Ave Migratoria

My little monsteras are growing. 🪴

The returns

The first time I went back to Peru after six years in Romania, I felt overwhelmed. Some things seemed as though they had been paused, others had carried on with their natural rhythm—but without me. It was a strange mix of emotion and nostalgia to witness those changes in person: a new haircut, a child, a pet, a house, a street, a business.

After a couple of weeks in the countryside, I returned to my apartment in Bucharest. As soon as I opened the kitchen door, something made me smile: my monsteras. The joy of seeing new leaves unfold came with a quiet sadness—knowing I would soon be traveling again and would miss the exact moment of their transformation.

I’m propagating them in water. The glass container lets me see what usually stays hidden: roots stretching out, preparing to hold on, to grow.

I had saved a spot in a Bodycombat class. It felt good to see familiar faces, to exchange warm greetings and dive into the same conversations as always: the drag of office days, the choreography that feels worn after so many repeats, the challenge of burning fat, the reminder to protect the back with a proper warm-up.

At the end of the class, the trainer urged me to stay for the next one. I hesitated. Checked my watch. Fell into silence. Then I heard him say: “Come on, I trust you. You can do this.”

I laughed. And I stayed.

Peru and Romania – The return

The familiarity of an airport. The texture of the materials, the aesthetics of the spaces: some designed with sense and beauty, others defying logic altogether.

My brother was waiting, and we hugged as if only days had passed, though the wrinkles and the white in our hair told a different story. With my sister Laura the reunion felt just as natural. She confessed she had long suspected I had tattoos. Perhaps it was the first time we had actually crossed paths in Lima.

In Trujillo, I touched my father’s shoulder. He was startled. Later my mother told me he worried that my style might make ‘los amigos de lo ajeno‘ (thiefs) think I was a tourist. Hugging my mother, each of my sisters, finding ourselves again in the ordinary rhythms: going out for bread or chicken, sharing coffee, a drink, a breath of fresh air.

“Did you feel out of place coming back?” my sister Ammi asked. Her husband replied before I could: “I don’t think he had time, he’s been with us the whole time.” And I nodded—it was true.

The city gave me back my tan. I walked under the sun, alert but not afraid. Looking around, not from fear, but because I remembered the habit of checking who might be behind me, of guarding what I carried in my hands, my pockets, my backpack.

I remember bathing Imanol in a small tub placed on a table, when he was only a couple of weeks old. Today he’s over three. He speaks, plays with my name, calls me “Uncle Tebico” and tells me he loves me. That double memory—his fragility as a newborn and now his clear little voice—I hold onto like a treasure.

I could go on, but I don’t need to write it all today.

Bucarest and Costesti – Half half

Bucharest has something. Something I still don’t quite know how to describe. The noise of the city unsettles me. Yet the company of the people I’ve met there wakes me up, lifts me, encourages me to keep finding places where we can sit together and tell each other everything.

Sometimes Bucharest also feels like my laboratory. A place for experiments. I’ve learned things here—about myself, about the world. Things I want to keep as part of me, and others I know I don’t.

Costești, on the other hand, opens the door to a calm I admire, a calm I want to weave not only into one summer, but into a summer stretched a little longer, year after year.

Costești awakens and nurtures a part of me I like. Is it the hills and the trees? The chorus of crickets at night? The expected visit of the cats? Or the morning appearance of deer taking advantage of fallen apples?

Or is it the absence of… of what?

I’ve placed a monstera on the table out on the terrace. Every day I look at it and speak to it a little. Something like: come on, you can do it, you need your first leaf. I have faith in it.

I’m also waiting for the visit of a new cat that surely will come looking for dinner. Last night I gave it a piece of very salty cheese, and for the first time it touched my hand with its nose. I’ve been thinking of calling it Pepinillo (Pickle). With its black-and-white fur, it looks as if it were dressed in a tuxedo.

Places that speak

I once wrote that there are places that speak—and that we hear them through memory. Tonight I open that album: voices, landscapes, faces. All of them whisper something to me.

And it makes me wonder: what if belonging isn’t a fixed place, but a sum of places I discover and rebuild each time I return to them—on foot, or in memory?

Thanks for reading.