It wasn’t supposed to arrive. Not really. The package was more of a rumor. A cousin—second cousin once removed, I think, but frankly the removals get blurry after the second gin—said she might send me “a few old papers” from her attic in Des Moines. She said it casually. As if they were coupons.
And yet, three months later, after I’d nearly forgotten the conversation (largely because my knee had been preoccupied with an arthritic rebellion), there it was. A battered brown box on my Madrid doorstep. International postage plastered like drunken tattoos across its surface. It smelled faintly of mildew and Midwest air.
I stared at it for a good while. You know that feeling when something is both exciting and threatening? Like opening a door you’re not sure you want to open. That.
Inside: letters. Dozens of them. Wrapped in brittle blue ribbon, the kind they don’t sell anymore unless you’re into expensive boutique stationery that smells like regret. Most were postmarked 1918 through 1926. All addressed to my great-grandmother Lillian.
Now, I know Lillian. Or I thought I did. Proper. Church woman. Baked pies. Frowned at almost everything else. She married my great-grandfather Charles—a man so stiff they may have buried him in a vertical shaft to save horizontal space.
But here’s where it gets slippery.
The letters weren’t from Charles.
Most were from one “Fernando.” The script was elegant, slanted, European—certainly not Iowan. The postmarks? Seville. Occasionally Córdoba. All pre-marriage.
I’ll confess to you: my hands shook a little.
The first letter opened like a sonnet:
“Mi dulce Lillian,
The moon last night reminded me of your eyes.”
Christ. The man was laying it on thicker than a genealogist at a DAR conference.
The Possible Spanish Branch
Now, I’ve done genealogy long enough to know: this is how it happens. The sudden swerve. You think your people are pure Midwestern cornfields, and then boom — Andalucía crashes through the brick wall like an uninvited guest at Thanksgiving.
If Fernando and Lillian had… well… something, there’s a chance there are cousins I’ve never accounted for. Perhaps even still in Spain. Which might explain why I’ve felt oddly at home in Madrid these last few months, despite the bureaucracy trying to euthanize my soul.
Of course, this discovery sent me spiraling into every online archive I could squeeze with my now chronically aching wrist. The PARES archive. The Archivo Histórico Provincial de Sevilla. Parish records. Even a few half-dead forums where people argue for hours about whether baptism sponsors “count” as family. (They do. They don’t. Depends. Welcome to genealogy.)
The paper trail on Fernando isn’t strong. His surname—López de Castro—is about as common here as Smith. I might as well search for a man named John Tractor in Iowa.
Unstable Bridges
I took the letters to my local genealogical society in Madrid. They’re a charming lot, mostly retired professors who argue over the quality of 18th century ink. One elderly man with nicotine-yellow fingertips suggested I check passenger lists. Maybe Fernando visited the U.S. during that period.
Passenger lists! Of course. Why hadn’t I thought of it? (Because I was busy romanticizing this as a forbidden love story, that’s why.)
So that’s where I am now. Searching ships. Digging through Ellis Island manifests. Cross-referencing dates, ports, and cities I once mispronounced.
I don’t know where this will land. That’s the thing about genealogy—it promises nothing. But every so often, like an attic box arriving on a humid Madrid afternoon, it throws you a rope.
And some days, that rope is all you need.