Updike in Spain

I've been reading John Updike's posthumous collection, My Father's Tears and other stories. I met Updike a few years ago when he spoke at a meeting of the Connecticut Library Association. I had never been a particular fan of his Rabbit series, but I found his Gertrude and Claudius (2000) very imaginative, and I summoned the courage to ask him a question, which he answered graciously. I forget the substance of the question and the answer, but I remember the feeling of the experience, and after living with the characters in My Father's Tears for the past week, I know Updike would understand that.

He writes about old people who are living their past and their present lives simultaneously in their minds. Several of the stories take place at class reunions or other returns to hometowns and people known earlier in life. Since I am going to miss an important high school reunion of my own later this month, I felt the nostalgia all the more.

Surprising to me, two of the stories, which were all written in the 21st century, have a Spanish connection. "The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe" takes place in Sevilla, where the rather travel-weary Fairchilds walk back to their hotel through a narrow street and become the target of a purse-snatching perpetrated by a youth on a motorcycle. "Spanish Prelude to a Second Marriage" introduces Brad Quigley with his longtime companion Leonora Katz, "experimenting to see if a vacation together might nudge their long relationship into marriage or a break-up." The story starts in Granada, where he wants to visit the cathedral and the graves of Ferdinand and Isabella, but she doesn't, because it is raining; and then it goes on to Madrid and Toledo. Quigley, of course, is experiencing two travels at once--the one with Leonora and another earlier one, with his mother, who had brought him to Spain on his only prior trip there.

Coincidentally I read the "Spanish Prelude" on the same day this week that Michelle Obama and  daughter Sasha went to Granada from their short vacation at a luxury hotel in Marbella on the Costa del Sol. Like Brad Quigley, they went to see the graves of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in the cathedral. Then, I understand, on to the Albaicin and a special tour of the Alhambra between 8:30 and 10:30 at night. The Alhambra is supposed to be especially beautiful at sundown and with night lighting.

Who knows, a lifetime from now, Sasha may also return to Spain for a second trip, and to relive the  first one with her mother.