Doubt and stress have plagued me for months. You may think I am different from you, a standout among your citizens. But I am just like every other American, fighting my way to the top, working, working, working till there’s nothing left to work for.

There is a difference, though. I am working for a different top, a different experience, one that cannot be achieved by sitting on my back patio and complacently watching my children push each other on the tire swing.

The blood, sweat, and tears I’ve put into my version of the top are not much different, though, than any MBA-proud corporate employee climbing his way up the ladder to the corner office, the brightly lit view of downtown, the paycheck that buys his family all they’ll ever need or want… His presence not included.

I want a top where we’re all there, watching the moon rise in the still-light-at-8-o-clock twilight, our tired eyes too overwhelmed to accept the shift that has moved us from one continent of thought to another.

It may look the same. There are maples and evergreens, dry plains and rose bushes, mountains starving for moisture. Just like home. There’s a Burger King, McDonald’s, Starbucks. They’re right there, along the same boulevard that leads to the king and queen’s palace, the plaza mayor, the Roman built museums and churches. Even along the highway, you might think you’re driving in Kansas, as one wind farm after another pepper the landscape, propellors spinning languidly in the heat that has followed us across an ocean.

Let’s try some fast food, shall we? It’s inside this tiny restaurant with tables on the sidewalk. Tortilla de patatas, sardinas con aceitunes, cafe con leche, langosta pequeña, tastes that pop in our mouths, that burst with whole ingredients our American stomachs can’t quite identify. We will sit for hours, Spaniards sharing their stories, asking about ours, lingering over a meal with so many small courses that we fear it may never end. Each time another platito comes out, we hear, “Muy tipico de España.” I want to say, “Us? We’re very typical of Americans.” But I know it wouldn’t be true.

I didn’t even need to leave the airport to shed, after a walk down marble steps into a heat-filled baggage claim, my typical American view of stress, doubt, fear, loss. We’d been traveling for twenty hours, loaded down with three girls, eight bags, and all our dreams. To move from one gate to another in the Toronto airport, we had to stand in line, fill out declaration forms and get our passports stamped (I thought we were buds with Canada?).

But in Madrid? Six empty windows with sharply-dressed, handsome Spanish police officers stood waiting for our arrival. I swallowed, ready to answer twenty questions, ready to declare all that they could ask of me, ready to complete an array of paperwork with my broken linguistic abilities. Instead? One officer took our five passports, opened them up to the page with the visas, stamped them, handed them back, said, “Bienvenidos a España,” as simply and suddenly as he’d taken them in his hands. Not a question, not a form, not a single complication.

I’m still fighting my way to the top. It may look a little different, linger a little longer on the realm of success as seen by others. But my version of the top began in that moment, the moment I realized that things don’t have to be as complicated as we make them out to be. We could, for a year at least, immerse ourselves in the relaxed Spanish view of the world. Will I be able to reach my dream, to reach for the top? Perhaps, perhaps not. But whenever I feel myself falling off my ladder of success, I will open my passport, look at that stamp, and remember what it is that I came here for.