Breaking My Arms Around the Ones I Love

As I sit in front of the screen, listening to The National, candles lighting the room and thinking back on this weekend, I feel full...oddly complete and so calm, the kind that makes you smile and say, "Yes, this is what it is to be happy." In the background, The National is singing out a lyric that portrays exactly what I feel:

How can anybody know
How they got to be this way
You must have known I'd do this someday
Break my arms around the one I love
And be forgiven by the time my lover comes
Break my arms around my love

"daughters of the soho riders"

And I think, it is not around one I break my arms, but many, so many people that make me want to hold them, to love and to give endlessly because I get so much in return for it. This weekend was "girls just want to have fun time". On Friday, we got dressed, put on lipstick and headed to a cool restaurant where cosmopolitans and martinis were the thing to order. After, we went around El Raval to have beers and then back to our neighborhood town to finish it off with a little dancing. I was delighted to be surrounded by so many wonderful women, laughing, dancing and simply loving to live.

The next morning, Gisela, Mary Alice and I woke up nice and early to catch a ride with Alex and Monica, north to Girona. The day doused us with sunshine as we caught up on a few more minutes of much needed sleep in the car. Once in Girona, which is such an amazing town, we made our way into the old part of town, where we wandered into a church. The church caretaker approached us and next thing you know we were getting a free tour of a church built in the 14oo's. He took us into places that only open for special events and we were thrilled to get this kind of treatment. I think he was thrilled to share this excitement with us, since all the attention is usually on the Cathedral of Girona...lucky for us we know how to find the smaller things in life. After the hour tour, we sat on the front steps of the cathedral and let the sun pour down on us. We decided to calmly stroll around the town, no plan in mind, find a sunny terrace to eat lunch, shop a little and then have a coffee in a marble tabled cafe and wait for Alex and Monica to call us and you know what? that's exactly what we did. The day could not have been more perfect. We ate in the sun, romanticized, bought fresh tea, a new mustard yellow purse and had mochas. A Saturday could not have been better spent, even if we were exhausted and needed to sleep. I laughed with the girls and told them, today we simply get to be girls, eat, shop and treat ourselves to chocolate and coffee. I was breaking my arms.

After a day of fullness, we headed back home, took much needed naps at 8 in the evening, only to wake up and go eat sushi, have a beer and drag our tired bodies back home to sleep.

Then there was today, Sunday. We woke up when our bodies told us, okay, I'm ready to begin the day.
We went to our neighborhood vermouth spot, started the day with a pick me upper and then came back home to make lunch. I had Jordi, Alex, Monica, Mary Alice, Amy, Charlotte and Julia all around me, waiting for my food, chatting and helping me in the kitchen. As simple as that but as fullAfter a long slow lunch, Susanna and Sergi came over for coffee and chocolate cake and to help me hang up some bookshelves in my room. Yes! Finally I have a new desk, shelves and a dresser to store and organize my life...And now I sit in my room, sipping on Vanilla/Cinnamon/Cardamon tea that I bought yesterday...breaking and breaking my arms all over again, but it's not just around one, it's many. All these people, all these faces that give me so many smiles and that remind me that living is exactly this, remembering to do what you love most as big or small as it might be. And so I tuck yet another Sunday into my memory box and look around my now re-arranged room and think this is how I got to be this way...and I will keep breaking my arms.

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