Spain Again? Really?

 As we sat quietly on the plane wondering why we weren’t going anywhere, the pilot got on the PA system and explained to all of us in a loud, clear voice that came through just fine, that the mechanics had told him the PA system wasn’t working and that they were trying to fix it.

The situation wasn’t improved by the fact that the list of movies included eight Harry Potter titles (who knew?), four Hobbit movies, two Shreks and a lot of films with very uncompelling descriptions (like “A mother of three is gifted a nanny by her brother. Marlo comes to form a unique bond with the nanny named Tully.” I could go on, but why).

On a positive note there is no one sitting to my left, and for the first time in 7 or more trips to Spain, I actually recognized the person who sat down to my right. It’s Martha. 

The fact that I’m going to Spain for the first time with my wife is delightful in many ways, but also raises a logistical issue around how to introduce her. Spanish is a very male-oriented language. I generally try to just let Spain be Spain, but this is a tricky one. The Spanish word for husband is the pretty benign marido. One might expect the word for wife to be marida (words ending in o are masculine and a are feminine). But the word marida doesn’t exist. Rather, there are two words for wife in Spanish – mujer, which means “woman,” and esposa, which means “handcuff.” I refuse to use these words because despite my insensitivity they are just too much for me. “This is Martha, my woman,” for example. 

A sort of woke word that is just starting to be used as an alternative in some circles is pareja, or “partner.” This one is not offensive, but it seems almost like it invites judginess, like it should only be used by men wearing hemp drawstring pants, or maybe it’s only for couples who feel like they’re too good to use words that have worked just fine for centuries. And it introduces uncertainty; I continually used pareja in my Spanish class at Hood, which caused the students to assume that we were  living together but not married (they later told me this). Maybe I’m overthinking this, but I may just introduce her as “Martha.”

Regardless, there’s nothing about any of this that a couple of glasses of wine won’t fix, so that’s where I’m going now. Then I’ll probably watch a movie that has a bunch of explosions in it and next thing I know, we'll be in Barcelona.