Giants, Windmills, and Exercise Equipment in Spain

 

I had thought it would be Miguel de Cervantes’ house. But the most inspiring part of Alcala de Henares was a small, sun-filled park with a row of exercise equipment for the elderly.

I have never been the traveling type. She always has been. She had seen London, Paris, Madrid. My family had lived in the same rural corner of Maryland for 350 years. We met at a college she attended because it was far from her home, and that I attended because it was an hour from mine. So when she asked me to join her in Alcala de Henares, home of the author of Don Quixote,  I thought the destination was fitting motivation for me to overcome my doubts and fears and take a plane into uncharted (for me, anyway) territory.

Alcala is a town filled with a thousand small things that deserve to have long stories written about them. There is a university where successful graduates were historically rewarded with town-wide parties lasting multiple days, and failures were chased out in shame. There is a convent with nuns so dedicated to their life of seclusion that they sell candied almonds via rotating trays build into the convent’s walls. And, of course, there is the house of perhaps the most famous Spanish author in history. A man with a legacy so imprinted on European culture that the European Space Agency sent a copy of Don Quixote into space to symbolize Spanish achievement.

All those things, amazing as they were, failed to stamp my soul like that park. Located near the center of the town, where a bronze statue of Cervantes watches over passers-by, we found the park as we were walking back from the convent. Bags of candied almonds in our hands, we curiously studied the exercise equipment installed along one edge of the unassuming park. We walked along the line of equipment, trying one machine after the other, laughing as we attempted to decipher the directions for their use.

And then suddenly, standing there in the sun with her, I could see into the future; or at least what I hoped was the future. I saw a couple once again in Alcala de Henares, in this small park, next to this line of exercise equipment. Grey-haired and bright eyed, this couple had shared a lifetime of adventures together. They were two lives lived as one, greater than the sum of their parts. I wanted that future. I needed it.

The future loomed like a giant, or perhaps a windmill, in front of me. I trembled at the possibilities, uncertain and ephemeral, that danced in my mind and prodded my fears and doubts. It was a journey I feared to take, but wanted with every fiber of my being to embark upon. I wasn’t prepared; I had no plan; I was on unknown terrain and out of my element. But as I stood in the park thinking of the years ahead, of an old couple so comfortable, so connected to each other, I knew exactly what I wanted. Fears were swept aside, and the towering giant seemed a little smaller. And so I gathered my courage and spurred my horse like the Man of La Mancha.

            We celebrated our first anniversary last July, and welcomed our first son into the world in October.  He is a handsome, joyous boy with his mother’s nose and my ears. I look at him and see a world of possibilities in front of him, as yet unfettered by the fears and limitations that the outside world tries to foist upon the human spirit. His travels are still spread out in front of him.  His life is a book not only unwritten, but still unbound; a road not only untraveled, but still waiting for the first footprints to mark the path. I imagine his future, travels and trials, triumphs and tragedies, looming before him like so many giants. They wait for him to lower the lance, and spur the horse.

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