates. No? OK, it’s just me, then. Well, whatever the mysterious reasons are, you’re all completely entitled to them, of course.
I can’t believe that, given the green light to share about encouraging feedback you’ve gotten on your Spanish, only one person jumped at the chance. It wasn’t about gloating; it was about congratulating ourselves on our hard work and the progress we’ve made. If I were to blog about every time I feel discouraged, annoyed with myself, disheartened, embarrassed, like a failure, as if all were hopeless–! I’d have to write something like twenty posts a day. Instead, I filter out all that negative self-talk, forget the embarrassing episodes, remember the positive feedback, and think of everything I can say and do. And I trudge forward. If I’ve made so much progress in three and a half years and I’ve barely been trying, just imagine where I could be in three more years if I were to ponerme las pilas!
And the last post? Who knows, maybe it just wasn’t your cup of tea. Or maybe you were rendered commentless. I know the feeling; I must read fifty or so blogs via Google Reader and yet only comment on around four. Even my favorite blog whose posts I practically live for and of which I devour every word and then lick the plate clean over and over– I only comment there once in a very blue moon. I can’t very well ask you to comment more and lurk less when I myself am the queen of lurking. I know we all mean well. And sometimes you just need a comment vacation. Silence is golden, eh?
Maybe things have gotten too heady? Well, let’s lighten the mood. How could we have a little fun around here? Hey, I know–a cat video! America’s number one pastime: watching funny cat videos on Youtube! Wait, wait. Cats on a bat site? That won’t do. Wait a minute, wait a minute; what is this I see on the Colombian station Caracol today? A bat video? Unbelievable! Another day in the sun for us chimbilás!
So, I edited the video so you’re only seeing this segment (which was sandwiched between some other news stories) and put it on Youtube. It’s about . . . wait for it . . . a BAT ORPHANAGE in Australia. (Bat World Sanctuary) Pero, ¡qué pecaooo! I absolutely promise you, you have never seen bats looking so adorable. (Not even this one) They’re bundled up in little blankets, drinking milk from bottles, squeaking, crawling, and everything. Plus, you can listen to a Colombian accent. What’s not to love?
There used to be a Youtube video here– waaaaaahhhh
If this doesn’t warm your hearts, I don’t know what would. I could also create some Lolbats images (I can has inzects?), but I don’t want to try too hard to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Comments or no comments, you know I’ll keep blogging about Spanish and keep inviting you to enjoy along with me. Thanks for reading, friends.
Update: The video got blocked! (copyright infringement, whoops) Noooooo. Qué bruta. Come on, Caracol, not even for a language blog that only sings the praises of Colombian speech and culture? It’s not like I’m making any money here. Hmm. Well, I’ll work on it. This bat is nothing if not recursiva. No time to fix it now, though. Maybe in a few hours.
We did a load of laundry a while back, but we didn’t quite finish. There’s still another pile in the hamper, still a few more laundry vocab terms to go over. OK, so maybe more than a few. There’s no excuse for each and every one of you to not be fluent Spanish laundry speakers after these two exhaustive lists. I charge ye to go forth and launder, my little bats. But first a word from one of our Colombian sponsors, Shakira, who, as you can see by her tattoo, is just as enthusiastic about laundry as I am (and probably much better at selling it).
First things first. Where is all this exciting laundry action going down? In the laundry room, of course. Most homes in Latin America don’t have a laundry room como tal, but more modern ones sometimes do. Whether they have a washing machine or just a washtub/sink (or both), it’s very likely in the kitchen, just off the kitchen, or in some other nook in the house. That room or area can be called one of a million things depending on the country. Possibilities include lavadero, área de ropas, lavandería, zona de lavandería, cuarto de la lavadora, cuarto de lavar, área de lavado, zona de lavado, cuarto de lavado, sala de lavado, pieza de lavado, and loggia. That last one, la loggia, is said in Chile, and I find it charming because it reminds me of one my favorite movies, A Room with a View. Though I don’t think a Chilean laundry room is quite the setting Eleanor Lavish had in mind for the characters in her novel . . .
