by Natalie Berman-Schneider

In Spain, I accidentally acquired fifteen grandparents.

My study-abroad program promised lectures, city tours, and the kind of busy weekends that
make you feel worldly and self-sufficient. I imagined myself navigating Madrid with confidence,
ordering coffee in Spanish without hesitation, and building a life entirely my own.

A central part of the program, however, involved coeducadores: retired volunteers who met with
us to talk about the history we were studying. They attended classes, joined discussions, and
accompanied us on trips—though I didn’t fully understand that last part until midway through
our first excursion, wandering through yet another aging town and doing what I did best: not
listening.

The tour guide’s Spanish rushed past me as I examined the buildings instead. On one corner
stood an old church that looked as though one strong breeze might finally push it over. I tried to
understand how it remained upright when, suddenly, both my arms were seized in what I can
only describe as vulture-like grips. Shrill cries of “¡Niña!” filled my ears, and I thought that
something had gone terribly wrong.

Luckily, it was only the coeducadores.

Two of them, Ruth and Martha, latched onto my arms and inspected me carefully.

“Your hair is beautiful,” Martha said. “You are a doll.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “I just washed it.”

This, apparently, offered insufficient information. Both ladies immediately began combing their
hands through my curls and firing off a million questions a minute about my life. I was escorted
down the street and deposited at dinner, placed squarely in the middle of a twelve-person table,
and surrounded on all sides by coeducadores who immediately began passing plates.

“I think the students are sitting over there,” I offered weakly, glancing toward the other table
where the rest of my program had already gathered.

“Why would you leave us?” someone asked, their faces full of puzzlement and hurt, as if I’d
abandoned them forever.

A few minutes later, I was staring down at a fish head on my plate. Its eyes were open, which felt
unnecessary. I could feel the eyes of the coeducadores drilling into my mind as I pondered what
to do about the head.

Do fish have eyelids?

I made a mental note to look up fish eyes after the meal.

I can’t eat this.

Before I could announce that I absolutely wasn’t putting a head, bulging eyes included, into my
mouth, the coeducadores swiftly covered my plate with appetizers from around the table: bread,
croquetas, unfamiliar spreads whose names I did not know and no one invited me to ask about.

“Eat everything,” Ruth instructed. “The head is just the first exciting new food you get to try.”

I imagined other exciting foods I could be eating: pizza, cookies, fish without faces.

“Can I just stick to the croquetas?” I asked.

They looked genuinely confused.

“I guess you could,” someone said, “but why would you want to?” Their expressions suggested I
had asked to eat the plate instead. After what felt like an hour-long standoff, my eyes met Ruth’s.
She held my gaze, almost pleading. I yielded. I couldn’t say no to fifteen people begging me to
try their food.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’ll try a bite of it all.”

Actually… I surprised myself. The head wasn’t so bad.

#

The coeducadores lived in a small town in northern Spain, and on the first weekend of the
program they invited me to stay in their homes. I had just arrived in Madrid, had not unpacked,
and the train ticket cost $150 I did not have. I told myself I was tired. I told myself I preferred
independence. They never let me forget it.

Twice over the course of our ten-week relationship, a coeducador reminded me, kindly but
persistently, that I had missed out on their town. In week eight, Esmé sat me down and
explained, gently and at great length, why I should have come to her home, using soft words that
somehow made me feel both loved and irresponsible.

“Niña,” she said, “Santander is a beautiful town. Much nicer than Madrid. You could go to the
beach. You could walk along the boardwalk.”

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I was there in spirit. My body just preferred my bed.”

She looked at me with the patient disappointment usually reserved for grandchildren. I realized, a
little too late, that I hadn’t declined a weekend visit. I had declined someone’s attempt to take
care of me, a far more serious offense.

#

Our weekly conversations were formally organized as a rotation among the coeducadores. Each
week we were assigned an hour slot, one coeducador, and a Zoom link, along with a discussion
topic our professor had selected in advance. What we actually talked about was usually
something else, although we always made sure to briefly circle the assignment.

I began taking these calls from a nearby coffee shop, ordering a café con leche and settling into a
corner where I could write the required reflection afterward. One week, I logged on and proudly
announced that I had prepared a list of questions. I expected praise. Instead, Ruth waved the idea
away with a smile.

“Oh, there’s no need.”

We talked about her grandchildren, about moving from Madrid to Santander after the housing
crisis, about what it meant to be young and far from home. When the hour ended, I realized I had
much more to write about than I had before, although none of it was on the carefully curated list
of questions I came in with.

#

In week four, I found myself walking through Bilbao beside Mariana, who was one of the oldest
coeducadores. She was so old that watching her power through a five-mile hike felt like
something that should be reported to a doctor. I commented on how fast she was moving and
asked for her secret.

