The secret to an Old World Life ...
That enchanted summer …Many years ago, I had a chance to live in Seville, Spain, for seven weeks in the summer. I lived in old apartment building by the Guadalquivir River and I could walk anywhere I needed to go.I walked to the language school in a former 19th century house three stories high with a fountain in the middle courtyard and orange and green patterned tiles on the floors, that cobblestone street with all the smashed oranges on it, the old man’s bar where they watched bullfights on the TV and drank wine out of flat bottomed glasses, the cafe where it only cost 25 american cents for a café con leche. I still have a blue and white azulejo tile I pulled out of a construction dumpster. I’ve propped it on a windowsill almost every place I’ve lived since then. Right now it’s in my bathroom on the ledge made by the bead board wainscoting.New World BluesI came from Dallas, a city where it’s impossible to go to a museum or a grocery store or a cafe if you don’t own a car. I could see my office building from my apartment window but it took me an hour and a half to arrive there by bus.I felt like I had died and gone to heaven those seven weeks in Seville, I had no idea people could live like that. Standing on a bridge over the Río Guadalquivir trying to look like I am not posing for this picture. I think I have gum in my mouth.vowing to returnWhen I returned to my hot ground floor apartment I sank into a depression. I had to get back to Europe – or I might die.About ten months later, after a lot of obsessing, essay writing, and one actual miracle, I won a scholarship to study in Spain. After that I took a job teaching English to first, second, third, and fourth graders in France. I didn’t stay nearly long enough, but every day over there was a gift. MindsetEven before I ever went to France, I had a favorite quote. It’s been my favorite quote for more than 20 years. It’s from Ernest Hemingway: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”I think he’s saying that mindset is the most important thing. Mindset. Hemingway was ahead of his time. Such a trendy word. I like that word a lot.An Old World Life for usYears ago I overheard a girl talking wedding plans with her friends – A day-after-the-wedding brunch, she said, was “so Old-World-y.”I imagined a long table outside underneath some lush green trees with big pink flowers and huge orangey-pink mimosas at every place. Old-word-y = happy, free, coffee on terraces, beautiful streets, and weight loss. Old World means to me what Paul Newman meant to Erma Bombeck.Kentucky and an Old World FarmhouseI’ve made my life here in the States, in rural Kentucky. We have a really old, antique farmhouse that needs a lot of fixing up. Its tall doors and transom windows remind me so much of the house (apartment) in Madrid I stayed in one summer. I like to sit on my front porch and drink pear brandy with my
