The First Morning

The morning we realized we’d actually done it.

The journey had taken more than a year to plan and almost twenty five hours to complete.

By the time we landed in Palma, we were exhausted.

The airline had temporarily misplaced our luggage, and for a while all three of us took turns sleeping on the floor of the airport, waiting for everything we owned to arrive on a baggage carousel. It felt strangely symbolic. Somewhere inside those five suitcases was our entire life.

Eventually the bags appeared.

We found a taxi.

We wrestled our way into the apartment, somehow managed to get the front door open, dropped the suitcases where they landed, and collapsed into bed fully dressed.

A few hours later we woke up hungry enough to order dinner through Glovo, ate without saying much, and fell asleep again.

That first day belonged to jet lag.

The first morning belonged to us.

I woke up before anyone else.

For a moment I forgot where I was.

The room was unfamiliar. Suitcases were stacked against the wall. There wasn’t a single picture hanging anywhere. It still felt more like somewhere we were staying than somewhere we lived.

I walked across the apartment and opened the windows.

The city drifted in almost immediately.

Church bells somewhere in the distance.

The sound of buses beginning their morning routes.

People talking as they walked down the street below.

It wasn’t loud.

It was alive.

I remember standing there for a long time, coffee-less, looking out at a city that had felt like a dream for so many months.

It still didn’t quite feel real.

We’d planned this move for over a year.

We’d rented out our home.

Packed our lives into five suitcases.

Said goodbye to family and friends.

Crossed an ocean.

And somehow, standing in that apartment, it still felt as though we were borrowing someone else’s life.

Eventually everyone woke up.

After showers that felt unusually restorative, we did what people always seem to do after a move.

We went looking for breakfast.

There wasn’t anything in the apartment yet.

No coffee.

No milk.

No bread.

No familiar routine.

So we walked toward Santa Catalina.

We already knew the neighborhood from the months we’d spent here the year before. The streets felt familiar enough that we didn’t need Google Maps every few minutes, yet unfamiliar enough that we still paused at corners to make sure we were heading the right way.

Instead of trying somewhere new, we ordered pancakes.

Maybe after twenty five hours of travel, familiarity matters more than adventure.

To this day I can still remember those pancakes.

Light.

Fluffy.

Covered with warm blueberry compote.

And coffee.

Far more coffee than was probably necessary.

As we walked back toward the apartment, nothing felt dramatic.

Nobody announced that we’d made it.

There wasn’t some cinematic moment where we looked at one another and declared that this was home.

Instead, we stopped at the little Eroski grocery store around the corner.

We bought bread.

Milk.

Coffee.

Blueberries.

The sort of ordinary groceries you could buy anywhere in the world.

Looking back, I think that may have been the moment everything quietly shifted.

Buying groceries isn’t exciting.

That’s precisely why it mattered.

For the first time, we weren’t preparing for a vacation.

We were stocking a kitchen.

We carried those bags back through streets we’d once explored as visitors.

Now we were carrying them home.

Over the weeks that followed, the changes were almost too small to notice.

“Our Airbnb” slowly became “our apartment.”

Google Maps stayed in our pocket more often than it came out.

The Number 4 bus stopped feeling mysterious.

The streets became familiar.

The rhythm of Spain became familiar.

I started sailing again, eventually finding my way back to STP Shipyard, where friendships formed naturally around docks, coffees, and long days on the water.

We found the school where Coco would flourish.

Neighbors became friends.

Birthday parties replaced sightseeing.

Christmas became something we planned instead of imagined.

Without ever making a conscious decision, we stopped asking what it would be like to live here.

We were simply living here.

Nine months later, our mornings look different.

I walk to the bakery.

Drop Coco off at school.

Wave to familiar faces.

Stop for coffee.

Sometimes I hear as much Mallorquín as Spanish and realize I still have plenty left to learn.

Our lives are wonderfully ordinary.

And I mean that as the highest compliment.

People often imagine that moving abroad is defined by the extraordinary moments.

The flights.

The paperwork.

The adventure.

Those things matter.

But they fade surprisingly quickly.

What lasts are the ordinary mornings.

The walk to buy bread.

The grocery store where you know exactly where everything is.

The familiar sound of church bells through an open window.

The neighbors you wave to without thinking.

Looking back now, I don’t think we built a new life that first morning.

I think we simply woke up and started living it.

Written from Palma, Mallorca.