Our Unlikely Love Story

The power of one percent

By Margie Hord Méndez

Refugio—known as Cuco, the diminutive of his name in Spanish—drove two hours to pick me up and take me out for lunch. I was a Canadian living in Mexico City, working for a non-profit organization focusing on the indigenous languages of Mexico. I had met him in church a few years previously in a nearby city, where we were both college students.

I'd agreed to go out for lunch, always a sucker for a free lunch. Off we went in his bright yellow Volkswagen thing, with its free-spirit hippie vibe that harked back to our student days. Not too far away, we got off at Los Tulipanes, a family-style restaurant near the huge Aztec stadium.

The meal? I ordered one of my favourites, enchiladas topped with melted cheese.

The weather? Mild, with sunshine drifting through the smog, par for the course in Mexico City. Since then, increasing smog has led to a rule that you can’t drive one day a week, based on one’s license number.

Refugio wore one of his favourite guayaberas, those shirts with tiny pleats and embroidered pockets that hang outside the slacks. It was bright green and contrasted with his brown skin. His dark, serious eyes were encircled by square, black-framed glasses. His long black sideburns were typical of the time. He wanted to impress me, so he wore bell-bottom jeans to seem more in style or perhaps younger, even though he wasn't exactly young anymore, heading for forty. I wore one of my favourite embroidered Mexican blouses, as foreigners and hippies in Mexico often did.

I had turned down his long-distance proposal—via cassette—six years previously. “You possess the best qualities of Mary and Martha.” (Oh no, he doesn’t know me very well.) “We’d make a pefect couple, serving God together.” (Right, but our careers and plans hardly jive.)

Twelve years older than me, he was not on my radar marriage-wise. I was almost a head taller. He was a Mexican of indigenous descent with a very different upbringing than my Canadian one. Above all, our lives seemed headed in different directions. He was a civil engineer with a small office in the city. I was preparing to leave civilization behind to live a life of service in a native community, probably learning a language that had never been written before.

I'd once received a letter from him after I insisted he no longer mention love in his letters and reminded him we were only friends. The letter was full of mathematical formulas! "Since you won't let me talk about love, I'll share something else that means a lot to me." Aargh! I couldn't help but let out a guffaw when that epistle arrived.

Another letter addressed me as Elizabeth, my middle name. “Since you’re Margarita’s best friend, and she doesn’t seem to know whether she loves me, perhaps you could tell me.” Again, I couldn’t help but admire his sense of humour.

After our lunch at Los Tulipanes, he started scribbling numbers on a crumpled napkin. Percentages. Then a circle. What in the world? His crazy love of math was at work. Then in his low, persistent, but gentle voice came the question, in Spanish: "What percentage of possibility is there that someday you might marry me?" The numbers man, again!

"If it depends on me, zero percent." Then I drew the tiniest sliver of a wedge in the circle. "But because God exists, let’s say one percent."

A little more than a year later, we were married. I am alone again, but I am grateful for our thirty-six years together. And for the lesson that miracles do happen.

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Margie is a Canadian-Mexican linguist and translator who writes about cross-cultural living, faith, family, aging gracefully… and more. 

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