Dot... dot, do, dot, dot... dot

Every morning when I open my eyes, the first thing I see is a picture of Christina on my night table. She is smiling and looking at me. I remember clearly taking that picture. The picture gives me a familiar warm feeling.

Back in 1993, after escaping Canada to avoid deportation, under a leafy Floridian tree on a sunny afternoon, I was getting ready to write my first letter to Christina from the USA. I had so many things to tell her but my hand had refused to write. Then, with a very soft movement, I placed a dot in the middle of the page, followed by another dot, then another, and another, and another, and a rain of dots flooded the page with a chaotic cadence to make sense only later. As the dot madness intensified a picture of Christina and me started to emerge. After a while, in the same way I started this creation my hand stopped.

I looked at the picture and loved it, like a parent loves the first sight of a born child, signed it, and put it in the mail. No words, only my name, and the date. What else could I have added?

Christina loved that picture. I know where the picture is but it is very personal and it was only for her.

As the hours turn into days, days into weeks, weeks into months, and years there is not a moment I do not think of my wife. On a sunny day, she would tell me "Jose, the early morning and the late afternoon hours are the best for taking pictures, the lighting is perfect. Colors have so much life in them, it is like they want to jump and dance!".

Millions of sensations also make my imagination hear her voice, and think of her. It could be music, a fragrance, a sound, a street, a beautiful tree, or food, the list is endless, just like the number of dots in my picture.

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The Planner 00Iren

When I tell my daughters that their mother was amazing, I am not sure they grasp the magnitude of her stature. They tell me, “Yes dad, we know,” but I want them to understand the steel in her soul. I remember the day I saw Christina for the first time. it was in the halls of the chemistry department at Simon Fraser University. We both entered a long hallway at the same time, walking in opposite directions in our white lab coats. We had the opportunity to take a good look at each other. When we passed, our eyes crossed. She kept walking without turning, but I looked back to see her disappear into one of the laboratories. I thought, “Wow, I do not have a remote chance with that girl!” Years later, after we reunited in Vancouver, she told me she had thought the same: "He is going to make a woman very happy one day." She said she had no idea it was going to be her. In 1993, after I received an ultimatum letter from Canada Immigration, I was left with no option but to escape to th...

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