In the Times Square Olive Garden, my sister Daria, Pete and I met two of our cousins from Guatemala. You may remember two years ago, my brilliant cousin swam around Manhattan, rendering me speechless. Thus, we were overjoyed to see our champion again, but this time she brought her mother.

More than thirty years ago, my grandfather Andy found her. She didn’t know she was missing. He was an only child of immigrant parents. Her grandfather Giovanni and my great-grandfather Carlo were brothers, and it meant everything to Andy that he had blood relatives besides his overly colorful children. He died a few years after he and my grandmother visited Guatemala, but his joy has remained impressed upon me all this time. When I saw her yesterday, she was tall, like he was. Her eyes were like his eyes. Her expressions were like his expressions. I can’t tell you how many times my heart skipped a beat because I’ve missed him so much. But she looked at me like she’d missed me, too, and maybe she did. She wants us to go to Guatemala.

It’s been awhile since I traveled. Plainly, I just heard the distant past describe a fantastic and once improbable future.