It must be crazy because it is so scary. That's what Daniela is telling herself. Everyone in her family thinks she's crazy. Her aunt even said she should check in at a psychiatric ward. Daniela suddenly wishes her grandfather was still around.
Daniela is a short woman, slim, and often found smiling. But often she is also very stressed. You can say she is talented. Last month she got the envious letter from the Dean that she was recommended the tenure track at the prestigious MIT, where she is currently working. She has been there for over four years, teaching and doing research in the field of chemical engineering. She didn't get to where she is now by luck or by her charm, and being one of the few female faculty members at MIT is not an easy life to have. Her struggle never ended with the first paycheck from the university; in fact, in many ways her life had only gotten more stressful.
But no one complaining now about her crazy idea understands her life in that way. No one in that circle truly understands how difficult it is to break through all the stress and still maintain that smile emanating from her heart. She enjoys teaching, and she finds her research topics fascinating, to say the least. But it never made her fall in love. She has worked hard all these years and that's how she got there. And with some luck, too, as you always do in life. But she figured out at some point that to get to where she is now, besides luck, you don't need extraordinary ingenuity or intelligence; it's mostly hard work, and to sustain the immense pressure of hard work you need to have an open heart, a loving heart.
But it was that very, loving heart that led her in a long journey, literally and figuratively, to where she is now. But then again, that love started long ago. At least when she was a little girl and hanging out with her grand father while her mother was working. He would give her the dulce de leche with crackers while the tango music was playing in the background. That was a Buenos Aires before its famous dance became a worldwide phenomenon. No one in her family, as in most families, danced to the music. But the music had already imbued in her blood with the love her grand father had given her without criteria, without strings. He had taught her many many things, pragmatic as well as philosophical, up until she was a teenager, at which point she moved with her Mother to the US because her Mother finally caught herself a man who was lucky enough to live in the US. Buenos Aires was no more, at least not for a while, but the music stayed in her blood, and she would play it often even though no one in her new country understood what it was.
And when tango came to her new city many years later, she didn't notice it. She had her music and it was enough. She visited a couple of times and never failed to find that same, unconditional, warm love in the arms of her aging grand father. That is, until he passed away. That was the first time she had a rift with her mother, who deliberately hid the devastating news from her because she was preparing for her doctoral defense. Her mother had lied to her that her grand father wouldn't be able to come for health reasons, but that she would videotape the whole event for him. She was very sad. Her achievements were partly motivated by her desire to show what a proud grand father he must have been to see her succeed in ways that are truly beyond the stars. She shed big droplets of tears, very large for such a small woman, when she dedicated her dissertation to what she thought was a very ill grand father. But the next day she found out the truth, and immediately, without talking to anyone, she bought a ticket with her savings and went to her hometown.
That was before the start of the crazy stuff. But that's what she is thinking about now. How crazy the world itself has been. How crazy it was for her mother and relatives to hide something so important from her so that in the end she failed to show up at the funeral of her most inspirational person. How crazy that her most beloved man could not see what she had accomplished, to see that despite all the hardships and longing, her smiles and enthusiasm didn't die and still shone with undiminished clarity one could see in his eyes. Her sense of humor, her love for life, her relaxed take on life, on love, on people, all so familiar to anyone who knew José Maria Sanchez Gonzalez. She remembers now that blisteringly hot afternoon in December, just a week before Christmas, when she stood at her grand father's grave. How crazy life got.
But her spirit was not diminished by the event. She needed time to mourn and time to learn to forgive her mother and the others. She disappeared over Christmas, refusing to join her family, so she could have the time needed to reaccept them in her life. She let that free spirit roam in her heart as she drove across her adapted country where she still spoke English with a slight Argentine accent. She enjoyed every day in this crazy country with at least one warm thought about her grand father.
So life continued. She continued to dedicate her life to the love of the man who gave her most of the love in her heart. Whenever life failed her, disappointed her, especially when it came to men, she simply remembered her grand father telling her one night, "I told you all these crazy things, but one thing you can never forget and never walk away from: trust in love, love for yourself, I mean."
