I Went to Colombia (Part One)

I went to Colombia already married to Adan.

Legally married. Emotionally married. Completely, ridiculously, head-over-heels married.

We had married forty-six days after we met.

I realize how that sounds. Forty-six days is barely enough time to finish a free trial subscription, let alone decide you want to spend the rest of your life with another human being. But neither of us experienced it as some impulsive leap. From the beginning, there was simply very little uncertainty between us. We met, and something in both of us seemed to recognize the other person almost immediately. There was never a long period of wondering where this was going or whether we wanted the same thing.

We knew.

Even though, technically, we could barely talk to each other.

Our first date had been at Tempe Marketplace in Arizona. I spoke very little Spanish. Adan spoke very little English. What probably should have made the date painfully awkward somehow did the opposite. We used the words we knew, translation when we needed it, gestures, facial expressions, and a lot of laughing. At some point his mother called him on WhatsApp, and without hesitation he answered and introduced me to her.

On our first date.

Apparently we were not easing into anything.

That was Adan, though. His mother was not some separate compartment of his life that I would eventually be introduced to if things became serious enough. She was already there. They talked constantly. She was part of his days, his decisions, his worries, his happiness. I understood very early that if I was going to know Adan, I was going to know his mother too.

And I liked that.

Over the weeks that followed, the language difference became less of a problem and more of a strange little intimacy that belonged to us. We taught each other words. We laughed at our mistakes. Car rides became Spanish lessons, English lessons, or both. Sometimes a conversation that might have taken another couple five minutes took us twenty because we had to slow down, translate something, make sure we had actually understood one another, and try again.

But we did. Again and again.

Somewhere inside all those ordinary days—cooking together, driving around, talking about our families, spending time at home, learning each other’s habits—there stopped being much distinction between his life and mine. We were already making decisions as “we.”

So we got married.

The courthouse ceremony was supposed to be the practical part.

We had talked about doing eloping to Northern Arizona or Las Vegas, so we decided to handle the legal marriage at home in Arizona first. Just the two of us. No elaborate planning. No big audience. We asked two strangers who happened to be there for another wedding to serve as our witnesses.

Then the judge asked which language we wanted the ceremony in.

English or Spanish?

“Both,” I said.

So Adan said his vows in Spanish, and I said mine in English.

And this little courthouse ceremony that was supposed to be the administrative portion of getting married became one of the most romantic experiences of my life. It was perfect for us. Two people who had begun their relationship barely speaking the same language were standing together, becoming husband and wife in both of them.

That evening we went to dinner, and although we had deliberately chosen to get married alone, we weren’t really celebrating alone. Adan’s family started appearing through WhatsApp from Colombia: his mother, his father, his sister, his aunt, his cousin, people congratulating us and welcoming me into the family from thousands of miles away.

The day after we married, Adan’s father, Luis Fernando, sent me a message from Bogotá.

“Fabricio gained a wife, and I gained a new daughter.”

And somewhere around those first days of being married, something shifted for me.

I had already been getting to know these people for months. They appeared regularly on the screen of Adan’s phone and, increasingly, inside our life. I knew their faces and their voices. I recognized rooms behind them. We had pieced together conversations through Adan, Google Translate, facial expressions, hand gestures, and that universal human language of smiling enthusiastically when you have absolutely no idea what someone has just said.

But they weren’t welcoming me as Adan’s girlfriend anymore.

I was his wife.

And now, they were my family too.

Family had always been a complicated word for me. I had built a beautiful little family and home of my own, and I knew what it meant to love people fiercely. What I did not know nearly as well was the feeling of simply being folded into a larger family of people I had not assembled around myself who were saying, without hesitation, you belong to us.

And suddenly I wanted very badly to meet them.

Not someday in some vague future when circumstances might finally make everything easier. Adan had already been separated from his family for years, and because of his immigration circumstances in the United States, returning to Colombia was not something he could simply choose to do. Neither of us knew when he would be able to see them there again.

I had the means to go. I had the desire to go. And I had a husband who wanted more than almost anything in the world to be with the people waiting there.

If he couldn’t go, and they couldn’t come to us, then the next best thing I could do was go to them.

Once I made that decision, I don’t remember treating it like much of a decision anymore.

I was going to Colombia.

