With the sun shining like a promise of things to come for me on my vaction to Cuba next week, I walked back to work from a lunch meeting with a woman ridiculously in love. She contacted me through Facebook asking if I could take a letter and gift to her boyfriend working at the resort I'll be staying at next week.
She is 38 and vibrant, fresh of face and attitude and from Toronto, as unlikely as that seems to a jaded Torontonian. And despite a language barrier and an age difference (he's 26) and being in vastly different and far-away countries they have fallen in love. It is a kind of love that shuts my mouth when it wants to speak words of realism, of logic, of typical Canadian coolness to the mere idea of love at first sight.
She tells me how they met, how they communicate, how she painstakenly translates her love letters from English to gramatically-correct Spanish for him, how he is saving money to buy his mother a refrigerator, how he is sweet and kind and how she loves having something and someone to look forward to after so many years of "living in a cinderblock room" here. She is not naive. She knows long distant relationships have the shelf-life appeal of tacky touristy trinkets. But she is willing to risk it. It amazes me. She is willing to go so far, to Cuba for another 6 months next time to be with the one she loves, whereas I'm not willing to make the move to Scarborough, or Mississauga or anywhere else for that matter.
I cannot help but wonder...was it ever possible in this city to be so romantically optimistic, so free with affection and feeling and willing to take an ultimate risk with our heart, or are we just too cynical for that kind of freedom in Cuba, or anywhere else? Do we need to go all the way to Cuba to learn how to be free?
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