It’s 10:00 p.m. and the teenagers next door are having a party. A dance party, from the sound of the cumbias filling the air. No complaint here: they’re good kids, and it’s the end of the school year. Let them dance.
Besides, the memories they'll make are the stuff of magic. I know whereof I speak.
It was the end of the school year. We lived in
Quito at the time, in a second-floor apartment on a quiet residential street. A very quiet street after 10:00 p.m.
Everyone was in bed (I thought). Suddenly, the unmistakable wail of an electric guitar being tuned ripped through the
night, right underneath my window, which overlooked that quiet, quiet street.
In an instant, I was fully awake. I'd known that the boys in our church youth group band had been serenading the girls on weekends, but as the weeks passed I began to think I was too young or too new to be included. But now! Even before I peeked out my window, I knew. It was my turn after all.
No acoustic guitars for our boys, no. There were three electric guitars. A bass. A full drum set in the back of a pickup truck. Microphones. And amplifiers. Oh lordy, those amplifiers! When they started playing and singing for real, everyone within six city blocks was in on the fun, like it or not.
In short, it was mesmerizing. I was almost 15, I was being serenaded, and my secret crush was right OUT THERE!
After three songs, the band fell silent and I realized that Dad had gone downstairs and invited them in. I threw on my bathrobe, dragged a brush through my hair, and went out to the living room. My secret crush was no longer out there—he was IN HERE. I tried to look blasé. (Given that I wasn't exactly sure what the word meant, I probably failed.)
Sometime around midnight, my mother interrupted the chatter with trays of drinks and fresh-from-the-oven banana bread. (Mom had some legendary hostess mojo.) The boys were thrilled and apparently hungry. When the last slice was gone, Mom and Dad shooed them out. It was nearly 1:00 a.m. on our once-again quiet, quiet street.
As I started back to my room, utterly enchanted by the surprise, I caught a fleeting glimpse of my parents exchanging the tiniest of winks, and I knew: they’d been in on it from the start. It was that kind of wink. But they didn’t say a word nor did I, and eventually I realized it was because they knew that sometimes words get in the way of magic.
So let the kids next door dance. Their parents are there, protecting the memories that last a lifetime. Like mine did.
-cs 052326
