So, my sister sends her son, Riley, to this little week-long day camp run by the community center.
Just a fun summer thing with crafts, snacks, and supposedly some Spanish lessons thrown in. No big deal, right?
Well, the kid comes back bouncing into the car like he just discovered treasure. His face is glowing, and he’s wearing this homemade white T-shirt that says “HOLA!” in orange and yellow puffy paint.
Super cute, classic camp stuff. But then—out of nowhere—he starts rattling off full Spanish phrases with this oddly perfect accent.
And I couldn’t help but laugh. I mean, Riley is only eight. I figured he had picked up a few words from the camp, right? Spanish was supposed to be one of those things they dabble in at school, but the way he said, “¿Cómo estás?” (How are you?), with such confidence and a perfect accent… it took me by surprise.
But then, things got weirder.
“Mom,” Riley said, his eyes wide with excitement. “I told everyone at camp that I’m from Mexico.”
My sister, Karen, who was driving, turned to look at him in the rearview mirror, clearly confused. “Wait a second, Riley. What did you say?”
Riley giggled, leaning forward in his seat. “I told them I’m from Mexico, and I speak Spanish at home. And then I showed them how to count from one to ten. They were so impressed!”
There was a strange pause as Karen and I exchanged a look.
I mean, Riley had never mentioned anything about Spanish at home. He was born in the States, and we had never had any kind of talk about Mexico or Spanish-speaking heritage. His family tree was a pretty straightforward mix of good ol’ American stock, as far as we knew.
“So… you’re telling me that you speak Spanish?” Karen asked, her voice filled with a mixture of disbelief and curiosity.
“I do now!” Riley grinned, clearly proud of himself.
There was a long pause in the car, and then I laughed, trying to brush off the awkwardness. “Well, that’s a neat trick, kiddo. But, uh, I think maybe you’ve been picking up a lot more than you think from camp. Let’s not get too carried away, okay?”
Karen didn’t say anything right away, but I could tell she was thinking. She was always the cautious one in the family, the one who kept her feet firmly planted on the ground. I, on the other hand, was more of a go-with-the-flow type, so I just assumed Riley was having a bit of fun with his new skills. Kids often pick up bits and pieces from experiences like that, right?
But the next few days…
It got stranger.
Riley started speaking in Spanish more and more around the house. He’d say things like, “¡Hola, mamá!” when he walked into a room, or ask for “agua” instead of water. At first, Karen and I laughed it off, thinking it was just him playing around with what he had learned at camp. But then, one evening, when Karen was preparing dinner and Riley was sitting at the table, he suddenly turned to her and said something that sent a chill down my spine.
“¿Por qué estás tan triste, mamá?” he asked.
The words were so fluid, so natural. And the way he said them… it sounded like he had been speaking Spanish for years, not just a few days.
Karen froze, her hands stilling on the knife as she glanced at him. “Riley, how do you know what that means?”
He smiled up at her innocently, his little face so serious. “I know because I’ve been dreaming in Spanish. And I know that it’s okay to be sad sometimes. You just have to talk about it, mamá.”
I blinked, unable to process what he had just said. Karen, however, didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, she asked softly, almost as if she was afraid to hear the answer, “What do you mean by ‘dreaming’?”
Riley tilted his head, furrowing his brow. “Well, I told you! I dream in Spanish. The people in my dreams talk to me all the time, and I talk to them back. They tell me things… sometimes things that make me feel happy, and sometimes they make me feel… sad. But I always understand them.”
That was when the room went completely quiet.
Karen’s face drained of color. She looked at me, and I could see that same look of unease in her eyes. What was happening to our little boy?
I had to know more. And so, I did something I didn’t expect myself to do—I started asking Riley more about these dreams. I gently probed, asking if he had ever heard these things from anyone in the family or if there were any other “family traditions” we hadn’t been told about. He would just smile, shake his head, and say, “Nope! I just know it. I’ve always known it.”
And the strange thing was, when he said it, it didn’t sound like a child’s imagination. It sounded… real.
The next day, Karen decided to ask the camp counselors about what had been happening. Maybe they had done something with him that was more than just basic Spanish lessons. The camp director listened carefully, then mentioned something that sent a wave of realization through me.
“Well,” she said, “we’ve been doing a lot more cultural immersion than we typically do. We thought it would be a good way to expose the kids to other parts of the world. But, to be honest, we were a little taken aback when Riley started speaking Spanish so fluently. We didn’t know he had that kind of ability.”
“What do you mean?” Karen asked, her voice trembling. “He’s… what, learned this in a week?”
The director paused, almost as if she was unsure how to explain. Then she said, “Riley’s situation is very unique. We actually had a guest speaker who’s from a small indigenous community in Mexico. His family speaks a specific dialect of Spanish that isn’t taught in regular schools. Riley was particularly drawn to him and seemed to connect with him on a deeper level. It’s been a remarkable thing to witness, really.”
When Karen and I left the camp, I felt my world tilt. How was this possible?
That’s when the twist, the real twist, happened.
I decided to do a bit of digging. I contacted the camp director again, asking more about the guest speaker and what he had said to Riley.
What I discovered floored me.
The speaker had actually been a man named Andrés—an old family friend of mine whom I had lost touch with over the years. He had been a close friend of my mother, and though I hadn’t seen him in decades, he had been very much involved in a sort of community outreach, teaching the kids in local schools the forgotten Spanish dialect of his people.
But it didn’t stop there. It turned out that Andrés was no stranger to our family. He had been the one who had helped my parents when they were in trouble many years ago, and he had made sure that the family legacy of speaking Spanish in our lineage wasn’t forgotten. He had personally come to my mother’s aid during some dark times.
And suddenly, it all clicked. Riley’s connection to this forgotten part of our family, this cultural legacy he hadn’t known about, was far more than mere coincidence. He had somehow been “guided” by an energy he couldn’t even understand—like a deep-seated part of him that was always meant to be awakened.
It was a karmic twist. The past had come back in a way I never could’ve imagined, and it was showing me just how much we are connected to the past, to our heritage, whether we realize it or not. The lessons, the legacies, and the bonds were all there, waiting to be rediscovered.
The lesson here was clear: sometimes, the things we don’t know about ourselves, the things we forget, have a way of showing up when we least expect them. The past, our history, isn’t just something to look back on—it’s a part of us that lives in the present, shaping who we are, and who we are yet to become.
If you’ve ever felt lost, disconnected, or uncertain about your place in the world, remember this: your roots are deeper than you realize. Sometimes, the answers are right in front of you, just waiting to be discovered.
