My mom welcomed me at El Dorado airport in Bogota on Friday afternoon. It felt more strange than familiar as we drove “home” in her new car to her new apartment along an avenue exploiting with new buildings. I could only think that 8 years really are a long time. Some things were familiar of course. The woman selling bagged plums in the middle of chaotic traffic, the intense smell of smog that made me headachy and dizzy, the faces… for hours as I saw people on the street I kept wondering why everyone looked like a Colombian, forgetting that cosmopolitan is not an adjective that applies to Bogota as it does to NYC.
When we finally arrived to my mom’s place and she very proudly started to show me around, I keep looking for the few objects I could recognize. I was tired, impatient, uncomfortable. I am blessed to have a very intuitive mother though, and she picked up that I needed a little time to take in all this newness. So she did what any good mother would’ve done: she asked me if I was hungry.
And to the table came my mom’s very simply cooked lentils with little pieces of carrot and green beans, white rice with “pega” — the rice at the bottom of the pan that’s a bit overdone so it becomes crispy and crunchy — and a broiled chicken leg. Everything lightly salted, the lentils flavored only with tomato and spanish onion. This is the food I grew up with… Suddenly, I felt home.
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