Most Latin American households are fitted with one of these beauties. Behold.
Properly attired with a cepillo and a bar of jabón REY
The most common names for this double sink are lavadero and pila.
What’s our mission? To kill the dirt. That is, la mugre, la suciedad, la roña.
We want to take especial care with items that are percudidos. Percudido? Percudir? I’m glad you asked. When your clothes get percudido, it can mean one of two things. One meaning is when the dirt gets really deep-set in your whites, producing an insidious grime that doesn’t come out just because you ask it to. It’s when your whites get grubby and dull and blah. That’s percudido. Men, you’ve probably noticed this around the collars and cuffs (los cuellos y los puños) of your shirts. Women, probably your bras. Watch this commercial, El misterio del brasier percudido, and it will all be made clear to you.
So, another one of our goals for our laundry session will be to despercudir la ropa percudida. As for the second meaning of percudido, it can also mean what happens to clothes when they’ve been washed too many times–little by little, the fabric gets worn out and starts to deteriorate.
We could just throw our clothes in a washing machine, but where’s the poetry in that? That’s right, there isn’t any. Let’s wash this tanda by hand and see what colorful laundry vocabulary we can’t coax out of the experience.
To sort clothes – clasificar la ropa, separar la ropa por colores (ropa clara/ropa blanca y ropa oscura)
To wet – mojar, humedecer
To soap up – enjabonar
For this, we’re most likely to use bars of soap. This can be called jabón en barra, jabón en pan, or a pastilla de jabón.
To scrub – restregar, tallar(Mex.), fregar, refregar
(Reggaetón is often called restregón by its critics – think about it)
To soak – remojar;to let soak - dejar en remojo, poner en remojo
(Just to mix things up around here a bit. If you know Spanish, I can almost guarantee you can read that Portuguese ad. Môlho is a cognate of remojo from above. How’d you do?)
To rinse – enjuagar
To wring out- exprimir, retorcer, estrujar
To drain, drip dry- (dejar) escurrir
Clothesline, clothes rack – tendedero
Here’s a famous Mexican commercial from back in the day for Rindex detergent. Notice the reference to a dove on a tendedero. I find it really beautiful, especially that last stanza, and I’ve watched it countless times. I’ve put the lyrics below (On the internet for the first time ever! Go me.)
La Lola y la Bartola se dieron un agarrón, querían saber quién usaba el detergente más buenón. De la Bartola su ropa quedó limpia y perfumada, mientras que a la pobre Lola le quedó de la patada. Al mirar los resultados, Lola se puso de llorona por mal tirar su dinero y haber sido tan gastalona. Vuela, vuela palomita, párate en el tendedero. Diles a todas las señoras que Rindex es el mero mero.
If your Mexican Spanish is a little rusty, Rodney did a great job in this post explaining what el mero mero means.
As you know, some clothes can secar al sol (dry in the sun), while others should secar a la sombra (dry in the shade). Another verb for to air dry is orear.
To hang – tender, colgar
Clothespins – pinzas, ganchos, broches, palillos, palitos, horquillas, perros, prensas, and, well, you can look up the rest of them here. I’m worn out. Once again, Chile wins the award for the most interesting term with perros. But what else could be expected from Neruda’s homeland?
Oh, and how could we forget. An imprescindible part of the laundry experience is the soundtrack. There’s a whole genre of music for housewives called música para planchar, and I see no good reason why we can’t enjoy some jams during the entire laundering process in order to break up the tedium. As it’s pretty hard to beat Juan Gabriel, here’s a great song to set the mood.
Sometimes laundry goes haywire. Here’s some help in talking about it.
To fade – desteñirse, decolorarse, desvanecerse
To bleed, run – desteñir, despintarse(Mex.), soltar color, echar tinte
To stretch out - estirarse, agrandarse, ensancharse, dar de sí/darse de sí
To shrink – encogerse, achicarse
There are, of course, all different kinds of encogimiento.
