New city, new Starbucks mug. This was a souvenir my mom always gave me when my then-boyfriend (now husband!) moved to Burundi, East Africa for work in 2017, when I began my round-the-world trip.
In my Filipino culture, “pasalubong” is a tradition of bringing something home for friends and family when you've been away for a while. It's not what you give that matters. Your loved one just wants to feel appreciated and thought of while traveling. My mom was a huge foodie, so she always paired Starbucks scores with little treats from each city or country. But nothing could beat the look on her face when she received another mug to add to her collection.
Initially, she and my father met me in popular destinations like Paris, Venice, and Barcelona. When my mom wanted a super sweet Frappuccino, Starbucks was our place. It wasn't the easiest to find elsewhere in Europe, as you might imagine. My mother had a chronic illness that made her picky and picky about food and drink, but she also wanted to experience the flavors of her hometown in a new place.
As time went on, getting my Starbucks mug became even more important as my mom got sick and my parents stopped traveling with me. Since she couldn't go, I wanted her to feel connected to what she was meant to be. our Let's go on an adventure together. Once, I traveled for several weeks from Johannesburg, South Africa to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with a pit stop at the airport in Amman, Jordan, and then home to Richmond, Virginia. I kept the carefully wrapped mug in my carry-on suitcase the entire time.
You can imagine the stress of moving from country to country with fragile items. It was even more difficult to track down the mug overseas in the first place. Because Starbucks wasn't usually near hotels or somehow always seemed to be on the other side of the airport. Despite this, I almost never missed a flight or missed an opportunity to give my mom a mug.
In February, my husband's work took me overseas again, this time to Cairo, Egypt. However, about a year before her departure, her mother died. In memory of her mother and her shared love of travel, I decided to send her mug collection across the Atlantic. I placed it in the center of the kitchen. My apartment in a strange country now feels like home.
When I was collecting mugs, I was scared that my mom would urge me to look for a Starbucks in the distance. Now, I couldn't be more grateful for these sentimental memories that I want to pass on to my children. Plus, being stackable and colorful doesn't hurt. This is ideal for a practical maximalist like me.
