Call it bucket list if you want, but I am determined to speak Spanish fluently before I die. No, I do not have a terminal illness. I’m pretty fit for a guy my age. Belt still buckles in the same worn hole. No, my desire is driven by something far, far worse: fear of irrelevance.

 

      This gringo fell hard for Spanish almost five decades ago in college. The lush, sensual flow of the language stirred my tender loins in ways English never could. Trilling my tongue over words like perro, arriba, and arroz in class felt illicit, like I was cavorting in an Almodóvar film.

 

      But converse like a native? I could never get it. Even after moving from my parents’ suburb to New York City — home to almost 1.9 million hispanohablantes — I still sounded like I was reciting from a used Frommer’s guidebook. Forget about understanding the machine-gun fire of street Spanish.

 

      So, like many college relationships, Spanish and I drifted apart in the real world.

 

      In the interim, English and I got along just fine. We married a girl from Tennessee and bought a fixer-upper in Brooklyn before the borough got Manhattanized. We produced two kids, and I happily wrapped myself in the cloak of fatherhood: Pick-ups and drop-offs from pizza parties, soccer games, and sleepovers. Afternoon sprints to teacher conferences, dance recitals, and graduations.

 

      Oh, there were occasional trysts with Spanish. We’d run into each other on morning commutes to my job as a magazine editor. If I closed one eye, I could block out the English on the subway signs and murmur the Spanish to myself: Si ves algo, di algo. If you see something, say something.

 

      And then ten years ago, my carefully curated life got knocked senseless by a one-two punch. First, new management came in at the magazine and I was out. Then my son left for college. With his older sister already out on her own, I felt as useful as a one-tine fork. Many days I found myself literally turning in circles, plagued by too much me time, unable to adapt to this strange new reality.

 

      The self-help books that pinged me whenever I neared a bookstore diagnosed classic empty nest syndrome. Chapter one: You are suffering from a sense of loss. Chapter two: Your identity has been upended. Chapter three: Find a new purpose in life.

 

      I knew how to look for a new job. But how to fill the hole in my soul?

 

      She called to me like a siren.

 

      The answer began to take shape on a trip to Barcelona with my wife a year later. On our first afternoon we strolled through the city’s glorious food market, La Boqueria. Surrounded by rows of luscious, colorful fruits, intoxicated by the salty scent of Serrano ham, I began to swoon. When we sat down at a lunch counter for a plate of grilled baby squid, the sweet, lilting Spanish of my seatmates swept me away. It was like suddenly hearing a song that transports you back to a hot summer night of your youth.

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      After lunch I broke out my rusty vocabulary and asked a market vendor if I could try the cheese in his glass case.

 

     “¿Puedo intentar el queso?”

 

      Like magic, out came a buttery slice of Manchego. Only later when I checked my translation app did I discover the cause of his furrowed brow: I hadn’t asked if I could try the cheese, I had asked if I could attempt it.

 

      Back home, Spanish and I reunited in a group class. Trilling my r’s again rekindled the romance and I indulged lustfully. “Soy rrrrredactor.” I am an editor. “Crrrrrrrecí en Nueva York.” I grew up in New York. “Me gusta el arrrrroz.” I like rice.

 

      My tongue was on the make, and I was its wingman.

 

      Eager to spice things up and speed my healing, I flew to Colombia for a ten-day immersion course at a language school in Bogotá. I bunked in a flat rented by a trio of Bogotanos — a mother about my age, her grown daughter, and a male roommate.

 

      Setting my bags down in the home of three strangers thousands of miles outside my comfort zone was a cold slap of reality. What am I doing here? Who are these people? But it was also liberating. As my hosts showed me around the three-bedroom flat, pointing out the Andes mountains to the east, I was no middle-aged dad searching for meaning. I was free to be whomever I wanted to be.

 

      And so, I imagined myself an hispanohablante. In the mornings, I strutted through the doors of the two-story brick school, euphoric from the joy of studying Spanish without a care. Afternoons I meandered through the city’s chaotic streets, pausing over a café tinto to watch the world rush by. Dinners with my flatmates featured swirling conversations over arepas and beer where I wrung out every ounce of my vocabulary — and mangled not a few verbs — before circling back to pepper in the new words I had picked up.

 

      At night I collapsed into bed, spent, the city’s lights twinkling outside my window against the silhouette of the darkened Andes. Drifting off beside the world’s longest mountain range, so ancient and formidable, time stretched eternal and loosened the bonds of fatherhood. I had passed that milestone along life’s journey. There would be others ahead.

 

      Spanish is such a sly mistress. Though considered easy for native English speakers to learn, it’s also the second-fastest spoken language in the world. Today, no matter where we hook up — in class, in the street, watching a telenovela — her sweet nothings can still overwhelm me. Even after years of study with a wonderful private tutor, I will rehearse conversations in my head before speaking and check my app after to root out the cause of a furrowed brow. I am long over the embarrassment of mistakes.

 

      At other times, Spanish and I are a long-married couple who get each other, and I am over the moon. In those moments, I feel fluent. And the bucket full.

 

Hasta pronto, mi amor.