“Pet Friendly,” read the t-shirt my brother left me before heading off. I giggled—not because it was funny, but because it was sweet and true. After all, I do have two little puppies. I have to admit the real gift wasn’t the shirt, but having him here. In Romania!
He came to Bucharest after the closing of his master’s program in Barcelona and stayed with me for a few days. It was his first time in Eastern Europe, and the first time in a long while that we shared the same space again. Once more thinking about what to have for breakfast, or what we might eat for dinner. That kind of closeness that only makes sense when you’ve known someone your whole life.
Josué and I shared a room for over 15 years. Later, we lived together again for a little more than a year in Lima. And now, we live on different continents. Strange as it was, it also felt good to have him here. Waking up under the same roof. In a city with trams and hard-to-pronounce vowels. Like the “a” with a little hat.
He got to run in the same park I’ve run in over the past few years. He also visited Leonidas—a Belgian chocolate shop he loves (and I do too). I noticed the little boxes in his suitcase.
His flight to Seville was canceled because of the recent outage, and that delay gave us two more days together. On his last night, I thought it might be a good idea to bring him along to a work dinner—something I hadn’t really planned, but it felt surprisingly natural to have him there.
When family visits, things don’t always go the way you hope. But this one did. Not in a dramatic or Netflix kind of way—but in a quiet, grounding way. It made me feel more real. Like my family and my everyday life had briefly overlapped.
He left with a heavier suitcase—surely because of the chocolates. I stayed “behind,” with the pet friendly t-shirt. A reminder that distance doesn’t always mean far, and that some bonds really can cross oceans.
Sometimes I think the people who’ve known us our whole lives don’t necessarily bring the past—they help us see who we are now.
Ave Migratoria 