In Elena Poniatowsky´s short story “El recado” (The Message) the narrator is sitting outside the house of the love of her life and says the following:

Quisiera tener la certeza de que te voy a ver mañana y pasado mañana y siempre en una cadena ininterrumpida de días; que podré mirarte lentamente aunque ya me sé cada rinconcito de tu rostro; que nada entre nosotros ha sido provisional o un accidente.

(More or less translated by me as: I want to be certain that I´ll see you tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and forever in a chain of un-interrumpted days; that I´ll be able to look at you slowly and carefully, although I already know by heart every inch of your face; that nothing between us has been provisional or an accident.)

I read that story in the Summer of 2005 and, at the time, this passage spoke to me of the love of my life (or so I felt/thought at the time), one who lived in a far-off land called Great Britain. I felt, before I even really truly knew him (do I even now?), that he was it. I still have no idea why I felt that way but I was certain. This quotation spoke to me of how much I yearned (yes, I did use the word “yearn”) to be with him and to get to look at his face and study each line of it. These words rang true in my heart from that summer onward for quite some time….

Now, here I am in the beginning of the Fall of 2007, and those words still speak to me. They remind me of the enthusiasm I felt for that love but now it makes me also think about how a woman can grow to love not just a man (although that is a particularly great kind of love) but rather that she can grow to love many things and how through distance and time she can still feel so very powerfully convinced that all these things that have happened to her have happened for a reason, that it´s destiny, that every day she might not (she being me) wake up with a man at her side and get to study his face, subtract hair, add wrinkles, add panza, et cetera but that she (she being me again) might get to wake up with a life she´s chosen for herself and look over the rinconcitos and feel good about it, feel certain about it.

I want to believe that where I am in life is where I am meant to be and that all the things I´m experiencing (good and bad) are happening for a reason. The town of La Carolina is approximately 168 miles from Madrid but was this Carolina (es decir, yo) meant to be not far from Madrid but rather living in it? The day before yesterday, yesterday, and today I felt I was meant to be here so, hopefully, that will continue for a while…