Trekhprudny Lane

It is heaven to be back at the cortijo in olive country. We are brown and dry like raisins. We sit on loose dry stones, suffused with peace, lulled by the spectacular views over the steep valleys, squinting at distant farmhouses through a watery veil of pure heat, or watching at close range lizards and swallows busy at their work. I am sitting near a great bank of lavender, thyme and oregano at the moment, and a butterfly just landed on the keyboard. (Where are my dwarves?) This morning we simply stood throwing rocks down a hillside for an hour. This being a largely British household, the girls are known by fat, carnivorous names like "sausage pies" and "cheeky chops." The sisters who run the place have become, in recent days, not merely hosts but friends.

Two weeks in Granada dragged on and on. I longed for these quiet hills and the girls got peevish from too much restaurant food and the claustrophobia of hotel rooms. I unexpectedly fell out with my sister, in grand fashion (what is it about trips to the beach that bring on catastrophe in this family?). Still, once a decade or so, applying an acid peel to a relationship that has developed a thick and festering crust of bullshit feels bracing and ultimately good. I've been trying, I think, to compensate for our often chilly mother by stroking and applauding and cheering ad nauseam. After a while we lost all space and all language for disagreement, over values, over each other; even implied criticism felt dangerous, and as Sister put it quite rightly, our visits became exhausting dances on eggshells. I must do a better job of acknowledging (and examining of course) my judgments as they come, so that we don't ricochet ever again from mutual pandering to furious confession. Better to brave small disagreements along the way than store them up for someday. Pretending we do not judge each other is workplace protocol, not sibling reality. The question is, where to put those judgments? Shelving them indefinitely is not, I realize now, admirable restraint, it is a form of dishonesty and disastrous in the long term.