Embracing my family's quirky holiday traditions from far away.
The first year that I missed Christmas at home, I was in Paris, under the guise of studying abroad
I flew on a puddle jumper with no assigned seats and landed in a city that was definitely not Barcelona. I may have been duped by a budget airline, but Marc was there waiting for me, in Girona, and within a couple of hours, we were at the lofty apartment that he shared with his sister in the Gràcia neighborhood of Barcelona. It wasn’t mine, but it was comforting to arrive at a family home for the holidays.
Later that night, we grazed on canapés and floated around a glittering white Christmas tree. In Spain, for environmental reasons, it’s tricky to acquire a real tree. Don’t quote me, but someone once told me that it has to do with all the trees mowed down to create the Spanish Armada—they’ve been working on regrowing their forests ever since.
Decorated with tasteful red, green, and silver balls, and blinking white lights, their tree was undeniably pretty. Still, I couldn’t help but miss the sappy pine smell of my mom’s back home; the tattered felt blanket she draped around the base to cover the clunky, decades-old stand; the elaborate train set that choo-chooed around the presents, even though her grown-up children were too old to appreciate it.
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