Esperar

At the beginning of what has become a life-long love affair with Spanish, I remember struggling with the word esperar.  It seemed so imprecise to an American English speaker.  How could a word mean, collectively, to wait, to expect, and to hope?  During my second year living in Nicaragua, I began to appreciate the creative implications of this word’s ambiguity.  Think of the range of meanings in this simple statement: “te estaré esperando“!  [Not surprisingly, Babel Fish can't deal with this and spits out "I will be hoping to you."]

When I think about the idea of home, I think about esperar.  Going to both Berlin and Italy last month had elements of home.  In Berlin, there were so many people, both friends and colleagues, to get together with.  Though there was too little time, I will be back there for three weeks starting Sunday, and am now trying to work out how many Thanksgiving parties I will be cooking pumpkin pie for.

Then, as I was schlepping my suitcase down the boardwalk in the precious little Cinque Terre town of Monterosso, following the instructions to the hotel where we were to meet, what should I hear but my mother calling my name?  She’d planted herself in a restaurant that faced the ocean, and, having miscalculated the time I’d need to arrive from Milano, had been scanning faces for hours.  What a strange sensation it was to hear her voice, I can tell you.

I’ve started surveying other people in various states of displacement.  M., when I asked, said home is where her parents are, even though they’ve eschewed her hometown in greater New York for god-knows-where in Florida.  Desparecido said it’s somewhere that one is a gusto.  For me, I know that home has very little to do with place, but is, rather, someone waiting/hoping/expecting me.  And this explains why I am, quite simply, a wreck when I live alone.  But despite my struggles with placeless-ness, I am lucky in one important way: I have many homes all across the world, with people dear to me, esperándome.