Lives move along signless paths, some ending in a paradise of realized dreams, some in a purgatory of unintended consequences and some in eternal regret for that one thing that shouldn’t have happened.
The postcard says "Mexico, Land of Tropical Splendor". A slice of earth and sky meets and pulls my eye from the distance into a tropical garden of flowering stalks and arched palms. Midday light flows through the slats of the bamboo curtain and into the shed where she sits. One arm is raised and a scarlet parrot perches on her wrist. She smiles, but this is no enigmatic pose. There is a promise, a hint of intimate innocence in those bright brown eyes. Bare shoulders, made for a lover’s touch, are the stuff of flesh on flesh dreams simmering somewhere just beyond sight.
Her other arm cradles a straw basket laden with fruit and bananas, ripe and ready. Bunches of green bananas hang from the rafters in upturned geometric precision. Toucans pose among orchids. A riot of color surrounds all; her lips are so red and this unrestrained fecundity threatens to spill a-greening from that printed card into this place.
Her name is Maria de la Luz (Mary of the Light), and she is half of me. She escaped a life of begging on the streets of Mexico City and came to California, adopted into a landscape of promise, thanks to the humanity and generosity of a good man, her father. I met her when she was a college student and dreamed about her for months before gaining the courage to tell her how beautiful she was.
Would she still be struggling on those dirty crowded walkways, I have wondered, if not for chance? Would she suffer from hunger, brutality and injustice, never knowing the good that is in the world? Would she see life through eyes tarnished by the hardness of daily survival? Would human frailty conspire to deny her a meaningful existence?
This brown-eyed goddess beckoning to me was pulled from hurtful possibilities and flown, heart and body, to where I am. I breathe each breath with the sweet knowledge that she was saved for me.
