| Every once in a while, my son chuckles indulgently, when he
spies me during my own, low-tech version of time travel. He has caught me again,
in the middle of the living room floor, swaying alone to the music of my
girlhood. All that he can see is a middle-aged lady, who fusses over pot roast,
and frets about the whiteness of her laundry. He cannot understand my dance.
You see, the steps are not really on the rug I vacuum daily, but on the sand of
a beach in Baja California. It is a moonlit night, and I am still a child:
listening to the sounds of the Mariachis, while dreaming of the day when I will
be grown and able to join the glamorous ladies at the fiesta. They are so
lovely, with combs in their hair, wearing graceful black lace dresses and
mantillas.
The favored music of the evening is, as always, a selection of Boleros.
In Mexico, there is a Bolero for almost any occasion: ballads of first
romance, beautiful green eyes, and heartbreak as well. My favorite is
Solamente Una Vez, with words that tell of the true love which comes only
once in a lifetime, then never again. Will that ever happen to me? The other
little girls and I practice our dances together, while we dream of being swept
up and away, on Zorro's horse.
Whilst traveling, fifty years later, that melody came to me in a New York subway
station. I turned and smiled, as a strong, warm voice and languid guitar took my
spirit back to those beaches of memory. The grandfatherly singer was a short,
stocky man: whose voice let you know that he too had known those dreams of a
long-ago night at the fiesta.
Our paths would cross several times over the course of my visit, always at a
different place. I would quietly drop a couple of dollars in his guitar case,
and receive a courtly bow in return. All this with no words exchanged, for that
would not have been in keeping with the dignified Mexican protocol which governs
interaction between respectable people, even when they are thousands of miles
from home.
The last time I saw him was in a tunnel at Penn Station. I dropped some money in
his case, as usual, and stepped back to enjoy the song. Another older woman
stopped, and then another. One turned to me and said, "Doesn't he make you
fantasize a serenade outside your window?"
Young women did not stop to listen. Perhaps, despite the clear, ringing tenor,
they did not see him as a man, and could not recognize romance in his lined
peasant face. They hurried on, in thin coats and flimsy shoes, the sort of shoes
a woman wears when she knows that someone will hold her toes, and care that they
are cold.
We were his admiring audience, in fur coats and sturdy footwear. Decent women of
a certain age, whose grown children would laugh to think of us as dreaming of
balconies and moonbeams. Ladies who are addressed as Ma'am by solicitous clerks,
the senoritas of long ago.
The tune ended and he started to play again. Perfidia, one of the saddest
yet most beautiful of Boleros, lamenting betrayal. Without thinking, my
body started to move with the rhythm. There was a small, rueful smile on my
face, for though my heart ached with the memory of sadness, it still could
rejoice in having known what it was to beat alegria.
All around him we stood, swaying to his music, with mouths turned up ever so
slightly at the corners. Each of us in a private, yet shared reverie of the days
when caballeros came to call.
The train came. I stepped inside, and he tipped his hat to me as I rode away.
Now, I am back at home, seeing the bemusement in my son's eyes. There is no way
to explain the paths my feet take on the carpet, the smile on my face, or the
tears in my eyes. Time will teach him what I cannot. I return to the Bolero,
and dance with the other girls, who grew to become my sisters in the subway.
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