Mija, vete a Espana

My mother has been gone for almost exactly three years.
And yet, she is always with me.

And when I say always, I mean my mother has apparently decided that death is absolutely not going to interfere with her ability to insert herself into my life 😂

She sends me signs constantly.
Sometimes they’re subtle and sometimes they’re so fucking obvious that all I can do is cry, laugh and say, “Okay, Mami. I get it.”

This is one of those stories…
Every year my friend Tiffany plans a vacation for her birthday in September, and I’ve already traveled with her twice before. This year after much deliberation, she landed on Spain. Mallorca to be exact.

Of course I wanted to go!
That was never really the question.
The question was whether I should go.

Because truthfully with everything happening with work, knowing my last day would be at the end of July and I’m stepping into this weird transitional chapter of my life, decorated with a brand new Mortgage payment I kept wondering whether flying off to Spain was the smartest financial decision.

Did I want to go? Heck yes!
But do I need to exercise some financial discretion? Also... Heck yes!

So naturally I became highly obnoxious about the entire thing.
(Tiffany can confirm this lol)

I went back and forth.
And back and forth.
And back and forth.

But you see Spain had another layer for me, because my mother loved Spain!

She traveled there when she was young in her twenties, and from everything she told me, she must have spent close to a month traveling around the country, in fact this is where she learned to drive stick-shift.

She went to Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and all the places in between.

Every time she talked about her time there it came with this excitement that never really left her.

You could see the happiness on her face when she talked about it.
And she always wanted to go back, but she never did.

Life happened. She met my dad while traveling again in Puerto Rico and fell in love. The whirlwind marriage happened. Kids happened. Work happened. And all the things that happen while you’re busy telling yourself that one day you’ll get back there.

But Spain? It stayed with her.
So I prayed about the trip… a lot!

I even had a dream one night that I was there, so I was getting the signs, but I needed a much more signier-sign. Know what I mean?

Meanwhile, I was still sitting on the fence thinking and obsessing about this trip and yet I had still not purchased one single ticket, So I did the next best thing. I organized the cabinet under my sink since I’m still setting into the new house.

I was just literally throwing away random shit.

You know those stupid little sample packets we all somehow accumulate? Tiny perfume bottles as gifts when you shop at Macys, those little conditioner packets that come in the mail, random sample creams, and all that stuff you swear you’re going to use one day even though you absolutely will not? Well, Yea that.

Apparently I have some strange hoarding tendency living inside of me because I had an entire little jar full of this crap.

So I’m sitting on the bathroom floor cleaning it out, saying things to myself like, “Sandy, get a grip. You are never going to use any of this shit. Throw it out!”

And then... there it was in the middle of all these little packets, I find a folded piece of paper..
I open it.

It's Spanish currency, Cien Pesetas!
A bill that literally says El Banco de España!
And I just sat there.

Because how the fuck did Spanish currency get inside a little glass jar under my sink? In the new house?!

I had cleaned that same jar last year and I knew what was in there and what was not and That bill had not been there!

Now I’m standing in my bathroom crying and laughing because I knew..
I knew exactly what it meant.

“Mija, vete a España.”

Go to Spain.

Of course she wanted me to go.
Of course she did.

My mother wanted the best for me while she was alive, she wanted me to live, to travel and to fully enjoy my life. Why would that suddenly stop because she wasn’t physically here anymore?

So, a few days later I booked the trip!

Flights to Barcelona.
Flights to Mallorca.
Hotel in Barcelona.
Done!

Now, for clarity my friend Tiffany is basically landing in Barcelona airport and immediately flying to Mallorca. But not me!

I need Barcelona, because I knew my mother had been there.

And of all the things I could do in Barcelona, the place that kept pulling at me was visiting La Sagrada Familia.

I’m not a devout Catholic by any stretch, but I am spiritual.
I believe deeply in the energy and power of faith.

Think about it, millions of people walking into one place with hope, in prayer, expecting miracles, with gratitude, looking for a sign, but mostly feeling love and faith in a higher power, something much bigger than them.

There’s something really powerful about that. There’s something beautiful about so many human beings placing their faith in the same space at the same time.

And I wanted to stand there and share in that magic. And yes - obviously I also needed a pic for the gram, but for that I booked afternoon lunch at the Sercotel, which has the best view and photo op of the church, its literally the only reservation I have made for my time in Barcelona.

Then I had another cool idea…
Maybe I could find one of my mom’s old pictures from Barcelona and recreate it?

Same place.
Her decades ago.
Me now.

However, this meant I had to go to my mother’s apartment and dig through her old pictures and albums. The problem? My mother has approximately eleven billion photographs. (Okay, fine, maybe not eleven billion)

But super close. Bins and bins of them, Pictures from Cuba, Pictures from her world travels, her wedding, pictures of me and my brother as kids, her family, its endless. I mean, think about it- its pictures from seventy-five years of living.

I even once found a family picture dated 1912 from Cuba! That’s along way back, and a lot to sort thought for this wild idea I have.

