Once I arrived at the hotel in Porto Seguro where I shared a room with my travel acquaintance from the US, I sat down at a large window facing the city. I knew something had happened that night, but I couldn’t describe it yet. I can remember the moment I saw you as if it was yesterday. This tiny girl next to two big men, raven black hair, dancing not very enthusiastically, at the same time trying to avoid one of the guys who constantly was trying to get close to her. You looked back at me immediately, and I thought that you must have seen me first. You smiled at me openly, something I hadn’t experienced very often until then. I remember the way your braces caught the light, making me pause for a moment, wondering if you were even of age—but I also found it undeniably cute.
Hadn’t you smiled I would have never started to dance samba that night. Well, at least it’s what I thought samba should look like. I observed the room for a couple of seconds and started shaking my legs and feet wildly, and somehow it felt good. Probably everyone is laughing at me, I thought, but I didn’t care. I was planning to cross the room towards you with my newly discovered dance technique, moving always a bit more forwards than backwards, pretending I was just randomly shifting around but at the same time keeping my eye on the prize.
Of course, you knew what I was doing. But you were kind and didn’t show it. And then you did something that was highly unusual and at the same time typical for you: you left your two friends behind and moved in my direction. I didn’t know it then, but it became a theme in our relationship: all major decisions were taken by you. Had you not done this, I would never have had the courage to talk to you that night, and you knew that. At that moment it didn’t really matter what I would say (of course I had to make first contact – you still tried to maintain some of the ground rules).
I had just arrived from Argentina and participated in a one-week immersion course for Portuguese, which was largely unsuccessful. So, I just went ahead with my best Spanish, and to my surprise you were able to answer. “Who is this girl?” I thought to myself while at the same time eagerly trying to maintain a conversation. I cannot remember the details, but it didn’t really matter; I just wanted to keep the conversation going. In the background I saw your two friends glowering, ready to pounce at your signal. But you didn’t give off any signs that you needed to be rescued.
For a while now I had been feeling something strange when moving one of my feet, but I hadn’t had the chance to see what was going on. Finally, when I looked down, I saw that one of my flip flops had started to disintegrate. Well, at least that was my perception, having been used to closed shoes for my entire previous life. When I pointed out my footwear malaise, I could see a sly smile on your face and immediately felt like an idiot when you fixed the issue with the help of a pen within a matter of seconds. (Another theme of our relationship: you were always more practical than me).
I knew that time was running out – your friends wouldn’t wait for long, and my window of opportunity was closing rapidly. I considered the options – taking you somewhere else that same night was impossible, so what was the play here? I was already planning to move on to Salvador the next day and thought that that would be the end of it. Well, it wasn’t. You were also going to Salvador a couple of days later and wrote down your phone number on a little piece of paper: eleven digits, and “Kelly” scribbled in your meticulous small handwriting below it. I carefully tucked the paper away; this one I couldn’t lose. You left right after this, and I still wandered around the bar for a while, thinking of this beautiful encounter with the stranger who would become my wife.
Inner View 