Ca, I remember Papi coming to the hospital and saying two things. Of course, he said more. It was the summer of the Olympics in Barcelona. Before you were born we had spent two weeks there an hour away, in La Escala in a villa with black gates on windows and doors to let the cool ocean breeze in.They spoke Catalan there which I could understand because of my Spanish and French. Instead of driving on an autobahn in Germany, having to go to the left for one moment and having a Mercedes come right behind me with lights and a horn blaring going 180 kilometers an hour which always made me jump, I found that whenever anyone there saw my German license plates they got the heck out of the way.In a mischievous way, I was kind of happy, not for the others on the road, but for the Karma which came back to me, even though I did not behave the way the "Mercedes" did.It was the German way then to get their frustrations out on the autobahn. In my life I have probably sped, actually did, but I really do not understand it. There is an old Spanish poem which I will cite later. It begins with, "Como era, Dios Mio, Como era? Era como el pasaje de la brisa?(Still minus accent marks.) ( Still do not know how to do upside down question marks on the computer.) It is about how fast life goes by. So why do people speed and try to make life go by faster?
One day , when Papi came to the hospital, you were awake and he held you in his arms and asked you in Spanish," Que vas a ser? Una campeonata de beber leche? (spelling things wrong- just a draft) You father was not destined to go the Olympics. He failed swimming, so he was not on the list.
The parents of my roommate visited and remarked to their daughter about all three of us, just two words, "Spat gluck" (minus the umlaut which you will have to teach me how to do.)