By the time I left Arizona seven weeks after our wedding, I knew a lot about my husband’s life there. I knew the foods he missed because we had spent months trying Colombian restaurants around Arizona, and I had made increasingly ambitious attempts to recreate some of those foods at home. I knew his favorite soccer team, the places he talked about, the stories from his life, the farm in Saldaña, the river, and the house he wanted so badly to build for his mother.

And I knew approximately seventeen thousand opinions about Colombian emeralds.

His family wasn’t made up of strangers to me either. But I had never hugged them. I had never sat at their tables or walked the streets behind his stories. I had never stood beside his mother on the land where he dreamed of building her a home. I had never physically stepped inside the country that had shaped so much of the man sleeping beside me every night.

And I certainly had never been fed by Colombian women.

As it turned out, no amount of preparation could possibly have prepared either my taste buds - or eventually the rest of my digestive system - for the amount of love that was about to arrive disguised as food.

I thought I was going to Colombia to meet my husband’s family.

And I was.

But by the end of the trip, I would understand that I had gone there for something much bigger than that.

I went to Colombia married to Adan.

I came home as his wife.

One Very Large Suitcase

The day I left for Colombia felt almost weirdly ordinary. I worked a regular day. I showered. I finished packing. I took pictures with the cats. And sitting near the door was one enormous suitcase that was almost entirely filled with things that did not belong to me.

For weeks, Adan and I had been shopping for his family.

This wasn’t simply a matter of buying a few souvenirs before a visit. Adan had been away from his family for years. They had supported him through an extraordinarily difficult journey to the United States, and while he continued to help them however he could, there was something different about finally having the opportunity to send things directly back to the people he loved.

He wanted to spoil everybody, and I loved watching him do it.

Every gift belonged to someone specific. There were things for his father, things for the children, purses and other gifts for the women. We found matching shoes for his mother, his sister, and me, which at the time just seemed sweet and would later become one of my favorite little details of the trip.

But shopping for his mother was different.

How do you buy a gift for someone when what you actually want to give her is the entire world?

There never seemed to be anything that felt quite special enough.

His mother is one of the central relationships of Adan’s life. They talk multiple times a day. He trusts her enormously. She is woven into our relationship in a way that has never felt intrusive to me; if anything, she has made our marriage stronger. She celebrates us. She advises us. She has talked us through difficult moments from Colombia in a language I barely speak and somehow still manages to make herself completely understood.

I knew how much she meant to him. And somewhere along the way, almost without my noticing it, she was beginning to mean an enormous amount to me too.

So one Sunday morning, we went out specifically to find something for her. Not merely a purse, but her purse—the one that would somehow feel special enough to carry across continents from her son.

We looked until we found it.

Was it perhaps a little extravagant? Probably. Does she now seem almost afraid to use it because it is too nice? Also possibly yes.

But that wasn’t really the point.

The point was watching my husband choose something for his mother when what he actually wanted to send her could never have fit inside a suitcase.

That same feeling followed us through all the shopping. He wanted something for everyone: his father, his sister, the kids, Tía Martha—the aunt he considers another mother and who holds an enormously important place in his life. There was always one more person, one more thing, one more idea, until eventually we were staring at the luggage wondering whether physics was going to cooperate.

Somehow, everything fit.

Sitting by our door that afternoon was this enormous suitcase packed with gifts chosen one person at a time, with an almost ridiculous amount of love. Adan couldn’t carry them into his family’s home himself.

So I would.

And that gave the suitcase a meaning I don’t think I fully understood until later.

I wasn’t just carrying my things to Colombia.

I was carrying pieces of him back to them.

Looking through my pictures from that day later, I found something else that makes me laugh now: a screenshot of a five-prong pear-shaped ring setting with a tulip-style basket, along with screenshots of emeralds.

Apparently the universe enjoys foreshadowing.

Before we left for the airport, Adan and I lay down together and tried to take one last nap before my overnight flight. I don’t remember whether either of us actually slept, but I remember taking a picture of us kissing.

It is still one of my favorite photographs of the two of us.

When I look at it now, it feels almost like a before picture.

Before Colombia. Before his mother’s hammock. Before the scarf. Before the land and the river. Before I understood why Saldaña could make my husband answer a question before I had even finished asking it.

Before Fabricio.

Eventually, it was time to get up.