Did I miss anything? Surely not! Believe me, I have scoured the internet, and these two posts form THE list of laundry vocabulary terms in Spanish, the mother of all lists, if you will. Would-be copycats are better off not even wasting their time trying to reproduce such a master file. I don’t think the internet’s big enough for two such lists, anyway. All right, batlings; you’re all set. A very happy and fluent laundering to you!
What about you? Got any laundry experience in Spanish-speaking countries? Did you already know these words? Which ones? If you’re a native Spanish speaker, anything to correct, clarify, comment on or concur with? Which of these words do you use in your country?
. . . because, let’s just face it, not all of your moments in Spanish will be just peachy. Sure, at the beginning you’ll just sit there, a happy-go-lucky statue, your eyes perpetually glazed over and a wan smile on your lips, because you’ll lack the Spanish to shows the depths of other emotions. Once your vocabulary branches out a bit, though, you’ll be able to throw fits of rage, ooze disdain, become rabidly paranoid, be bouncing-off-the-walls giddy, wax poetic to the apple of your eye, and split your sides laughing hysterically. Probably in that order, too– it takes a while before you can really get humor in Spanish and elicit laughter from Spanish speakers with your killer jokes and brilliantly wry comments. Or maybe it was just me. Or them. Ah, well. They knew I thought I was funny, though, and that’s all that counts in the end.
Everyone needs a good cry every once in a while, but sometimes your eyes just mist up a bit out of the blue. You look around quickly to make sure that no one noticed, tilt your head back, hoping the tear duct is a two-way passageway, and wave your hands like little fans in front of your eyes, thinking you can maybe just dry up that telltale moisture. No matter. How do you say that your eyes watered in Spanish? I’m most used to saying and hearing Se me aguaron los ojos. In some places, they say Se me humedecieron los ojos. I remember that in Medellín, they sometimes said Se me chocolatearon los ojos. No joke! Like, my eyes turned to chocolate. I guess if you have brown eyes, this would be a pretty good description of what happens when they turn into brown, melty puddles. Mine are hazel.
@AleRivolta#YoConfiesoque ayer se me aguaron los ojos cuando el abuelito declamó en Colombia tiene Talento (I admit that yesterday I teared up when the grandpa on Colombia’s Got Talent recited poetry)
@DianysPaoQue viejito tan queriidooo, me hizo aguar los ojos #ColombiaTieneTalento (What an adorrrable little old man–he made me tear up)
Wow, I guess I’ve got to see that clip! Be right back . . .
OK, I tracked it down, and, YES, it made me tear up too! This will take just a minute of your time, but it’s well worth it, I promise. Plus, you’ll get a good feel for how Colombian Spanish sounds. The good news is that it’s very clear!
Presenting Jorge Elías Campos in Colombia Tiene Talento:
Wow. Weren’t you taken back by how he read his poetry? Not what you were expecting, was it? And I loved the judges’ feedback. The best part was what he shared at the end about his dream of recovering poetry in the culture, especially for young people, and seeing it gain ground over reggaeton. That and the part at the beginning when he said that poetry has provided him many satisfactions . . . such as letting him capture the hearts of his many girlfriends. And then he said that he’s too sensitive. Oh, what a dear old man. I now have a crush on him. Oh, I’m such a sucker for poets! And I just broke up with one, alas. Such is life.
Back to the topic at hand:
@Byxinaays, me estoy acordando de la peli y se me humedecen los ojos… snif! (I’m remembering the movie and my eyes are watering… sniff!)
A mí se me chocolatearon los ojos e hice un esfuerzo pa´no llorar al leer lo que cuenta don Fernando. (I got tears in my eyes and had to try really hard not to cry when I read what Don Fernando wrote.)
I’ve also read llorarse los ojos, but someone will have to confirm that. In García Márquez, I’ve read anegarse en lágrimas for eyes brimming with tears, which is one step beyond tearing up, but it appears this is pretty literary.
Now you’ll be linguistically prepared the next time your eyes start . . . sniff, sniff . . . chocolating up. Make sure you have some milk on hand.
_________________________________________________ Non-natives, what’s your experience with these verbs? Had you heard them before? How have you heard them used? Where? If you’re a native Spanish speaker, anything to correct, clarify, comment on or concur with?
