Credit: Miquel Benitez/Getty Images
When I moved with my husband and two young children from Brooklyn to coastal Spain late last year, we did not anticipate staying put; we’d planned to use the opportunity to explore as much of the Mediterranean as possible. The fountains of Rome, the Pillars of Hercules, carpe diem, and all that. But tragedy after tragedy struck, and the pandemic rages on.
Unable to travel, we’ve been mostly stuck on one remote hilltop, nestled in the fragrant orange and persimmon groves outside Valencia, and the pandemic’s instead granted us the rare and unexpected luxury of slowly, intimately becoming familiar with our new adoptive country, its people, plants, and peculiarities. Lovely and fascinating as it is here in the Sierra Calderona, however, as the holidays approach, there’s a new sadness setting in from being so far from old friends and extended family, and I’ve been