Seeing me enter her store, a shop-keeper addresses me--before I say a word--in Galician. In the next shop, again before I say anything, the shop-keeper addresses me in English. Wondering about these matters, I asked my Galician friends what, if anything, makes me look as if I´m from somewhere else. My Leaf cap perhaps? The rumple of my map? My glasses, jacket, boots, height, scent, or manner of pausing inside doors?
Your blue eyes, they said (in this nation of brown). I´d forgotten my eyes were blue. Anytime I glance in the mirror, it´s to make sure everything´s still there, that´s all.
After that, my friends admitted maybe it´s the way I walk. Maybe my sore knee shows. Once I remember an English woman nudging her friend and pointing at me, saying Watch this, as I pulled out my hankie and blew my nose. Maybe it´s the way I blow my nose.
Now I´ve got these weird eyes . . .
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2 comments:
That must be it.
I´ll take any flimsy excuse, like my blog posting, to cite this Gershwin standard, originally sung from Fred Astaire to Ginger Rogers:
The way you wear your hat
The way you sip your tea
The memory of all that
No, no, they can't take that away from me
The way your smile just beams
The way you sing off key
The way you haunt my dreams
No, no, they can't take that away from me
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