I wish you could have seen the almond trees in Spain that spring. Javi, a friend of a friend, had invited us for Sunday lunch in the countryside with his parents. At about half past one we followed his motorcycle across the city limits and along the highway to a pueblito (small town) a few dozen miles outside of Valencia. No one spoke over the flapping wind or loud music, though I can't remember now what we were listening to. Some of the girls slept the whole way there while cool air passed through the backseat and nursed our hangovers.
I hardly felt the top of the glass digging into my arm as I rested my head and elbow halfway out the window. The olive orchards on the side of the road looked so green and so dry from far away. I was anxious to know where we were going, but every time the sun peeked out from behind the clouds I forgot that I barely knew some of my fellow travelers.
When we arrived it smelled of farm and earth. Hardly a town, only a few homes were built on the shared hundred or so acres. Javi's parents welcomed us each with dos besos (two kisses) and scooted us outside onto the patio so they could start making the paella. We watched as his father fed the wood-burning oven and sizzled the sofrito (vegetables and paprika base).
He lectured us about proper technique: meat first then vegetables - always. As smoke rose from the paella he sent us on a walk until the meal was ready. I can only assume he wanted to keep the recipe a family secret.
At about three o'clock we returned to the kitchen and sat down to a table set for eleven. There were baskets of bread and plates of jamón. There were potatoes and salads somewhere in between. Bowls of olives spilled over onto the table cloth. On the counter pink boxes of cream-filled pastries waited patiently. There were glasses for water and glasses for homemade wine. And in the middle there was a golden paella dotted with crisp pieces of chicken and rabbit and dulled snail shells. The smell from the fire filled the entire house. The clinking of glasses echoed from one end of the table to the other. Finally, a half second of silence fell over all of us as we eyed what we would taste first.
Lunch lasted over three hours. After we helped clean up, everyone piled back into the cars (a little tighter than when we arrived) and waved goodbye. The gravel rumbled beneath us and we drove past the fields of almond trees. Dear friend, I wish you could have seen them that evening. Then you would understand when I say how perfectly they stood in military lines, their bodies rooted in soil. How the flowers danced between the branches and kissed the air as they spun to the ground like dizzy girls in ballerina pink.
