The Light - An Alumni Publication Fall 2014 | Page 20

REFLECTIONS

Sue (Fleming) Yurick (second from left) and YFU friends visit the gardens of the Alhambra in Spain in 1962.

Where my heart burst and bloomed
I dropped my heart out the window of Jorge Juan Cien
that summer in Spain, into the reaching hands of a boy.
We strolled from the Goya metro
past melons in fragrant mounds on Felipe Segundo,
to gravel paths in La Quinta del Berro,
shade-filled, a-murmur with water.
Here was respite, peace, shelter for innocent lovers,
the laughter of boys who sailed boats in the fountains
and slipped back, years later, with girls of their own.
Back in Spain, I hurried alone, burst heart on my sleeve.
No sign of the head of Bacchus
that peeked through the ivy in ’62,
or the wall I had perched on, straight-backed,
hair short as a boy’s, with a tentative smile. 
The one I had loved was transformed:
fancy car, big mustache, new ideals, three kids and a wife.
He provided good travel advice:
“Madrid is a desert; go visit the north for a change.”
“Mi patria” he’d said of Seville, years before
when his eyes burned bright
in the shade of La Quinta del Berro,
his lips enflamed like gypsy cave torches.
My dreams were of Andalucía, a lifetime ago,
reflecting the sparkle of Alhambra fountains,
that red fortress bathed like a heart
in the blood glow of sundown.
I took his advice and
froze on the beach at Sanxenxo,
made plans to seek out the pilgrim road’s end:
Santiago, a saint’s bones interred
where the path knotting Europe
ends in a field of stars.
On every return I am pilgrim;
paused outside each Spanish doorway,
I search for the stain my heart left,
a wondering smile still in place
fifty years further on.
- Sue Yurick, Spain 1962
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The summer Sue (Fleming) Yurick
spent in Spain in 1962 set her on
course to become a Spanish teacher,
a vocation that enabled her to
accompany other young people on
voyages of discovery.
Her poem, “Where my heart
burst and bloomed,” describes her
experience of returning twenty-seven
years later with her daughter to La
Quinta de la Fuente del Berro in the
Madrid neighborhood where she
had lived. Spending time with the
gentleman who had been her summer
crush, Sue learned the turns his life had
taken—among them, his pursuing a
career in business, not medicine as he
had planned, for in that era of rebellion
he had been kicked out of university.
Now retired from teaching, Sue
lives in Rockford, Michigan,
and sp [