La Princesa of San Luis
Lessons of love from the blue castle on a hill.
Brithanny’s tiny lips pursed, wet from her juice, as she didn’t bother to wipe her mouth.
“Puuunnnto…Flexxxxx…Puuuunnnto…Flexx,” the inflections of her high voice mimicking a familiar ballet instructor.
Her leg lifted high above the supper table as she sat beside me, her pink ballet slipper almost touching my fork. She made sure that the elastic laces were tight and tucked when her father assisted earlier. “¡Meta! ¡Meta, Papi!” she ordered.
As she pointed and flexed her five-year-old foot in the air, the sparkly pink mariposa wings tied to her back and matching antennae fluttered along. They matched the sparkle in her big brown eyes that looked up at me.
I already knew the words “¡Mira! ¡Mira!” when she got up from her seat and leaped across the red tile. With only a few feet of room, we performed chasses and pirouettes until dinner.
I was sitting in butterfly position, my toes barely kissing, and my pink tights and matching tutu touched the cold hardwood floor.
“Now let’s fleeeeeexx…Good. And now pooooiiinte…Good. Again…” instructed the voice of a tall, slender woman, with pink ballet slippers like my own.
She floated across the room from student to student to check form. Upon passing me, I noticed that her laces were not to be seen, but my own were tied in neat bows.
She squatted in front of me and leaned over to tuck my laces in. I looked up at her with big brown eyes, silently begging for approval, and she smiled. My mom sat on the other side of a viewing window. “Watch me!” I mouthed.
While watching El Monte de Toros on television, Brithanny’s Papi, Hugo Perez, used a blunt pencil to trace characters from Disney’s Moana. With careful precision, he carved lines into gold poster paper using a hand-drawn stencil. A red desk lamp illuminated the workspace. Then, he dipped a thin brush in white paint to fill Maui’s shark tooth necklace. The bright green leaves, pink flowers, and creme fish hook were cut from colored tissue paper, and glued over. His wife, Guilmara, whom he calls Mi Amor, and I were on cutting duty. Brithanny separated the delicate tissue pieces by color. Guilmara explained how the tissue paper is more vibrant and bonito than regular colored markers.
“Es mucho trabajo,” I say, not knowing how to form the words “labor of love” in Spanish.
These were just the invitations for Brithanny’s sixth birthday party. Her fiesta was in a week, and Hugo and Guilmara had spent many nights like this hand-making decorations. They used whatever craft materials they could find, all piled in a large tub near the love seat.
Brithanny would have another Disney Princess-themed party, complete with a framed photo booth, character table décor, a newspaper maché Moana piñata, and a large cardboard carriage, covered in orange and yellow tissue paper, for her presents.
I sit against the blue, wood-panel wall in the main room above the kitchen table. It is maybe six feet wide. A giant Frozen sticker covers half of it — a celebratory remnant from her fifth birthday party.
“Es para mi amor — mi princesa,” Hugo said. Only the best for his little girl.
My silver tiara had teeth in order to stay put in my hair, which dug into my scalp. I wasn’t the birthday princess without it, so I ignored any irritation and left it in.
Prancing around to each guest in my bright pink tulle dress, I matched the princess decorations that filled the room and my store-bought cake that my mom had ordered days in advance.
As I shoved cake gracefully into my face, I was rudely interrupted by Labor Day fireworks. I ran to the porch to watch them over the neighborhood lake a few hundred feet away. I watched in awe atop of Daddy’s shoulders. He said they were for me and laughed the same way he had the year before. Only the best for his little girl.
After dinner and crafting, I sat on my temporary bed, tired from a long day of driving to my homestay in San Luis from San José. During my stay, Hugo and Guilmara had sacrificed the only room in the house with a true door and full-sized bed to share a twin bed in their daughter’s room. Brithanny, my homestay sister for the next five days, followed me in, bringing her boundless energy with her. We had already danced, played Jenga and Bingo de Animales, but the night’s activities were not over yet.
I reached for my phone to set my alarm, and she looked at it curiously. Most kids from home in the States are so fascinated by technology, and I figured she wanted to play on it, too. I began scrolling through pictures from home and opened other apps on my iPhone, but she quickly loss interest.
“¡Mira! ¡Mira!” she ordered, unveiling a bookshelf concealed by lace cloth in the corner. Like Belle from Beauty and the Beast, she stroked the spines with her index finger. She wanted me to read her a bedtime story from her precious collection.
I let her choose a book while I got up to brush my teeth and slip into my night clothes. When I came back, the shelf was empty, and a pile of books covered the bed.
“Uno,” I chuckled.
“Dos,” was her negotiation.
“Okay. Dos,” I agreed.
Butchering my Spanish, I read from pages she had picked at random. I recognized the story of Aladdin and used my best genie voice. I continued to read paragraphs from three different fairytales. Her father had to tell her that it was time to let me go to bed and that she would surely see me the next day.
So we exchanged “Buenas noches” for my first of five nights in the small, blue casa.
So much love overflows from this small blue castle that sits atop a hill in La Finca de Bella of San Luis, Costa Rica. It is where a humble front porch overlooks majestic mountains, slightly obscured by misty clouds. It is where a young mother cooks farm-to-table meals for her family and laughs at bull riding on television with her husband. It is where a father comes home from a long day’s work with a loud “Hola, Mi Amor!…y Mi Princesa!” only to make decorations into the night for his daughter’s birthday party. It is where a pink-winged little girl reads bedtime stories and leaps across tile floors. It is a quaint sanctuary filled with pure joy.
