“Is hambre feminine or masculine?” my Spanish tutor asked me.
I look at the “e” at the end: humbre. (e = masculine) “Masculine,” I say confidently.
She pauses and corrects me, softly, “Femenino.” Ah. Hambre is feminine. It’s an exception from the “e at the end = masculio” rule. Ok, got it.
Ok, let’s practice the verb tengo (have) now and build a sentence, “let’s say you are very hungry, horribly hungry.”
I pause to process the rules in my mind before I answer. Hambre = feminino. Una = feminino. Tengo una hambre tremenda? I keep reiterating the rule in my head to make sure I get the correct form of the article (un vs una).
“Tengo una hambre tremenda,” I say confidently.
She pauses again. “Oh, actually, it’s un hambre tremenda, because we don’t use una before a word that starts with an “h”… It’s another exception from the rule.” Now she almost feels bad for even asking me if it was feminine or masculine, because it really didn’t matter since we had to follow another exception from the rule and use the masculine version of the article for the feminine word.
I sigh and remember the real reason why I keep logging in to these Spanish lessons every week.
“Keep going, Helen,” I tell myself. “Smile with your eyes, to hide your disappointment for yet again making another mistake.”
As my professora continues to explain the rules, my brain drifts away for a moment: “Isn’t this the story of life itself?”
We need to learn the rules so we can play the (life) game. We want to know how to win, so we can put the focus on the right efforts and pour our energy into maximum growth. We do our best. And yet, life throws us exceptions. Twists. Contradictions.
Not una hambre—but un hambre. I was not incorrect, yet, not right either.
I can’t stop thinking that the more I learn, the less I seem to know. For that reason, I miss my teenage years, when I thought I knew everything. I miss that feeling of taking the responsibility off of myself and thinking that everyone else was wrong, and I was the right one. I liked thinking that I was the one who was creating the exceptions from the rules. And everyone else had to follow them. Not anymore, though. Not in my forties. Not if I actually wanted to learn and grow.
Un humbre. Una humbre.
Why do I feel like “humbre” is staring at me with its hungry eyes, expecting me to like it? To accept it. Forgive it? It’s not humbre’s fault that it starts with a silent “h.” Yet, it’s not the un’s fault that humbre is not masculine.
Un humbre. Una humbre. My mind refocuses back on the screen for a moment before I go back to my staring contest with Mrs. Humbre.
Perhaps this is the point? The twists. The contradictions. The exceptions. Are they the catalyst for learning and growing? Are they the red traffic lights that say: “Are you still paying attention? Or have you checked out again, because you know everything.”
Perhaps this is a reminder that we, humans, need to choose to keep learning and growing. Especially as we get older, because no one will do it for us. (Unlike in our teen years, when it seems the whole world wants to teach us how to live before we even have a chance to try making our own mistakes by doing it ourselves.)
Tengo una hambre tremenda. 15 more minutes left en mi classe.
Perhaps, it’s all about practicing. Perhaps, that is precisely why I keep logging in every week to my Spanish classe? To practice. To remember.
To remember that no matter how disciplined or curious or diligent I am at learning and “getting better”, there will always be a part of the world that doesn’t follow the previously discussed rules, and keeps going by its own rule that comes from yet another exception.
And maybe that’s okay. Maybe when life itself throws me another un hambre tremenda moment—
a thing that doesn’t make sense, doesn’t follow the pattern, I will remember the real reason why I am learning Spanish.
Because it’s not just language practice. It’s character work. It’s growth—not from mastering every rule, but from surrendering my need to. From showing up, again and again, not just to learn Spanish, but to learn humility. Because what I thought would be Spanish classes have really become something else entirely: classes in letting go, in staying open, in being willing to get it wrong. To my surprise, I realised that mis clases de español have turned out to be mis clases de humildad. And maybe that’s exactly the exception from the rule that I needed in my life today.
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