The Last Trip

The handle snapped just as I left the San Stae station. I felt a sharp crack in my hand and froze. I didn’t want to look back, as if doing so might convince it to hold out a little longer. I tried to pull it gently, but the suitcase had decided it wasn’t going any farther. I had to drag it, barely hanging together, over the last few meters to the hostel, across bridges, up and down steps, and over Venice’s unforgiving cobblestone streets. Fifteen years of traveling together came to an end right there, on the banks of the Grand Canal.

The suitcase came into my life when I was going through one of the most devastating periods I had ever experienced. I had been cheated on in the worst possible way. The kind of betrayal where everyone seems to know except the person being cheated on, and a baby was on the way as a result. It was around the same time as the events I told you about in my previous column.

To help ease my sadness, Edson, one of my best friends, invited me to spend a few days in Morelos with a group of his friends. Part of me wanted to go on that trip, but I was embarrassed to go without a suitcase, so I made up some excuse to turn down the invitation.

My mother had just gotten a better job, and she was worried about the sadness that seemed to have settled deep inside me. She suggested we go look for a suitcase I would love so I could take the trip. She would get it for me. That seemed like an incredible luxury to me.

It didn’t take us long to go shopping. Months earlier, I had seen the one I wanted at a travel agency on Avenida Montevideo. It was a pink fabric suitcase that came with a gorgeous toiletry bag. It was love at first sight, and my mom made that love official when she paid 1,200 Mexican pesos for it. Without realizing it, that October afternoon, she gave me much more than a suitcase. She gave me the freedom to begin exploring and living in a world beyond anything my eyes had seen up to that point.

We invite you to read: The Question of Becoming

We’ve been inseparable ever since.

La rosita, my little pink suitcase, traveled from one end of Mexico to the other. Together, we made our way from Tijuana all the way to Yucatán. She waited with me at bus terminals at all hours of the day and night, through illness, hunger, and the uncertainty of delayed flights and buses. She walked with me through endless airport hallways. She was there for every Guadalajara International Book Fair I attended. In fact, she had been with me since my very first one, back in 2011, where it got covered in scratches and suffered damage that could never be repaired.

La rosita was there for the first LibrObjeto book fairs, back when everything was uncertain and, above all, filled with pure excitement and hope. That same sense of possibility stayed

with me during my two moves to Cuernavaca, during which she traveled back and forth dozens of times. A few months ago, we crossed the Atlantic together to explore Europe.

Even though I have other suitcases now, it never occurred to me to leave it behind on this trip. Before leaving, I cleaned it carefully, taking my time. It was covered with the marks of so many trips that it was already impossible to tell which ones belonged to which one. One of its screws had come loose… coincidence? My uncle fixed it. I polished the suitcase until it gleamed, just like when you get ready for a special occasion with a friend.

But life as a suitcase in an airport isn’t easy. They’re thrown, dragged, and slammed against conveyor belts and concrete floors. They even bear the weight of other people’s memories without anyone stopping to wonder whether they were ever meant to carry such a burden. This time, rosita had had enough.

As I write these words, I’m crying, and I cry again as I edit them. I’m having a hard time figuring out why, but I’m overcome by a strange feeling that I’ve come farther than that twenty-year-old girl could have ever imagined the day she walked out of the store clutching a pink suitcase. I called Mom to tell her what had happened.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. Don’t cry,” she said. “I’ll get you another one.”

For years, I thought holding on to that suitcase was a way of never letting go of my mother’s hand. The very thought of replacing it made me feel disloyal, ungrateful, as though leaving it behind meant diminishing the sacrifice she had made to get it for me all those years ago. It has taken me a long time to realize that love doesn’t reside in objects; it passes through them. The suitcase may be left behind somewhere along the way, but what my mom placed inside it fifteen years ago remains untouched. That afternoon, she didn’t give me a suitcase. She gave me wings, the freedom to leave whenever I wanted. I think that is one of the greatest acts of love a mother can offer.

Perhaps that’s why it hurts to watch it break here, of all places, along with the version of myself who first took it on a trip in 2011, a woman who no longer exists. Leaving the suitcase behind in Venice meant accepting that the woman who had first taken it out into the world had been left behind, too.

I can’t stop crying.

I saw la rosita for the last time at the hostel reception desk. The fabric still bore the scars of journeys I could no longer remember, as if even the polyester had a memory of its own. I said goodbye with that terrible certainty that comes with knowing something is happening for the last time, and I couldn’t help taking one final picture of it. It’s hard to think that I left Mexico with it, but rosita won’t be coming home with me.

Of course I’ll let my mom get me a new suitcase. I know I’ll keep traveling the world, and somehow, she’ll keep accompanying me as I set out to conquer every seemingly impossible thing I’ve always dreamed of doing.