“Niña, I’m so old I remember when the Dead Sea was only sick,” she said. “The secret is
freedom. No long-term boys. Do you have a young man in your life?”

As usual while speaking to the elderly volunteers, the conversation shifted to my romantic
failures. Somehow, I wasn’t embarrassed, but rather amazed that a person who had only known
me for three weeks was already this invested in my future husband.

I shook my head no, confirming the diagnosis.

“So,” she said, studying me carefully, “you haven’t been out with a single man in Spain. We need
to change that.”

She immediately began scanning the street and, for the next several minutes, provided a running
evaluation of passing men.

“Too short. Too serious. Dios mío, he is a walking chimpanzee.”

I couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped me. Soon we were doubled over, lost in fits of laughter. By
then, the love didn’t feel invasive. The other ladies began to crowd around, analyzing my options
with the focus of architects reviewing blueprints. My love life had become a community project,
though not, so far, a successful one.

While we laughed, I felt someone staring. A young Spanish man had stopped mid-sidewalk,
looking directly at me. It must have been a sight: a twenty-year-old blonde girl flanked by a
council of abuelas. Esmé noticed him at the same moment I did.

“Muy guapo,” she announced loudly enough for him to hear. My face burned. Whether or not her
assessment was accurate felt beside the point. The fifteen women decided, unanimously, that I
deserved someone guapo. The ladies turned in unison, inspecting him the way he inspected me.
One of them beckoned him over with a small wave, the confidence of someone who had been
matchmaking longer than I had been alive.

To my horror, and their delight, he actually walked over. He stopped in front of Mariana, bowed
dramatically, and lifted her hand to his lips. The ladies erupted into delighted giggles at the
theatrics of it all. It turned out we were all just teenagers at heart.

He finally looked over at me. “This is my phone number,” he said, switching to pieced-together
English. “Call me if you feel brave.” The ladies gasped as though he had proposed marriage.

I surprised myself by answering in Spanish.

“¿Valiente? No necesito ser valiente.”

His smile brightened. “Entonces curiosa.”

He pressed a paper into my palm. His fingers lingered a second too long, or maybe I imagined
that part. My heart thudded against my chest. I begged it to quiet down, not to give me away.
When he turned to go, I saw Mariana give me an approving nod, like I had passed a test.

Freedom, she said. No long-term boys.

The paper was warm in my hand, and I understood what she meant. Freedom didn’t mean saying
no or remaining untouched. It was about choosing. I slipped the number into my pocket because
I liked knowing I could call. And also that I didn’t have to.

#

One afternoon, by dumb luck, I ended up seated with Ruth, Martha, and Laura. On our table sat
complimentary bottles of Fanta Limón and red wine—the ingredients for tinto de verano, a
Spanish cocktail made with wine and lemon-flavored soda. In the United States, I was under the
legal drinking age, so the open bottle alone felt illicit. Even stranger was the ladies’ insistence
that I drink it, despite the fact that in Spain I was perfectly of age.

“Do you want wine?”

“No, thank you, I don’t really drink during the day.”

“Ah,” said Martha, sharing a laugh with Ruth and Laura. “Young Americans.”Well. I had to drink then. There’s nothing quite like peer pressure from three seventy-year-old ladies. Trying to recover, I attempted to demonstrate my newfound cultural knowledge.

“Tinto de verano is kind of like the local version of sangria, right?”

As I learned later, I had committed a minor cultural crime.

“Niña,” Laura corrected softly, “tinto de verano is the local choice. Sangria is for the tourists.”

They laughed in a way that suggested forgiveness for both my ignorance and my nationality. For
the first time, I wasn’t a guest. I was a part of the banter, the laughter, and something that felt,
unexpectedly, like belonging.

#

Eventually, there came a day when I had to say goodbye to my fifteen new grandparents. We met
at a small restaurant in the center of the city. I arrived right on time, but Ruth and Martha were
already there. They wove their arms through mine—those familiar vulture grips—and began
speaking at once.

“We read your blog,” Ruth exclaimed.

The blog I had written about my study-abroad experience, published on the school website, had
been shared with every coeducador.

Martha thrust her phone into my hands and scrolled through the group chat, reading messages
aloud. Each one was kinder than the last. Each one sounded like something a grandparent might
say.

“What a stupendous reflection of the program,” Esmé had written.

“How lucky we have been to share this experience,” Mariana added.

“Thank her for the affection she has shown us,” Laura wrote.

And finally, Martha read her own message.

“How proud I am to have known her.”

The coeducadores loved loudly: through advice, through laughter, through food pushed onto my
plate, through opinions about the men that walked past us on the sidewalk.

Somewhere between the fish head, the unsolicited romantic advice, and the seventy-year-old
peer pressure, independence stopped meaning solitude.

The fish head waited at the center of the table. Its eyes did not look away and I met them first.

Then I ate the cheek.

“¡Qué rico!”