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PHOTO: Courtesy of gilbertosantarosa.com
“Let me ask my father; maybe if he takes us?”
My poor friend Olymar only wanted to make this work. It wasn’t her fault that my mother and father were, well, cabezas duras.
She offered this solution as I listened over the phone, curled up on the bedroom floor of our Inwood apartment. She was far from El Alto, in Heights of her own: Jackson Heights, Queens, but she might as well have been on the floor beside me, as despondent in solidarity as she was.
I had longed to attend a Christmas-themed concert to be held at nearby Lehman Center, in which my favorite salsero, Gilberto Santa Rosa, also known as El Caballero de la Salsa [The Gentleman of Salsa], would serenade the audience with two hours of the kind of sublimely arranged, perfectly rendered music that makes your reconsider the value of cynicism.
Olymar, my schoolmate and co-madre, even in our young teenage years, was less committed to the experience, but knew that I was beside myself, quite literally, over the possibility of not being able to attend.
The problem?
My parents had been less than enthused about the thought of two freshmen venturing out into the bitter, dark cold alone (we argued vehemently against chaperones) to attend a salsa concert for which there was no academic credit, familial obligation, or any such inherent value.
But how, I insisted, could this be denied as anything but an unequivocal stroke of fortune?
Not only had I won the tickets from the local radio station during a call-in contest (I was assured many thousands of people attempted the same feat without the same luck), but we had just moved to El Alto, to a new neighborhood with swaths of greenland at every turn, with small, tidy streets filled with children, grandmothers and Irish setters. This was supposed to have lessened my parents’ anxiety about the ferocity of the world outside our door, and have made it easier for me to move about without the heavy weight of their worry at every step.
Claro, we were still in familiar territory: you only needed to venture three or four blocks in any direction for your fix of salchichon, bacalao, mondongo, and the rest; and we were still regaled with merengue and the rumble of the nearby elevated train.
But here, in this small, quiet spot above Broadway where our family had moved our every belonging was to have marked a turning point, for us all. This was a new space in which we’d think, and be, different. Here, it’d not be a stretch for my brother and I to venture a few blocks, surrounded as we were by parks to visit and play in. Here, we could travel to nearby stores for a snack or a grocery run on our own; the street corners were a little clearer of malingerers. Here, we could invite friends and family over for a movie, or a weekend sleep-over not possible in the one-bedroom of yore.
Here, we could certainly imagine attending a salsa concert featuring a legendary maestro defined by gentility and sweet hope, together with your best friend.
Ay, pero no.
My mother and father too are defined by gentility and sweet hope.
And also by the steely, no-nonsense reserve that guides damaged warships through sniper fire and perilous waters.
The move had marked a change in geography, but not in their abiding concern over the unit’s integrity, and its safety, and that would not be easily broached simply by our adjusting latitude and longitude.
Still, our move to El Alto did allow for some breathing room, figuratively and otherwise, a small alteration in perception, in which less seemed so extreme as to require an immediate “yes” or “no” (usually the latter).
It was in El Alto that my brother was allowed to skateboard, and eventually, ride a bike, scraped knees be damned. It was in El Alto that we first bought a “real” tree for Christmas, one that my mother came to regret after it shed profusely in our overheated living room. It was here in El Alto that we hosted surprise birthday parties, and Thanksgiving dinners, over a real dining table.
And it was in El Alto that I received the knock on the door which heralded my father explaining that yes, so long as Olymar’s father would take us over to the concert, he’d arrange to pick us up.
And so we did see Gilberto Santa Rosa that night, and even venture backstage as part of the radio promotion.
I remember Gilberto’s small start of surprise when I spoke about how much his music meant, how I’d been listening for years, how he should sing “A Quien, A Mi” in concert more often. He smiled graciously, took my hand, and kissed it.
“Eres una reina, ya lo veo, [You are a queen, I can tell],” he said.
He was gracious and kind, just the caballero I had imagined.
Later, at home, it was my turn to knock on the door.
As expected, my mother and father were up, clearly awaiting my return, their faces flooding with relief upon seeing me poke my head in.
“¿Como te fue? [How did it go?],” they asked, feigning casual interest.
And so I settled in on the floor, and regaled them both, my own queen and gentleman, of El Alto.
Cosas nuevas, mi vida se lleno de cosas nuevas
sentí la sensación del que se eleva y tocar su estrella
Cosas nuevas, momentos que te dejan una huella
si pude descubrir que hay cosas bellas
lo hice por ella.
“Cosas Nuevas,” Gilberto Santa Rosa
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