During the days leading up to the trip, I had kept thinking some variation of the same thing: I cannot believe I am actually doing this.

People had told me I was brave. Some thought I was a little crazy. I was about to fly thousands of miles alone into a country I had never visited, barely speaking the language, to spend several days traveling around with people I had never physically met. And truthfully, when I looked at it from the outside, I understood their point.

The month before, I had traveled internationally for the first time in my adult life. I had gone to Mexico with a friend. This would be only the second time I had ever used my passport.

And this time, there would be nobody beside me to figure it out with.

But I didn’t experience going to Colombia as some dramatic act of courage. By then, it felt less like something I was deciding to do and more like something I had already decided mattered too much not to do.

I had the opportunity. I desperately wanted to know these people. And I loved a man who wanted more than anything to be with them but couldn’t.

The day before, Adan and I had even gotten into an argument. For a moment, emotional and overwhelmed, I had said maybe I shouldn’t go. But underneath whatever we were arguing about, the truth hadn’t changed.

There were people waiting for me in Colombia.

And I was going to them.

So when it was finally time, we gathered everything, loaded that enormous suitcase, and Adan drove me to the airport.

The Airport

Adan drove me to the airport and, of course, parked. There was never really a version of this where he was going to pull up to the curb, unload my suitcase, kiss me goodbye and drive away. He knew me better than that, and truthfully, if he had suggested it, I probably would have looked at him like he had lost his mind.

I wanted every possible minute with him.

So he came inside with me. We found the right counter, checked the enormous suitcase full of gifts and handled all the practical things that had occupied so much space in my brain for the previous few days: passport, bag, boarding pass, everything where it was supposed to be. Once that was done, there was nothing left between us but the part we had both been avoiding.

The escalator up to security was right there.

I remember that escalator strangely well. We stepped onto it together and rode slowly upward toward the place where he could no longer come with me. Neither of us seemed particularly eager to reach the top.

Before we separated, we took pictures, and I love them now because they captured something I don’t think either of us could have explained very well in the moment. Adan looks like he is trying to put on a brave face. There is something tender and a little sad behind his smile. And there I am beside him, holding up my passport like a trophy, grinning as though I’m about to embark on the greatest adventure of my life.

Which, to be fair, I was.

I was excited. I was proud of myself. I still could not quite believe that I was actually doing this. But those photographs feel bittersweet now because there was another story happening beneath the smiles.

I was about to fly thousands of miles away to meet the people he loved most in the world.

And he was staying behind.

When we reached the top, instead of walking straight into security, we found a bench and sat down together. Neither of us seemed particularly interested in being the person who finally said, Okay. It’s time.

The whole situation felt almost impossible to comprehend. I was about to get on an airplane and fly to Colombia to meet his mother, his father, his sister, and the kids - the people he had not been able see physically in years. These were his people, his memories, his home, and somehow I was the one going.

It felt completely backwards.

I had spent the days leading up to the trip repeating some variation of, I cannot believe I am actually doing this. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about it. Brave. Crazy. Adventurous. A huge leap of faith.

Maybe it was all of those things. But sitting there beside my husband, I didn’t feel particularly brave.

I felt focused.

There was a flight to catch, a connection to make, immigration to navigate, a suitcase I desperately hoped would arrive in the same country I did, and a phone that absolutely needed to work because on the other side of all of this were people waiting for me who spoke almost no English.

My brain had reduced the entire emotional magnitude of the moment to one very simple objective:

Get to Colombia.

The emotional part was harder to organize. I was going to miss him terribly. I wished more than anything that he could come with me. I knew how much he wanted to see the people I was about to see, and I knew there had to be something deeply strange about sitting beside me while I prepared to enter his world without him.

Later, when I asked Adan what he remembered feeling in those final minutes, he didn’t give me one clean emotion. He remembered happiness and sadness at the same time. Nostalgia. A tangle of feelings so complicated that even he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to feel happy or sad.

Mostly, he told me, he was happy.

Because I was going to meet his family.

And because, in his words, I was taking a little piece of him with me.

I don’t think either of us understood yet how true that would become.

Goodbye

Eventually, sitting there became its own form of procrastination. There was no dramatic announcement, no perfect moment when both of us suddenly felt ready. At some point, there was simply a flight I had to catch, and the only way to catch it was to stand up and walk away from him.

