Falling in Love

The warmth of the holidays and of nearby family surrounded me as I sat at the table in the sunroom of my parents’ home last December. The Christmas tree lights were on in the corner, as dad worked on his computer and mom read her Bible. I had just received an email from a high school acquaintance, who commended me on my decision to move to South America, as she herself had lived in Argentina for the past few years. She warned me that the third month would be the most difficult.

I’ve reached the third month of living in Montevideo, and I can see what she meant. The newness of my arrival is fading as the realities of making a living are setting in. Despite the myriad opportunities for socializing each night, my heart has begun to stir. Winter has just begun, and the longing for something more drives my thoughts. I miss home now more than ever, and often find myself sitting in the warmth of my parents’ kitchen in my daydreams. Surprisingly, I also find myself reflecting back on the first time I left home, on my own, to live in a foreign country:

The year was 2004, before my heart had ever been broken, before I owned a house or ran a half-marathon; It was before my grandparents all passed away and before I cried at their funerals; It was before I was a bridesmaid in my friends’ weddings and before I realized the importance of health insurance or IRAs. I was 23, and I was going to Guatemala to learn Spanish.

It was a transition year. I had just left my life in New York City to return to my southern hometown and wanted to take a break before starting over in a much smaller city. I had left my job as a flight attendant and mailed all of my things from New York to South Carolina. I didn’t have a new job yet, but I had some savings and an ever-present wanderlust. I found an inexpensive language program in Antigua, Guatemala, and booked my flight, planning to stay a month.

A small colonial city resting among volcanoes in the high plains of Guatemala, Antigua surprised me with its charm. Ruins were interspersed with Spanish-style architecture, and past the thick wooden doors facing cobblestone streets, most of the homes opened up into interior gardens. Some gardens were home to pet birds, trees, and flowers. And others were more modest, like the home-stay I shared with my host mother, her son and daughter, and a German, English, and Australian student. We ate black beans at every meal, watched Mexican soap operas, and walked to Spanish school together.

I only knew a few phrases in Spanish, that I had picked up from a language CD—“Dónde está la estación de bus? Puede usted decirme dónde está un buen restaurante? Hola, mucho gusto en conocerle.” I felt like a complete idiot in Spanish class, but my teachers made it fun and interesting. One of my favorite teachers, Diego, had curly black hair and a constant smile on his face. He would stand at the front of the class with a marker in hand and have a conversation with us, turning around to illustrate new words on the board with bad drawings, laughing at himself and us, correcting our bad pronunciation, teasing us and making us laugh. Through repetition, we slowly acquired enough language to tell Diego what we did last weekend, what we liked doing, and what we planned to do tomorrow.

“Te gusta bailar?”

“Sí, me gusta bailar,” I said.

“Te gusta bailar salsa?”

I didn’t know the answer yet, but there was a free lesson Tuesday after class and everyone was invited.

The lesson was held in a gym near my house, and since it was our first week of being in Antigua, everyone came. Our instructor, Miguel, was thin and fit, with remarkable lean muscle and impressive body movement. His girlfriend, a deadly seductive beauty, loomed in the background of class with an amused look on her face. Miguel got us moving, and it was hilarious to watch so many white people trying desperately to move their hips with rhythm. I laughed the whole time.

That Saturday, some of the braver students planned to go to the salsa club to practice their new moves. It sounded fun to me, so we met that night at the school to walk together through the empty market, a dangerous place to walk alone. Emerging safely on the other side, we could hear the salsa music pumping across the dark field that separated the nightclub from town. We carefully made our way across the field towards the bright lights and music.

My love of dance began in my youth—first with tap and jazz, followed by All-American cheerleading, and in college, Davidson Dance Ensemble and musical theatre dance. Of course, I had secretly been dancing alone in my room since I discovered that I could, sometimes making up dances for the “Girls Only” club I started in elementary school, and sometimes letting off teenage angst while listening to Tori Amos throughout high school. I had always loved to dance.

So, it made sense that I enjoyed the first free salsa lesson. It made sense that I risked the perils of the market to go out that night. It made sense that—in the darkness of the crowded club, with the rhythm of the clave marking the steps of sweating bodies, turning and spinning, pausing and dipping—when he extended his open hand to me, I took it.

You could say that Paulo wore his heart on his sleeve, that when he extended his hand to mine, I knew him already. I knew him before our hands touched. When he danced, his heart seemed to be two feet in front of him. When we danced, I fell into the warmth of his love. I blossomed under his patient care and rested in my knowledge of him.

That night I took his hand, and he led me to the dance floor and into the basic salsa step. He spun me once. Did a cross-body lead. “How long have you been dancing salsa?” he asked. I didn’t understand. “How many salsa classes have you taken?”

“Uno,” I said holding up one finger.

“Wow,” he said, “you’re a natural.” He was just flirting of course, because it didn’t feel natural at all. I could see the girls who were the real naturals, and I wondered if I could learn. I was embarrassed at not being able to follow his lead gracefully and wanted desperately to be able to.

I started taking individual salsa classes with Miguel, and my dancing started improving faster than my Spanish did. I met Paulo on the dance floor again and again. He walked me home from the club. We spent the day together. I met his friends. We held hands. We talked. We laughed. We danced. When I called my parents to tell them that I was skipping my flight home at the end of the month and returning by bus in time for Christmas, they were, as usual, more understanding than I expected.

The day came for my departure. Paulo and I talked about me staying, but I was intent on being home for Christmas. We talked about me coming back to visit. The shuttle to Guatemala City came to pick me up in the dark early morning hours, and Paulo helped me load my luggage into the van. He kissed me goodbye, and I climbed into the van. I turned around, and he was gone.

When I was living in New York, I worked with an acting coach who asked me if I had ever been in love and lost it. “You would know without a doubt,” he said, “you would know the feeling of waking up in the morning with a weight on your chest, suffocating you: that feeling of dying each morning you wake up without your love.” I died a little bit the moment Paulo and I parted. When my bus crossed the border from Guatemala to Mexico, I understood what my acting coach had meant. My body grieved without permission.

I returned to South Carolina and found the local salsa scene. I moved on to bigger loves, to more painful heartaches. Each time, I could take it to the salsa club, where the rhythm of the clave lifted my feet from the ground, the sound of the drum reminded my heart to beat, and the touch of the hand continued the conversation.

It’s my third month of living in Montevideo, and I think a lot about my time in Guatemala. Watching my English students struggle with the frustration of learning a new language, I think about how I felt then, and how Diego patiently took the time to delight in his students and make learning meaningful. Taking an intermediate salsa class here, I think about my first salsa instructor, Miguel, and how he encouraged that first spark so that my love of salsa would grow. As the weather turns cold and my heart stirs, I think about my first love, and the brief sweet moments my memory preserves.

I was talking with a friend who had her heart broken recently. We talked about our disappointments, how people let us down and we don’t understand why. They disappoint us and hurt us, and it’s so painful. I tried to reassure her, “I think we have a choice. We can let that disappointment become our reality, slowly corrode our joy and turn us bitter, or we can choose to forgive them and love actively in spite of everything,” secretly hoping for the courage to follow my own advice.

She spoke softly through her tears, “Love doesn’t come around that often.” She’s right. So for now, we wait. And we hope for the strength to love again as fully as we did the first time.

My palms sweat, my heart beats a little faster, my mind surrenders control to the inevitable blindness of love, and a sly grin grows into a full-bodied smile. “You look happy,” they say.