I still vividly remember the sensation of overwhelming awe when my dad allowed me to go outside in the morning of October 7, 1999, when the Guagua Pichincha volcano erupted for the second time in recorded history. The adults knew it was a relatively harmless one, no lava, just gas and ash and an imposing view, so I didn't step outside fearfully, I was excited and curious. It was one of the most beautiful and impressive things I had ever seen. I was 6 years old. Life just was at the time, I didn't have much to compare it to. I didn't know the world was at big as it is. Even now I don't understand it, but that was one of the first times where I experienced inconmesurable vastness.

It relocated me in space and time. I recognized myself as diminute, a miniscule little human. A feeling I can now put into words, haphazardly, but at the time the feeling was just awe, deep remoteness, incalculable distance, being minuscule, profound amazement. Observing a powerful declaration from an ancestral being, encountering the force of a volcano for the first time, having been born nestled between them.

Three days ago I walked with my grandma in her neighborhood. She still lives right in front of that childhood home were I saw the Pichincha erupt. I thought about all the things we've gone through as a country, in the terror that closes in on us, and how minuscule I am compared to all this communal pain. I think about that often. I grab my grandma's arm and choose what kind of bread we're taking home to have cafecito. Little anchors to avoid being cast away by daily horrors.