Nicolas
Last week, Kit and I spoke with our grandson Nicolas on his first Father’s Day. He and our great grandson William Marcos Salter’s mother Mel have just moved to Hamden, CT where Nico is beginning Law School at Yale University. Our conversation reminded me of the first time we met our grandson in Madrid and fell in love with both Nico and Spain. From my journal…
June 1997. Touching the face of Nicolas, my fingers traced the rich colors of Spain. His is a face filled with light. Mediterranean light that comes in early June and stays into each evening, turning all that it touches a rosy gold. Reflecting the color of the sun-bleached bricks of Iglesia de San Nicolas, the cathedral of his patron saint built in Madrid in 1547. The cathedral in which he was baptized during our trip to Spain that month.
Saint Nicolas who lived in the A.D. 300s is the patron saint of sailors, travelers, bakers, merchants, and little children. It is the perfect name for this beautiful child—the grandson of a family of bakers in Madrid and geographers from America who love traveling back country roads and exploring urban landscapes.
Nicolas at the age of 11 months is the spitting image of his paternal grandfather Kit. Years ago, Kit’s own father photographed him as a baby with his head thrown back, engaged in a joyous explosion of laughter. Five decades and a few years later, that same bright spirit is alive in baby Nicolas who we came to know during our visit.
We stayed at the Hotel Santander, a small family-run hotel on Calle Echegary in the heart of old Madrid. Lillian, the day clerk, smoked continuously and bantered in rapid fire Spanish with whoever passed her small check-in counter near the hotel’s closet-sized lift. On the landing, an aged German Shepherd—the hotel’s security system—was sleeping, effectively blocking anyone trying to ascend or descend the stairs.
After dropping off our luggage, we walked with our son Hayden, his wife Ana Martin, and Nicolas to the Plaza Santa Ana for a zuma de naranja (freshly squeezed orange juice), pan (sweet roll) and our first Spanish café con leche (coffee with steamed milk). The small plaza is quiet in the early morning hours with only an occasional stroller walking a dog in the park that forms the square’s center. While I enjoyed my coffee, Kit carried his grandson out to the sidewalk for the first of many walks they would take together. At 11 months, Nicolas has discovered that shoes are made for walking, and that morning he had little else on his mind.
Most evenings, the threesome would meet us at our hotel around 9:30 p.m.—the hour when the city comes alive. We would stroll through the old neighborhood to one of the many small restaurants and cafes that can be found on every block. There we would be at 11:00 p.m. each evening, eating tapas (Spanish appetizers) such as seta salteadas (sautéed mushrooms with parsley and garlic), pollo con patatas pobres (chicken with fried potatoes), and chuletas aliñadas con ajo(lamb chops with garlic), while sipping sangria in densely packed, smoke-filled eateries with Hayden and his beautiful family. Being a Spanish baker’s grandson, Nicolas was happy throughout the meal gnawing with his five baby teeth on a piece of hard bread and taking periodic walks with one or the other of his American grandparents.
On Sunday evening, we gathered with the Martin family (pronounced Mar-teen), relatives, and friends at Inglesia de San Nicolás for the Nico’s baptism. He was dressed from head to toe in baby blue the color of a Spanish sky in early summer. His godfather, Jose Luis Gahona Fraga, and his godmother and aunt Marta Martin, stood as witnesses with Hayden, Ana, and our grandson during the ceremony. A party followed the ceremony at the home of Nico’s Spanish Abuelos (grandparents )Azucena and Marcos.
Then all too soon, it was time to begin our long flight home.
June 2023. As I recall these precious memories from the summer of 1997, my mind is flooded with episodes from our many subsequent times together in their home in Madrid and our memorable road trips across the past two and a half decades in and around various regions of Spain. And sweet too were many wonderful summer visits with Nico when we lived in Missouri, for a brief while in New Mexico, and now more recently at our home in the Sierra foothills above Nevada City, CA.
As Nico begins a new chapter in his remarkable life this June as a father and Yale Law School student, Kit and I—his proud California Abuelos—delight in sharing the happiness he feels with his life, with Mel, and with our darling little great-grandson William Marcos Salter.