With a cup of tea and some biscuits, I set out on Monday morning to create the day’s collage. Paging through The New Yorker while listening to cumbia, I came across a black and white picture of a woman talking to someone off camera. Given that I wanted to work with a grey background—which eventually became brown—I thought the image would compliment my color palette well. It was her stance, too, that captured my attention.

As I combined her image with that of Italian meat that I came across earlier, a message began materializing before me: Mother is home. Interestingly enough, without knowing it at the start, my collage was speaking for me. My mom had, in fact, arrived the night before, but I did not know she would show up on this page.

Knowing that I subconsciously sought to represent my mom, I looked for an image of food to symbolize her. She made us breakfast tacos earlier that morning and burritos made sense. All that was missing were a few words. With a little searching, I found exactly what this work intended: Homecoming.