The Rain in Spain

Learning a second language is a gradual and sometimes tedious process.  But if you stick with it long enough, usually there is a watershed moment, after which it becomes less of a struggle.  For Eliza Doolittle, the protagonist in My Fair Lady, the watershed moment (no pun intended) was when she recited “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain” in perfect upper-crust English.  For Helen Pollak, the watershed moment quite possibly happened today, when she hit her face on the rearview mirror of the car parked in our driveway.  

We were walking home from school.  I thought Helen walked into the mirror because she did not see it, but Max claims she was looking at herself.  (Maybe Helen was wondering who the cute girl was whose face kept getting bigger as she approached.)  Whatever the explanation, Helen hit the mirror head on and started to cry.  Our neighbors asked her what happened.  “¿Que pasó?”  Without pausing, Helen answered, “me pega mi cabeza en el espejo de la carro.”  Loosely translated, it means, “I hit my head on the mirror of the car.”  The conjugation is not perfect, and she missed the gender of one of the nouns, but that is not the point.  It was the first time Helen volunteered a complete sentence in Spanish.  (Or at least it was the first time we were there to witness it.)  And Helen did not even pause to think about it.  In fact, she probably did not even realize she had answered in Spanish – although Natalie and I took care of that by asking her to repeat the sentence several times afterward.  It was very cool.

Helen spent the rest of the afternoon playing and chatting with our neighbor’s son, José Andres, and with the housekeeper Cristi’s teenage daughter, Susie.  As with Eliza Doolittle, who still had much to learn after nailing “the rain in Spain,” Helen still has far to go before she is fluent in Spanish.  Nevertheless, as I listened to Natalie tell me how Helen continued to use Spanish phrases and sentences for the rest of the afternoon (I had gone to soccer practice with Max), a scene from My Fair Lady kept playing in my head: Liza Doolittle twirling around Professor Higgins's house, singing “I could have danced all night.”

Helen in the Zócalo with a sketch artist.

Post script to the "School Daze" blog entry about the kids' school:  That entry is only two days old, but already two more things worth mentioning have happened.  First, during a parent's presentation yesterday on discrimination, the parent showed a picture of a KKK member, explained that it is a popular religion in the United States, and asked Max and another classmate from the United States if they are members of the KKK.  It is possible that Max misunderstood the context of the question, but he swears that is not the case.  Max was still angry when we walked home after school.  I doubt the class learned much about discrimination, but Max learned an important lesson about being on the receiving end of a stereotype.


The second item has to do with Max's hair.  We took the following picture three days ago.  It shows Max Skyping with his class at home -- which was a real thrill.  (Besides being able to share what he is doing with the class, at the end of the call Max's class performed a poem about César Chávez called "Si se puede," with which they recently won first place at the Oakland Unified School District's Oratorical Festival. Natalie, Helen, our tutor Mercedes, and I watched too.  It was awesome.)

But back to the hair.  As you can see from this picture, Max's hair was not long.  Consequently, we were all surprised to learn that Max's teacher would not dismiss the boys today until each of them (except one, who already has a crew cut) signed a pledge to get a haircut by Monday.  According to Max, the pledge says he will not try to enter the classroom without getting a haircut first.  So, this evening, Max got his hair trimmed just enough to say with a straight face that he honored the pledge.  It was either that or get his hair dyed crazy colors and shaved into a mohawk.  The second option would have made for a good story, but it also would have required us to find a new school, which none of us wants to do now.  --Harrison