Elena Castedo

When I fly somewhere where I can cook I carry food. Tractors and grand pianos are carried in airplanes, why not some onions and potatoes?

I don’t expect to be happy, just not unhappy. But I’m usually very happy or very unhappy. I’m aiming for midway, tilting towards happy.

When someone died at the age I am now, I used to say, well, lived long enough. Now I say, so young! What happened!!

Many parents who have been rejected by their grown children ask, “I can’t understand why I have so much pain in my life.” The answer? It's because they are too close to the issue to see it with perspective. Most rejected parents are the victims of a trend that started in the 1960s (more…)

Whenever I get a headache I say better a headache than to be limbless, blind, deaf and dumb (that especially, if you know me).

70 years ago, after fleeing from Franco's wrath, concentration and detention camps in France, and the invading Nazis, my parents and I, departed from Europe in an old, leaky cargo boat originally outfitted for a crew of 12 to 16, bursting at the seams with almost 2,500 Spanish refugees like us. My father had war wounds and had lost the sight of one eye. The boat was called The Winnipeg. The rescue operation was arranged by Pablo Neruda. (more…)

I was in Boston when I got a call from a doctor in Madrid who told me he was at my mother’s and had sent her in an ambulance to the hospital, but didn’t think she would be alive by the time she got there. Glassfuls of blood were pouring from my mother's mouth (more…)

Have three hours at Logan airport, six hours of upcoming flight to Paris, look for a plug everywhere to work on my computer, spend an hour trying many, none have juice. I see a man sitting with his computer plugged, one socket free. Ah, finally. Are you plugged (more…)

From Paris. Given the scrawny dollar and the robust European prices, moving to Europe now is like moving to the jungle. I arrive in Europe, where we have been living one semester a year lately, plus taking many short trips, with suitcases half full with rice, nuts, raisins, oatmeal, beans, toothpaste, Vaseline… (more…)

For a chicken like me it’s not easy to deal with taxi drivers–-usually young--who chat on their cell phones while driving with one hand, obviously not totally focused on getting me to my destination as fast and safely as possible. They (more…)