It is Saturday in Spain, and the last day of January. We woke up to the sound of rain in the streets, and  I found that soft and familiar song of falling water so comforting. I could close my eyes again in the dark room and imagine I was somewhere on the wet west coast of Canada. Soon the rain stopped, however, and my sleepy half-dream of cabins and coniferous forests stopped too, because if I really were on the west coast, it would have rained all day long! Perhaps it is strange to be missing such a thing, when the sun is already bright in the sky again just a few hours later, and the breeze is warm, but there is something extremely soothing about a long wet day, and rain on the roof all night long… with a few conditions of course, such as a good raincoat for walks and a warm home in which to dry off and curl up.

Not a trace of rain remains as I sit looking out the window at the bright orange tree just outside. They grow everywhere here, adding colour to the stone and brick  landscape and making streets look merry. Just as there is some deep calm in the sound of rain, so too is there something inherently uplifting about an orange tree. It may just be the vibrancy of the green and orange together, or the novelty of seeing such bright fruit alive and growing, but at any rate, I do not miss the rainy shores of home quite so much with that lovely tree to look upon.

A week and a half have passed since I arrived in Sevilla and since Morfar died. Gently, patiently, acceptance settles upon me as the days go by and I feel my feet sinking a little deeper into this new ground. I have learned that the Christmas and birthday cards I had sent to Morfar reached him in time, that he had been happy to read them. In them I had written how much I was looking forward to celebrating with him. Last week that occurred to me as nothing but sad, but this week I see how much it means that he knew we all were excited, we all were anticipating being together to celebrate him and his life, and though it did not happen as we imagined and hoped, he did have something very important—knowledge that he was not alone, that he was loved.

Thinking of all my loved-ones at home is a similarly comforting thought; we know we are there for one another, we are connected always, even when far apart.

It seems my heart took a while to catch up to my body this trip, but it is happening. Rob and I do our best to practice Spanish, struggling with this crazy Sevillano accent, we walk the city and riverside, and balance our desires to eat tapas and drink beers out on the town with making meals ourselves and saving money by splitting a beer in the house—about two dollars for a litre! A heartening thought as well.

And I have my orange tree. There is just something inherently uplifting about the green and orange of a naranjo—rain or shine—that comforts me.