So when she asked the most popular guy to dance that night in that dark and dingy milonga hall in Buenos Aires, she didn't know what she was getting into. She discovered the dance that her native city created and exported to the world just two years ago, after she snatched a very much sought-after faculty position here, in the university where she is standing now. She was so tired one night and felt her energy drained to the last drop when she got a phone call from a friend who wanted to ask her to take a lesson with her on tango. The obvious joke was that she, being a Porteña, never danced tango, would still be his best choice as a class partner. She wanted to say no, that she was too tired, this new job, however glamorous, was full of traps, full of difficulties unrelated to the search for scientific truths. There was too much pressure on a woman, too much injustice as an academic, too much competition that only seemed to destroy the human spirit responsible for the beauties of science and engineering. But somehow, she didn't say no. She shrugged, and in her usual happy spirited way agreed to go. And that was the start of her passion for the dance. She couldn't remember the last time she had such passion for something. She always enjoyed what she was studying and now working on. She was very smart and very good at what she did, and her dedication was second to none in her peers at any stage of her academic career. But there was never passion.
But when the teacher started playing the music and she found her body being prodded to move, she felt something in her heart. And then she found her body wanting to move to the music she had been listening for over twenty years, almost on a daily basis. The music started to give her love, and she started to reciprocate that love too. They say that ultimately what you need to be a great tango dancer is love for the music, for yourself.
So with two years of passion in her heart she caught the gaze of the man, a gaze all the women in the room would want. He later told her that there was something special about her he saw in her face, it stood out for him among all these other women sitting next to her. Of course, she reminded him too that even if that was true, he didn't notice it until the very last set of the songs of the night. She nodded as a consent to dance with him, and he gracefully and enthusiastically walked over, offered his hand, and walked her to the still very crowded floor. It was the last set, so all the couples converge on the dance floor. His embrace was heavenly, as she remembered telling herself. She felt he simply melted her when his right arm wrapped around her. She felt her heart blossom for the first time since it withered at the news of the death of her grand father. Learning the dance of her heritage invigorated her, but she never felt her heart actually opening. And the roof of the building seemed to have opened up so the stars above started sprinkling down. It didn't matter that the sprinkling sound was actually the pouring rain beating on the roof. But the music drowned out the exterior noise as soon as the first beat commenced. And the soft yet firm movements he offered her was every bit exquisite, as if she had been starving for water and it was the first droplets touching her seared tongue. She felt in that first few seconds she was well taken care of, enough that she could be herself, show her blossoming heart, show the woman she was without all the barriers in life. And then the song ended, and before the next one started, she looked at this man, whose smile was surely even bigger than hers. He made a clever remark, she giggled. Then they danced again, where she melted again. Then before the next song he made her giggle more. And this continued until the set of four songs was over.
It was over, she thought. She was grateful for the night. She was full of smiles inside and outside. But when she started taking off her shoes like other women were doing, she heard a gentle, yet firm voice. It was his. Luis was standing there. His smile still on, just as sincere and simple as before. He simply said, "Not yet." He knew the owner of the milonga bar. The DJ had left but he put in his little iPod to the sound system. Before the last people left, they started dancing again, but this time there were no more pauses between songs. No more funny jokes because she already had found herself inside his world, already knew him enough to want to stay there, at least for as long as he wanted. And two hours passed without any significant pause, transfused with the sorrow and joys of the different kinds of music.
From that day on, she became even more involved in the dance. MIT was in a city, a region, that didn't offer much serious tango, a small community of people who thought the dance was interesting, but not passionate. So after she returned to her adopted country, she would commute nearly everyday to New York, arguably the biggest community with the greatest passion for the dance in North America. There was no time for sleep when she also had to remain true to her purpose of being an engineering professor. She even rented an apartment in New York so she wouldn't waste time commuting. At the same time, her love for Luis didn't end after those two hours. They continued dancing every night that she was in Buenos Aires. And she tried inviting him to come to the US and help her teach, not engineering, but this dance that she started teaching in the smaller community of Boston. But that visa remained elusive to Luis.
Until one day, in a cafe outside their favorite milonga just before they were to go in, she told him, "I want you to come. I want you in my life. I want your smile to be in my life. I want you." The goofy boy she had fallen in love with looked very humbled. She was afraid, suddenly, that she had crossed the line, that she had said too much, and whatever she would say next no longer made any sense. But he looked at her with a passion that held her gaze. She saw his eyes moisten, and then she heard him say, "Only you know how much I want you. Stay." He held her hands and repeated, "Stay, please." That word gave her the courage to do the craziest thing. "No, there's nothing here for you. You're a talented teacher. We can make a great team. Come with me, come back with me."
And so that's how the two crazy people held their hands and flew across the equator to her life, to their new life. She stands in front of the Dean's office with her letter in her shaking hand. She has no regrets about abandoning everything she had worked for in her adult life so far. The only person she thought it would mean anything to was her grand father, and he is standing next to her now, telling her, with a big smile and a proud look, "Finally, you're doing something for yourself, for your love for yourself. When you come back out from that office, there'll be plenty more dulce de leche for you!"
