Describe Your Grandma's Kitchen
New module. We're calling it "The Imperfect: How It Used to Be," because we've spent this whole course in the preterite — what happened, what you did, one thing after another — and now we need the other past tense. The one for stuff that just... was. Ongoing. No clear ending.
Grandma's kitchen is the perfect place to start, because nobody tells that story as a list of finished events. You don't say "grandma cooked, then she stood, then she talked." You say she was always cooking something. The stove was always hot. There was a smell you can still call up right now if you close your eyes. That's imperfect territory. That's estaba, olía, hacía, había — the was-ing, the used-to verbs.
Why this tense feels weird at first
Preterite is easy to feel because it's got an edge. Something happened, boom, done. Imperfect doesn't have an edge. It's a mood, almost. English kind of hides this from you because we use "was" and "used to" for a bunch of different jobs, so when you get to Spanish and there are two different pasts, your brain wants to just pick one and move on.
Don't. This is one of those grammar points that actually earns its keep, because once it clicks, your stories get so much richer. You go from "grandma made tortillas" (fine, but flat) to "grandma was always making tortillas, the kitchen always smelled like it, and there was flour on everything, always" — and now I can see the room. That's the whole opinion I keep coming back to in this class: grammar serves the story, not the other way around. I don't care if you can define imperfect on a worksheet. I care if you can make me smell your grandma's kitchen.
The pattern, quick
For -ar verbs: -aba, -abas, -aba, -ábamos, -aban. For -er/-ir verbs: -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -ían.
That's basically it. Way fewer irregulars than preterite, which after last week's mess of irregular verbs should feel like a nice break. Really only ser, ir, and ver go off script (era, iba, veía), and you'll pick those up fast because you use them constantly.
Steps to actually practice this at home
- Sit with a photo or just close your eyes. Pick one kitchen from your childhood — grandma's, an aunt's, doesn't matter whose. You need a specific room, not a general idea of kitchens.
- Build five imperfect sentences out loud, not written. What was always on the counter. What she always had cooking. What the room smelled like. Where you always sat. What sound you always heard — a radio, a fan, water running.
- Resist the urge to translate word for word. This is the one where people get stuck, because English "used to" doesn't map cleanly. Don't build the English sentence in your head and convert it. Just say what was true, in Spanish, straight through, even if it comes out clunky.
- Say it to somebody. A spouse, a kid, your dog, doesn't matter. Out loud is the whole exercise. If you only ever write this stuff down you'll never get fast at pulling it up in conversation.
- Mix in preterite on purpose. Once you've got your imperfect sentences down, add one preterite line — one specific thing that happened once. "Siempre hacía tortillas, pero un día se le quemaron" (she always made tortillas, but one day she burned them). That contrast is where this tense actually starts making sense.
A word of caution, not about grammar
If you're pulling up real memories of a grandma who's passed, this lesson can hit different than the haircut story did. That's fine, that's actually good — it means you're not just conjugating, you're remembering. Let it be a little emotional if it wants to be. Nobody in this room is going to make it weird.
The embarazada story, because this is exactly where it applies
Early on, married into Neal's family, barely hanging on, I had this moment where I thought I'd finally nailed a whole conversation in Spanish with my mother-in-law. Felt like a genius. Ten minutes in, I realized from the look on her face that I'd been telling her I was "embarazada" — pregnant — instead of embarrassed. Not even close to the same word. I was not pregnant. The whole room lost it.
Here's why I bring it up now: that mistake happened because I was translating word for word in my head instead of just saying what was true. I grabbed the wrong tool because I was building the sentence in English first. Same trap waits for you in this tense. You reach for "used to be embarrassed" and your brain tries to force English logic onto Spanish grammar, and something slides sideways. It's super common. Say the wrong word, get corrected, and I promise you'll never mix it up again. I sure didn't.
Before next time
Think of one specific kitchen from your childhood and get five imperfect sentences ready to say out loud, no notes. We're going around the room next class and I want to actually see that kitchen. 💛