Summer in Spain normally falls somewhere between ‘lava’ and ‘the sun’s core’ on the temperature spectrum. Madrid is smack dab in the middle of the desert, and living in the suburban part of the region only decreased the suck factor by about five. Maybe five and a half, if you’re feeling generous. The dryness, the oppressive sun, the perfectly blue sky, nobody sane spent more than a couple minutes in the sun. It just was not done. You either spent the time inside hoping the air conditioner would actually work this year (it wouldn’t, and then you were off to the store to find the cheapest fan possible) or safely submerged in the lukewarm water of the local community pool.

The summer of 2004 was no exception. Our local pool was a cesspool of bacteria that would probably give you cancer in a few years if you stayed in for too long, so I usually went over to my friend Elvira’s apartment complex to use their pool. When we weren’t there, we were inside playing with our dolls, or watching a Disney movie, whatever had caught our interest that day. Weekends would be spent in the city itself, visiting my grandparents and going on painful walks through the historical parts while my parents droned on like bees about whatever it was that was supposed to be interesting. Art museums, the houses of famous Spanish playwrights, and more museums filled those afternoons. A five year old like myself of course, was wildly excited about this.

Time passed like molasses, each day blending together in a blur of heat, Disney princesses, and popsicles. Somehow, we arrived to July, and then something… different happened.

“We’re going to be moving to the US.”

I wasn’t old enough to understand the details, just that it had to do with my parents’ work. Even if I had known the details I wouldn’t have cared. I was being expected to leave every single one of my friends in Spain, go to a country where I only half-understood the language (my mother’s attempts to make me fully bilingual had not taken), and go from seeing my doting grandparents from once a week to once a year. I did the rational thing. I threw a total hissy fit and got sent to my room without dessert.

There was a (hopefully metaphorical) storm cloud hovering above my head for the next week or so. That’s how long it took me to realize that there was nothing I could do about the situation, that we were moving to the US no matter what my opinions on the matter were, and my attitude was just making me and everyone around me miserable. Well, my epiphany used much smaller words, but that is the embellished version. I decided that since we still had a month left in Spain, I would make the best use of it that I could, or so help me.

The rest of my time there was spent on zoo trips (I was not above using my resentment of the situation to guilt-trip my parents into presents, but what can I say, I was a spoiled little kid), playing dress-up with my friends, and the many, many hijinks that took place while packing for the trip. The most notable was the one time I used one of the boxes as a sort of sled to go down the attic stairs and ended up in the emergency room needing stitches. Oops?

Unfortunately, our time in Spain had a deadline, and that deadline screeched to a halt in front of us far too soon. Tears were shed, hugs were exchanged, and soon-to-be-broken promises to write were made. It was all very picturesque, but my memories of our last hours there could not assuage the seeds of fear that had finally lodged themselves in my mind.

I had been to the US a couple times to visit my mother’s family, but that was different. For one, we were going to be living in the Washington area, and my grandparents lived all the way up in Michigan. The distance between the two places was longer than the total diameter of Spain. But mostly, I was not going to know anyone. Making friends is a terrifying thing to do and the many experts that I just made up in my head strongly advise against it. Becoming emotionally dependent on someone who isn’t related to you by blood, and thus, might not have any moral objections to stabbing you in the throat, is a scary and probably irrational thing that for some reason, we are advised to do. Or maybe I was just completely overreacting and making very big molehills out of very small molehills. Both are very valid points that I might have been very interest