by Allen Zeesman

I had driven this road before. Four years earlier, I had lived in San Miguel de Allende: long enough to learn the way the light fell on the facades, the slow rhythm of the cool mornings, the tourist seasons that filled the cafes where English floated like a thin veil. I knew this landscape. I thought I understood it. So, returning to Mexico to live permanently, I expected nothing more than the comfort of familiarity. My daughter and her mother flew over later; I traveled alone, following a road that should have felt ordinary.

But when the highway began to curve toward San Miguel, the world changed texture. The asphalt vibrated gently beneath the tires, and the air—dry and clean—filtered through the crack in the window. The mountains parted with an ancient stillness, as if they were parting to let me pass. The light of the high plateau, that gold filtered through the fine dust, fell suddenly upon the dashboard. And then something inside me gave way.

My chest tightened without warning; my breath caught in my throat. Tears welled up, quick and hot. I felt a shiver run from the back of my neck to my hands, and I had to brake. I pulled the car over and put it in neutral. The engine continued to vibrate beneath my legs as I tried to catch my breath, my fingers gripping the steering wheel tightly, as if I needed to hold onto something physical to keep from completely breaking.

There, stopped by the side of the road, with the sun beating down on the windshield and the scent of earth warming outside, I understood that this wasn't nostalgia. Nor a fleeting emotion. It was deeper, more visceral: a recognition that came before any thought. Home. House. My place. A silent word I didn't utter, but felt like a pulse.

And yet, it made no sense. I wasn't venturing into the heart of Mexico, but rather its comfortable edge: the foreign bubble where one lives alongside Mexican life without ever truly experiencing it. I was already familiar with that distance. I had lived there before. So why the tremor? Why this certainty that surfaced unbidden?

I found no answer. I simply remained seated, breathing slowly, letting the warmth of the steering wheel and the glare of the high plateau envelop me like a kind of signal. An opening. A tiny crack through which something I couldn't yet name was entering.

Then I activated the turn signal, returned to my lane, and continued on my way to the city. I didn't know what what I had felt meant. I only knew that, for the first time in a long time, the journey wasn't a return. It was a beginning. And that something—still hidden, still formless—had begun to stir within me, like a whisper that said: you're getting closer.

To be continued

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