I made a big investment in bikinis for this sabbatical.
Between the surfing, paddle boarding, and coastal stops, I knew I’d be wearing a lot of them. So, I tried them on, one after the other, teals, fuchsias, blacks, oranges—all shapes, several sizes. I preened and posed in tiny dressing rooms, envisioning myself wearing them in Mexico, California, Nicaragua, Washington.
But I never saw myself walking down the street in them in El Portil, Spain, my face turning a matching fuchsia as I lugged a kayak behind me. Or Dani, lugging the other side, doubled over in laughter while occasionally yelling out “Donde está el agua?” (Where’s the water?) to the fully-clothed families with strollers, groups of middle-schoolers, and the occasional elderly couple walking hand-in-hand, eyes wide as they passed us by.
SMH. You have got to be kidding me. Que verguenza (How embarrassing!).
We hadn’t intended to walk down the street, of course. The plan was to kayak between the small islands that form a bay in the Atlantic off the coast of Portil and then kayak back to the beach we started from. After about 15 minutes of paddling in one place, it became clear the current was too strong to kayak all the way back to the beach we’d parked at. We rowed onto the closest beach and attempted to walk, but eventually we ran out of sand. There was just rock between us and the place we needed to be. So, we took to the boardwalk, and when that ran out to the sidewalk.
Even with its ample beaches Southern Spain is not Waikiki. Street walking in a bikini through the city remains, if not socially unacceptable, highly discouraged. This is a fact I have been acutely aware of for over 16 years. It is consistently reported in every Spanish guidebook. And I have never seen anyone in Spain walking around in a bikini outside of a beach, and I have been to a lot of Spanish beaches. I know this might seem odd since it is socially acceptable to be topless on the beach in Spain, but I don’t make the rules. I just try to live within them. Hence, the wide-eyed onlookers and my fuchsia cheeks when we broke them.
We eventually reached a street corner about 5 minutes from the car, and Dani suggested that I wait with the kayak while he got the car. Relief. Now, I could hide my body and my embarrassment behind the kayak.
And that’s how I found myself like this:
Or more accurately, when the camera was off, cowering behind a kayak on a corner in El Portil, avoiding the eyes of the rubberneckers that rolled by.
I busied myself with life jackets and paddles while the couple parked nearest to the kayak stared as they backed their car out. I lied through my teeth to the elderly man who stepped out of his house to ask if “Todo esta bien?” “Yes sir, yes sir, everything is fine.” I love standing on street corners in swimwear. I do it on the reg.
Everything, of course, was fine (even if not socially acceptable).
Dani returned with the car. I put on clothes. We loaded the kayak, and then headed to his parents’ house in nearby Huelva for dinner. We even took another walk—fully clothed—around the neighborhood I used to live in 16 years ago in Huelva before we ate.
And now I not only have the memory of an afternoon kayaking to beautiful beaches on an unexpected summerlike day in Spain, but my subconscious has a new defense the next time I find myself dreaming I’m naked in front of crowd, a court, or on a street: a kayak.
And you have a picture of what it feels like to leave your job and take a self-imposed year off. Sometimes, it’s like an endless summer kayak (or a cross country road trip). Sometimes it looks like this:
But, for me at least, it’s also like this:
Vulnerable. Uncomfortable. Unexpected. Unfiltered.
And it’s never been more so than this last month.
The places I’ve encountered living abroad
Being in another country for more than a visit and particularly for a relationship, has a way of tapping into these places and parts of me that I either never knew existed, or thought I’d buried a long time ago.
Like that place where I feel confident and competent, a place born of years of hard work, small victory after small victory, and therapy. Who knew it could be rocked by a night out with four Sevillanos (people from Seville) in which even when I understood the heavily-accented words they were saying, I often had to say—“right, right, but what do you mean?” No entiendo.
Or the place where I thought I’d become more open, less judgmental, more understanding. A place born of my earlier years living in Spain and Argentina, 20 + years of travel, and a lifetime of surrounding myself with people who are different than me. Yet, I find my patience running thin, my tongue turning sharp, and my mind thinking “we do this better in America,” when a waitress informs me just why the customer (i.e., me) is wrong, or a shopkeeper tells me he can’t sell me something I’m holding at the check-out line, or when I find myself endlessly waiting to be attended to at a business, because everything, EVERYTHING in Spain seems like it can happen mañana.
But there’s also that place where I feel shy and introverted, yet I push past it to find the part that will show up to brunch with 15 ex-pat women I’ve never met, or exchange numbers with a stranger after an unexpected conversation in a clothing store, because even the shy and introverted need friends.
There’s the part of me that ignores the place filled with verguenza and asks clumsy questions so she doesn’t get on the wrong bus. The part that delights herself in a view of the Spanish countryside from the train on her way back from a midweek trip to Madrid.
That can’t get enough of the ocean view from Cádiz, or the selfies you take in front of it with good friends who come to visit.
The part that seems to like shopping if it’s for boho pants (or, apparently, bikinis).
That stands outside the entryway to the apartment she lived in 16 years ago, next to the man she once let walk her to that home because he promised to take her to the beach in his car, and has the courage to confront the questions: What if she had done it differently? Would that have made her happy? What if she does it differently this time around?
***
Author and travel writer Jedidiah Jenkins says that “when [we] don’t know what to do, [we] travel. [We] go out and see. [We] have to rattle the bed, shake [ourselves] out.”
I feel like I’m being shaken. Like something is rattling around inside, trying to get out.
I just hope that when it gets out, it decides to wear more than a cheeky fuchsia bikini. Some things in life make great memories but, por favor, once is enough.