Memoir
Could I Have Crossed Paths With the Love of My Life and Let Him Go Without a Word?
When your head is in the clouds, the Universe spills hot coffee to bring you back to reality.
Madrid, Spain. June 2007.
One more uneventful Saturday ahead of me after a 60-hour work week. It was late June in Madrid, and that meant hot.
I didn’t complain, though. I spent the whole week working in the North of Spain, dealing with cold and humid weather, and for a lizard-like Mediterranean creature like me, it’s hard to get used to so many days without the warmth of sunshine.
I woke up around 9 am (quite late for my early bird standards), but my bones and muscles were like mashed potatoes after the prior day’s two flights and a 5-hour car journey.
In this state, my first thought when I opened one eye and saw the sun’s rays throughout the window was:
“Pfffffffff, I should (the most frequently used verb in my vocabulary) go to the attic and bring down the suitcase with my summer clothes and do the ‘changing seasons wardrobe project,” but I didn’t feel up to it. “I’ll do it tomorrow,” another one of Lady Procrastination’s top 10 phrases.
“I think I’ll take the subway and go to FNAC,” the biggest, 6-floor bookstore in Madrid.
By 11 am, I was leaving the Gran Vía subway and joining the human tsunami walking along the street, 95% of them ‘guiris.’
[Side note]: ‘Guiris’ is Spanish slang to identify stereotypical tourists: lobster-red because of their sun overexposure, Lonely Planet in hand, and wearing shorts and mid-length white cotton socks with sandals. Over the last years, they also added a selfie stick and a smartphone to their outfit. They also eat paella at night, but that’s another story [end of side note].
I am a person who loves solitude or small groups of people at the most. However, there is something in the overcrowded streets of Madrid that makes me feel alive and in good company. I’ve never found a rational explanation for this apparent oxymoron.
And there I was — one among a multitude of cameras, shorts, sandals, and summer hats.
It seemed guiris had done their homework following the Lonely Planet recommendations before coming to the oven-like summertime streets of Madrid.
I quickly looked around and realized I was the only one with long sleeves and winter boots — so, who was the ‘tourist’ in that scene? I felt like Wally in a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ beach scene: easy to spot at first glance.
I guessed that was why one guy on the other side of the street was staring at me while waiting for the green light.
I didn’t pay much attention at the beginning; he could have been staring at any of the other 25 young girls in summer outfits — by ‘young,’ I mean in their twenties, as I was already 32 and at that stage of my life, that difference felt like a generation gap.
I shifted my focus on the new song prompted by shuffle mode on my iPod: “The Reason” by Hoobastank.
I had been obsessed with that song for more than a year. The irony? There was no one in my life at that time to be ‘my reason,’ — but the sempiternal and hopeless romantic residing in my head loved to immerse herself in that song’s lyrics.
The light turned green, and the human herd ‘on-hold’ started moving forward, soon blending with the equivalent crowd from the other side.
What happened next took place in no more than 10 seconds. However, I’ve recalled it so often in my mind that it seems as if the Universe had decided to press the slow-motion button on its cosmic screen to perpetuate the moment.
The moment I stepped onto the pedestrian crosswalk and looked ahead, I realized it was me. I was the one he was staring at.
I am usually oblivious to these signals, as my tendency is to be mentally somewhere else from the place I am physically, but his persistent look became evident.
Despite the fact I was trying to dodge hundreds of legs to avoid stumbling, I could not help but quickly check him out: tall, in his fifties, rather blonde but not Nordic-like, his haired parted down the middle, sunglasses, dressed in safari khaki cargo pants and a white cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
The physical X-ray took me no more than 2 seconds, enough to immediately tag him as a “guiri with an air of a National Geographic reporter — sort of Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County.”
I cannot even remember how often I glanced at him to immediately turn away my head in an outburst of uncontrolled shyness.
He was staring at me without a doubt, but his expression was not the typical gaze of a foul pervert or a macho alpha peacock treasuring another ‘visual trophy.’ Instead, it seemed a natural inquisitive look, as if he recognized an old acquaintance in the middle of that crowd.
“I’m not a perfect person; I never meant to do those things to you…,”
The Hoobastank continued playing in the background, detached from my surroundings but adding the soundtrack to the moment.
When we were at a face-to-face distance, he smiled. It was a warm, ‘I-see-you-and-I-greet-you’ smile.
The kind of smile that kisses you.
As a spontaneous reflex, I smiled back at him and immediately felt an uncontrolled rush of blood popping onto my cheeks –just where I had received that visual kiss.
And that was all.
Total time? Not even a minute. However, the Jane Austen in me would keep that instant, amplify the pleasure in every single detail, and press ‘replay’ over and over.
The actual events took place in a far less romantic manner: in a matter of seconds, each of us had reached the other side of the street and continued our initial paths on different sides and directions.
But I could not help it. I looked back.
And there he was: standing on the other side and smiling at me. My stomach became a liquid mash.
I shyly and silently nodded to thank him for bringing a smile to my face on that otherwise uneventful Saturday, that otherwise uneventful period of my life.
I turned my head back to the street and accelerated my pace, trying to shake off the ‘cloud number 9’ mental state I’d fallen into. But I could not help it. I turned my head at least five times more to see him one more time.
Or, I should say, to check whether he was doing the same.
Our eyes met five more times, at least symbolically, as he had become the size of a leprechaun, and my nearsighted right eye could hardly distinguish his face.
The last time, I saw a woman prompting him to quicken his pace and catch up with the group. It was the first time I realized he was not alone; that was the ultimate cosmic punch I needed to return to reality.
I turned my head so rapidly that I bumped into a guiri, creating a hot mess (no pun intended) with his takeaway coffee and his, until that very moment, white T-shirt.
In the movies, that’s the moment in which you hear the dissonant sound of a scratched vinyl record disrupting the sweet melody you are playing in your head.
Unfortunately, my life has never been a movie script, so that moment took the form of my often repeated mantra:
“Lo siento!” (I am so sorry!)
And the 26 subsequent replies: “No pasa nada, tranquila” (Don’t worry. Sh* happens!”— free translation).
I could hear my brother’s voice — he is the youngest and the most down-to-earth one in the family:
“For Goodness’ sake, sister! You are the chimeric blend of Amelie Poulin and Mr. Bean!”
Drowned in a boiling concoction of self-blame and embarrassment for having jumped into the spotlight on the busiest pedestrian promenade in a city with more than 6 million people, I saw myself almost running towards the safe harbor of the bookstore.
Three minutes later, as I walked up the staircase to the 5th floor, The Beatles and their “Strawberry fields forever” took over the stage on my iPod:
“Living is easy with eyes closed…”
“With eyes closed, maybe, but you better keep looking straight ahead when you walk,” was my mental rant while returning to reality and releasing my excess adrenaline.
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I wish you a joyful reading time and a slow-paced, meaningful day 🌞.
