She didn't laugh, not very hard at least. And the yelling was minimal. Just enough, really, so that I didn't damage the display too bad.
They looked so real, see. And why, WHY, if the pastries are plastic, are there so many of them? And why is there a stack of plates and a set of tongs on top of the case? And a door that slides easily open? And why is there no sign that keeps me from behaving like a moron?
"No! Senora!! No!" She ran over to me and I froze, dropping the tongs back onto the plastic case.
"I'm sorry...not ok?" I didn't know what to do. The sign over the fruit and drinks said, in English, "self serve." I assumed this applied to desserts too.
"No, it's...display." Her English was quite good. But in my panic I didn't even realize she was speaking my own native language. So I continued to stare deeply into her eyes, fear keeping me immobile and mute. She tried a new tact.
"You bite," she mimed biting down hard on something. "Hurt very bad, yes?"
Ooohhhh. It's a display. I will break my teeth on it. Stop pawing at the plastic food. Got it. It was to her credit that she smiled right away and I started to thaw out.
I followed her to the counter and ordered the pastry and a sandwich. I paid for everything and followed a waiter outside to a table, wanting to bolt and leave Burgos behind me forever. I ate both items as quickly as possible, then continued to the city's massive Cathedral for a pilgrim mass. But I never quite got over the encounter.
Things like this, these little mistakes, they're like the snow that gets under the cuff of your glove. Even though you're mostly dry, that spot of cold and wet on your wrist is like a slow death of irritation. I sit and dwell on it, on my awkwardness, and start to remember all my other mistakes. The little ones, the medium ones, the muy grande. Sometimes I walk and just think of stuff I've done wrong. Long lists of them, great wailing chants of them, and as the sun heats up the dust around me I listen to myself whine away each dry minute. Any one of us can slip into this depressed, narcissistic rhythm. I loved the way Anne Lamott put it in the book I just read. "I am the piece of shit around which the universe revolves."
But a day full of only walking and self-pity is a very, very long day. So I don't let it stay long, but it's hard work to kick it out. I think about my feet connecting to the rock and dirt below me, I think of my momentum across the planet, of the things living all around my moving feet, and I think that I could be the thistle and the grape and the grasshopper. That my connection to all these forms of being is a way toward peaceful thinking. That I could be a good and kind and flawed person. I know this seems like an obvious lesson — that of course we all contain good and bad, failures and successes, joy and anxiety. But actually accepting that, giving up any expectation of perfection and the guilt of past mistakes, is not such a simple chore. Not for me. Once again, something I understand with my mind, but not with my full self.
It makes me think I might need to learn a few of the basics over again — if not all of them. Because to me, self forgiveness seems as terrifying as finally learning to use chopsticks. Which I swear to sweet baby Jesus I will never, ever master. That's not so difficult either, you say? Monkeys can do it, you say? People have tried to teach me both: Be nicer to yourself, nobody's perfect. You just have to put your thumb here and your finger here, then move them like this...
Hogwash.
We lots of those sayings to deal with it yes? You win some you lose some. Just do your best. Everyone makes mistakes. No one is perfect. It's time to move on. Blah blah blah.
But some days, all you can manage is, why am I so damn WRONG? Like yesterday when I walked in circles for hours looking for my hotel. Or when I finally got a city map and it tore in half in my hands, somehow. Or when I accidentally crossed in front of traffic and when I couldn't understand the unfamiliar words around me and when I clawed at a display case of plastic food and didn't realize it was plastic until a woman yelled at me. Some days, you just get it wrong.
But it doesn't have to stay that way. So when I was walking and whining to myself this morning, I started on a different rant. A sort of mantra of forgiveness, I guess you could call it, and I made myself think of just that and the grasshoppers for a while. I asked myself to let go of the bad and welcome the good back in its place. I asked myself to turn my weaknesses into strengths where I was able. I asked myself to let the past lie in its place. And it wasn't about the plastic croissants anymore, of course, they just opened the door.
Even though I resisted, even though part of me wanted to wrap my bad attitude around me like a favorite sweater that itches but you wear it anyway, I kept at it. And after a while I was more interested in the hills and hay than my own self-loathing, and after a while I remembered that the universe does not revolve around me, and after a while I stopped thinking of myself much at all and remembered to enjoy what I was doing. And I did, and I am. This, despite its frustrations, is a very good day. A success.
And yet, I have no intention of making any further attempts with the chopsticks. Call me a quitter, but that crap is for the birds.
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