When we moved to Spain, our eldest son was just eight years old. Three months after enrolling in a local school, he was already fluent in Spanish. His father and I could hardly believe it. While we were still carefully piecing together new words and unfamiliar customs, our son had already found his rhythm. He adapted quickly, almost effortlessly, and in many ways, he became our first real glimpse into what it meant to belong somewhere new.
Now he is sixteen.
This past weekend, he spent three days at La Feria de Sevilla, one of the most iconic and beloved celebrations in Spain. Moving through it with the kind of ease and confidence that only time can give. Watching him now, it is hard not to marvel at the boy who arrived here still very much tied to one world and has grown into a young man learning how to move between two.
But belonging has never been as simple as speaking the language well.
Over the years, I have watched my son navigate the quiet complexities of growing up as both foreign and familiar. American, but shaped in Spain. Fluent, but still different. Black, visible, and at times left to wrestle with the unspoken weight of being “other” while also carrying all the usual uncertainty that comes with becoming a teenager. Like many young people, he has wanted to be accepted, to feel chosen, to feel part of something. And like many young people who grow up between cultures, he has also had to learn that belonging is not always something the world hands you easily.
That truth has not always been easy to watch as his mother.
But more important than teaching him how to fit in was teaching him how to stand. To understand that there is nothing wrong with being different. To carry himself with confidence, to move with respect, and to know that identity is not something to apologize for. He does not have to choose between the parts of himself that made him. He is allowed to be both. He is allowed to belong to more than one place.
There is beauty in that.
Our job was never to decide exactly who he would become. It was to give him something steady enough to stand on while he figured that out for himself. Spain may be part of what shaped him. But the foundation beneath him will always be ours.