I began to grow pineapple, mango, and papaya from seed in the garden. I filled it with hand crafted furniture made by a carpenter who lives down my street, and art painted by my friends in Mexico City. I decided to buy a fully restored, 100-year old house about a 10-minute walk from the beach. On my birthday, three months after I arrived, I put faith in that feeling. I felt connected to the flavors, to the land, and to the vibrant community that flourishes on that tropical coast. But every day that went by I fell a little more in love with the city with its kind and generous people with the cool Pacific waves crashing on rocky beaches and, of course, with the seafood-among the sweetest shrimp and lobster I have eaten anywhere in the world. I had no intention of staying in Mazatlán when I arrived on March 19, 2020, planning to hole up for just a few weeks-until the pandemic had passed, I thought.
When I realized we’d be entering lockdown, I drove eight hours to the first major city on the open Pacific, Mazatlán. and Mexico, I was in the middle of the desert in Coahuila. In March 2020, when the pandemic fully hit the U.S. Just as I was inching closer to finding what I'd come for, the world turned upside down. I hadn’t found a place that felt like it was mine I hadn't found my place in Mexico. Still missing though, was the personal sense of belonging that I expected-that I desperately wanted. I had found the flavors of my childhood and I had found people who look like me. It might have been enough to head home with. It was like being at a wedding and bumping into relatives I hadn’t seen in years I didn’t remember their names, but I knew their faces. I then walked through the mercado-and everyone I saw looked familiar. I sat there frozen, tears welling in my eyes at the striking resemblance. She turned toward me and my heart sank: She looked exactly like a photo of my mother when she was the same age.
There was a little girl, about three years old, in a little white dress and black Mary Jane shoes, dancing between her parents. I parked and walked the cobblestone streets of the Spanish colonial plazas, eventually sitting on a bench and watching a family play in front of me. That changed a few days later, when I drove into Saltillo, Coahuila, about an hour southwest of Monterrey. I'd found one part of the puzzle in Monterrey, but there were still missing pieces. I have more of my maternal grandfather’s features-darker hair, darker skin, darker eyes, sharper features in my face, more moreno (brown). They looked a lot like my dad’s side of the family: The Martínez’s are light skinned and have lighter hair than my mother’s side, the Castruitas. A street view in Capula, Michoacán Ren Fullerīut the thing was, the people in Monterrey didn’t look like me.