The saint of impossibilities, recently, and the language of signs.

1. Santa Rita is the saint of impossible things. When there's nowhere left to go, the people pray to Santa Rita. And we said that when our lives become impossible we'll also pray to her.

2. Recently: The nights have cooled down considerably. The view from our terrace gives me vertigo. I no longer walk a country road at night because the sun sets too early. Children love to chant and sing. Some people talk too much, and others too low. Haven't had a nightmare in a week, after weeks of continual nightmares, and most of my worst nightmares in my life being of shadowy figured men. Am planning a trip to Portugal and want to see the Sintra Palace with rooms named after swans, mermaids, and magpies. Am wondering what next year will bring. Drove up into the Alpujarras and cried at the top because I was so carsick. Then I was called a llorona. Have put another blanket on the bed. A butternut squash pie in the oven. No, two. Thanksgiving on a train to Madrid and an early plane to India this Friday. A week-long funeral awaiting me on the other side and a bus full of my family members awaiting us in the New Delhi airport.

3. Every language has its own sign language, M told us. Her parents didn't realize she was deaf until she reached 2 years of age and wasn't talking yet. She's been using a hearing apparatus ever since she was a child. M says that she feels sorry for us because we will never hear the silence that she does when she takes out the hearing aid. "Es un silencio profundo," she says. Much deeper than the silence of the hearing people. She is so devoted to this silence that when the doctor told her that she could get a hearing aid surgically implanted and never have to worry about putting it in and out everyday, she refused it. Because then she would never have this silence again.
M taught us signs for guapo, feo, sucio. And she showed us her personal moniker: Laughter. Although she already has a name, M, the deaf here are given a second name, like a nickname, based on their personalities. She said that since she was a child, she's always been laughing, even when there's nothing funny to laugh about. Then we asked her to give us names too, and so she did. Delphine was Delfin (dolphin), Eilis Pestaña (eyelash), Matteo Cantar (sing), and me La Vida (life, like my name Jeevan means).
Delfin told us that seeing the students at her school speaking sign language was like watching people dance with their hands. So the rest of the night we practiced signing our names, Delfin, Pestaña, Cantar, y La Vida.