Anyway, Labor day weekend, I went over to her place to hunt. As I open the hall closet, I stare at this absolute abyss of photographs and immediately think:

Fuck. This is going to take all day.

Despite that, there’s something to be said about old printed photographs that makes me sad now because we don’t really do this anymore. Everything is digital and it’s so annoying. We swipe, we scroll, we screenshot, and we pay for digital storage- even more annoying.

Still, there is a completely different feeling holding a photograph in your hand, the nostalgia, the sentiment. It’s the fun of sitting on the floor of your home surrounded by pieces of a life lived and memories captured.

The magic of turning over a picture and finding a date or a note written in the lost art of cursive writing, it’s like discovering old clues. You just can’t swipe your way into that feeling, I’m sorry.

But anyway.
I’m standing in front of this closet staring at the bins and I literally say out loud: “Mami, where are your pictures from Spain?”

And truthfully without thinking too much about it, I reach forward. There were about three albums sitting outside of the bins So I grab them first. I flip the top one open quickly and think, Oh. These look like her old travel pictures.

So I take them all to the dining room table and have a seat.
And would you fucking believe it? Of course you would, because I don’t lie!

The first picture I find is of my mother of course young, looking beautiful and she’s wearing a traditional Spanish matador costume! I have NEVER seen these pictures in my life!

And I immediately lose it. I start crying.
“Of course you would do this.” I say to myself aka Her.

I keep turning the pages and there she is again!
This time she is dressed like a professional flamenco dancer standing with another woman whom she had traveled with also in costume.

Now I’m laughing through my tears because you just can’t make this up!

At this point I’m convinced my mother’s ghost is apparently just as insane and dramatic as she was when she was alive and I love her for it.

I move on and I open the next album, this album has most of the slots empty, pictures are missing and I’m starting to think this isn’t even a full album but I flip through the pages anyway.

And then - there it is.
One full photograph.
La Sagrada Familia.

The exact place in Barcelona I had been thinking about, the exact place I want to visit and have reservations for. The place I had chosen before ever finding these albums.

Now, I’m crying again because - okay Mom!
I hear you.

Now you’re not just confirming Spain.
You’re confirming Barcelona.
You’re confirming La Sagrada Familia.
You know exactly where I’m going.
You know what I’m excited about.
You’re here.

But I still wanted that picture. The picture of her somewhere on the streets of Barcelona so I could recreate it. Because obviously I need a signier sign.

Unfortunately, I never did find the Barcelona picture I originally went looking for. But apparently my mother had one more thing to show me.

I keep flipping through another album.
And there she was wearing a black-and-white striped sweater with red trim.

I immediately recognize it because she handed down that sweater to me when I was maybe fifteen or sixteen years old.

She had told me she bought it on her trip Spain.

I think I remember her telling me Barcelona, but I can’t swear to that part and I’m not going to rewrite history just because it makes the story prettier.

But what I do know for a fact is that she bought it in Spain!

And I loved that sweater, there was something about it. It was so cool to me. It had belonged to my mother when she was young, and later it belonged to me, and I also wore it in my twenties.

Somehow, through moves, marriage and divorce, children growing up and moving houses, closets purges and entire versions of myself coming and going...

I kept it.
I STILL HAVE THE FUCKING SWEATER!

It has to be close to sixty years old!
It is tucked away right now in a bag of sweaters in my closet, and the second I saw that photograph of my mother wearing it, I immediately knew..

That sweater is coming with me to Spain.

Now listen, will it fit me now? Probably not 😂

My mother was tiny then and I was considerably smaller the last time I wore it too.

And I’m not going to turn this into a semaglutide miracle challenge just for the plot (even though I’ve been trying lol!)

But honestly, I don’t need to wear it.
That isn’t even the point. But I am packing it in my suitcase.

Because somehow this sweater left Spain with my mother nearly sixty years ago.

Then it became mine, and now I get to carry it back, that sweater feels like a piece of her and a piece of me. It belonged to the woman she was before she was my mother. Then she became my mother, and then it became part of my story. And now, sixty years later it is making its way full circle! Back to España.

Tell me there isn’t something magical about that?

Actually, don’t. I don’t care.
Because I already know what I believe whole heartedly.

The people we love do not disappear because we can’t see them anymore. Love doesn’t suddenly evaporate because somebody leaves the physical world.

That’s why to me, this is so much bigger than a vacation.

It’s bigger than Barcelona.
It’s bigger than finding old photographs.

It’s about knowing that the people who love us are still with us and you don’t have to believe that the same way I do. You can call it coincidence, you can call it grief, you can call it whatever makes sense to you but I know what it feels like when my mother is with me, I know the difference.

And I am so excited to land in Spain.
To walk through Barcelona.
To stand in front of La Sagrada Familia.
To experience a place that meant something to my mom.
To be on land connected to my own ancestry and heritage.
And to have that ridiculous little black-and-white sweater tucked safely inside my suitcase.

She never got to go back.

But somehow... I feel like this time, she is.

So, Mami...
I love you.
I got the message.

Me fui para España x