I was looking at photos of the small Castilian village where my father was born. He happily worked in another small village until I was three or so. We moved to a city at my mother's insistence, for our education.

Many years after, he told us stories about the time when he helped a man who could not afford to pay the vet to treat his pig, who had what sounds to me like sepsis, or the neighbour who could not repair a metal barrel.

At times I stop and think about my life, noting how in a way, it mirrors my father's. I don't see myself giving penicillin to a pig anytime soon though.

The Homeric pain of homecoming resonates with me. I find myself humming old Spanish Renaissance tunes as I go about my daily work in this green and pleasant land. In my dreams, a ray of Mediterranean sun caresses my arms, and lulls me to sleep. Birds sing in the garden, summer calls me home.

Endings are bittersweet. Looking at the sky, my head on my backpack on the grass, people around me. I did not feel well and thought, "I can't die in this foreign land, among strangers." Twenty five years is a long time, filled with the good and the bad. I am listening to Luis de Milán's "Fantasía número 3". The vihuela is such an old intimate Spanish instrument. My heart left years ago, my body is just following.