Once upon a time, in a land far, far away there was a little boy and a little girl. He lived in building #15, she in #12. Just around the corner from the bottom of their street, they both went through all their years of school before entering university and when they would later have children they, too, would attend this school. A block from the top of the street was their church and a bit further down, their post office. The park he spent hours running around in and she not as many, surrounded them on all sides except the East because that’s where the department stores and other little shops resided. A few minute walk to within that metropolitan area was a passage to the rest of the world. The carcenería, panadería, pharmacy, caf’é, bar, and alimentation store were also quite near, but with a little bit longer than that 2 minute walk there were plenty more choices. With everything so close to home, oh what a perfect place to live.

This land, of course, is Madrid and the two children are my host-mom and -dad. They really do have everything they need and use within a two block radius of their houses, granted that’s not saying too much because it is city living. As always seems to happen, they didn’t meet each other until after living over 10 years just a few doors apart and then it was another few years until they started dating.

The funniest part is that we are currently living in #15 where he grew up with his 15 brothers and sisters, though half of the flat was walled off and sold as kids moved out. In Spain, a large portion of the population lives with their family until they get married at around 26-30 years old, so it is not entirely remarkable that we have the same place.

This ‘passageway’ is the most connected Metro stop in Madrid, Moncloa, which gets me to the airport with one transfer and I can get back to it from practically any other site in the city. If I wanted to opt for the bus, at the bottom of the street is a stop on the most popular line that they use so often that they call it their ‘taxi.’

Unfortunately, though, the household is not such a happy, fairytale place. The four of them have no respect for each other and can hardly talk for 30 seconds before starting some sort of yelling fit. They don’t listen to each other and constantly complain or order the others around. There is no such thing as a constructive conversation and it makes it incredibly uncomfortable for the three of us to be in the middle of it. He insists he is always right and will correct any one of us for faulting, even at times telling us we don’t speak English properly. There is no personal sacrifice to make things easier for everyone else, the perfect example being the broken dishwasher that he didn’t have time to fix until the end of the week, but still managed to get to bed plenty early with some late-night sitcoms to rock him to sleep, leaving the daughter and wife in the kitchen scrubbing dishes. These remnenants of machismo may be cultural and are only aggravated by having two teenage children, but I have certainly heard of and met other families here where this is not such a problem.

Despite having the best of intentions, nothing gets done in a timely manner and things are forgotten about and blamed on all the rest of us. I know everyone is entitled to disagreements and skirmishes, but this really is of a different, dysfunctional caliber. At least they have now taken two mini-vacations to el campo and their families’ pueblos leaving us in peace and quiet for a few days like this weekend.