Perhaps my obsession with routine is linked to the fact that I live abroad. September 2023 marked ten years since I left Galicia. The mixed feelings of being far away from my family, yet knowing other places, people, and having a career, are always present. It’s a feeling I know well. My mum has lived far from her homeland almost her whole adult life, and I have seen in our home those mixed feelings, but now I am the one to experiencing them.

Whenever I return to Galicia, the plans that I enjoy most are those that allow me to sneak into people’s routines: going to my grandma’s for lunch during a weekday, going with her to the market, meeting with a friend after their workday, having breakfast with my parents… all these things help me to create, at least for a few days, a fictional scenario in which I still live there, in which I am still physically around for them.

It is then that the small day to day details, instead of being dismissed, grow in importance: grandma exchanging conversations with the owner of her favorite market stall, grandpa meticulously eating his daily kiwi at breakfast, my dad carefully peeling an orange trying to not get his hands too dirty… They carry on with their routines, unaware of the fact that I savour each one of those moments, memorising each detail, each smell – so that I can carry them with me once it is time for me to leave again.