WAITING IN A COFFEE SHOP

I had not been to Washington, D.C., in some three decades.

This morning, after walking for fifteen minutes through freezing wind, snow, and generally disagreeable weather, I arrived at the doors leading to my appointment. After fumbling with a frozen bell and intercom, a voice from the other side informed me that I was too early - and added that the doors would not open for another thirty-five minutes. 

I had miscalculated my time by about an hour. 

So here I am, sitting in a nearby coffee shop, trying to bring body and soul back to a tolerable temperature - a hot coffee in one hand and a hot bun in the other. 

Warming cold buns with a hot bun. 

Why am I here?

My appointment is at the Spanish Embassy, where I am depositing documents showing that I am entitled to Spanish citizenship because my grandfather was born in Spain. My mother later became a Spanish citizen while living in Cuba. Unfortunately, she never had the opportunity to travel to Spain. 

Am I leaving the United States?

No.

I love this country. Whoever - and whatever - I am today came into being through the opportunities I was given here. Through successes and failures that help mold a person. At least here, I had the chance to try. 

Something my own country denied me. 

So again - why?

For me, this is more sentimental than pragmatic.

Yes, I have visited Spain several times, usually for work. And I came to love that country in many ways because, after all, it is my heritage - on both my mother’s and father’s side. But not enough to give up my residence in the United States, much less my citizenship.

The real reasons go back to my childhood and to the man who raised me like a son - my grandfather.

He was an immigrant who arrived in Cuba at fourteen - a child-man. With nothing to his name but a burning desire to do, to become, to grow.

He came from a small village in Asturias called Illas. I am not even certain it still exists in its original form today. As I grew up in his household and traveled around Cuba with him, I heard countless stories about his Asturias - about the beauty of that land and the ever-present, if unspoken, desire in his heart to return and visit the place where he was born.

As destiny - aided by political changes - would have it, he never returned.

That is the reason for this short, cold, disagreeable trip.

Perhaps it is a foolish dream. Some would call it a fool’s errand. Perhaps it is melancholy - a hopeful sadness.

A desire to visit Asturias as a citizen - even if only in name - and remind that land about a son who left long ago and could never return.

To light a candle at the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Covadonga - the Mother Virgin of Asturias - and entrust to her the memory of that son who never forgot her, never forgot his Asturias, but who never had the opportunity to return.