So we stood.

I hugged my husband and held on.

I remember wishing there were some way to skip this part entirely, as though I could simply disappear from one side of security and materialize in Bogotá without having to experience the space between. But airports offer no such kindness. They are places built around arrivals and departures, around one person going where another person cannot follow.

We kissed. We said goodbye. And then I turned toward security.

There is a peculiar vulnerability in walking away from someone you love while knowing they are still standing behind you. Every part of you wants to turn around. One more look. One more wave. One more second. But eventually, the line moves and you move with it, and you have to face forward.

I stepped into security with my passport, my carry-on and all the logistical anxieties I had been rehearsing for days. Adan remained on the other side.

I was sad. I was nervous. I was excited. But almost immediately, the mission-focused part of me took over again.

Just go.

Get to Colombia.

I had already made the choice, and that was the thing I understood most clearly. It wasn’t that I had no choice. Of course I did. I simply wasn’t giving myself another one.

I wanted to know these people. I wanted to sit beside his mother instead of seeing her through a phone. I wanted to walk through the places that had lived in his stories for months. I wanted to understand the life that had existed before me and the people who had made the man I love who he was.

And this man wanted so desperately to be where I was going but could not go himself.

So I would go.

I would carry that little piece of him with me.

Then suddenly I was through security, and for the first time, the trip belonged entirely to me.

Somewhere Over Colombia

That night, I discovered something wonderful.

Overnight flights are fantastic.

I had spent an unreasonable amount of time worrying about whether I would sleep, whether I would be miserable, whether I would stumble into Miami exhausted and disoriented. Instead, the lights dimmed, the cabin settled, and an entire airplane full of strangers seemed to enter into an unspoken agreement to leave one another alone.

Nobody wanted anything from me. Nobody needed me to make a decision. Nobody needed an email answered or a problem solved.

I slept.

And it was glorious.

When I woke up, I was in Miami, a place I hadn’t seen since I was probably ten years old. I found my next gate, boarded the flight to Bogotá, and somewhere between Miami and Colombia the trip changed.

I wasn’t sleepy anymore, and this flight had Wi-Fi, which meant Adan and I were communicating almost constantly. He was still in Arizona, but once again he was traveling with me in the only way he could.

At some point he messaged me that I must be getting close to Colombia.

I looked out the window and saw clouds. Water. More clouds. Nothing that looked remotely like a country.

Still, I kept watching.

I stared through the window as though I could somehow summon Colombia into view simply by wanting it badly enough. Then, slowly, something began to appear beneath the clouds.

Land.

More land.

Mountains.

Green.

And suddenly I understood what I was looking at.

That’s Colombia.

I remember the feeling almost more clearly than the view itself. This wasn’t a photograph Adan had shown me or a video someone had sent through WhatsApp. It wasn’t a pin on Google Maps or a place inside one of his stories.

It was real.

Colombia was beneath me.

I was looking down at the country where my husband had been born, where his family still lived, the country that had already been present in our relationship through food, photographs, phone calls, and memories almost from the day I met him. For months, Colombia had existed in fragments inside our life in Arizona.

Now I was looking at the whole thing from the sky.

I was also farther from home than I had ever been in my life.

So naturally, I took approximately one million pictures.

I photographed the view from the window and took screenshots of my location because apparently one form of proof was not sufficient. I required photographic, digital, and probably spiritual confirmation that I had officially entered Colombian airspace.

As we got closer to Bogotá, I could not stop looking outside. The landscape seemed to unfold beneath us in layers - green mountains softened by clouds, mist hanging between the peaks, valleys disappearing and reappearing beneath the plane. Everything looked lush and almost impossibly alive.

Growing up in the United States, I had so often heard Colombia reduced to the darkest chapters of its history.

Nobody had told me it looked like this.

But mostly, I remember one overwhelming thought.

Oh my God. I’m here.

I had never traveled this far from home. And I had done it alone. Somewhere beneath me were people who had been appearing through the screen of my husband’s phone for months, people who already called me family even though I had never touched them.

And now they were waiting for me.

Somewhere down there was his mother. His father. His sister. The kids. Somewhere down there were streets and homes and stories I had only known through Adan.

For the first time, all of it was about to become real.

There was no turning back now.

Not that I wanted to.

I had made it.

♥️