Laura and Marina

Laura (USA) and Marina (Cuba/USA)

Last night was lyrical in the most literal sense.  A dinner “date” with two amazing women, Laura and Marina, became a way-too-much-information conversation (i.e., why deodorant doesn’t work as well here, whether telling someone there’s something in their nose is more intimate than telling them there’s something in their teeth, international waxing techniques, etc) over pasta and a bottle of red wine.  Afterward, in Piazza Del Campo drinking prosecco, under a velvety blue sky deepening to black, Marina gave us a reading of her spoken-word poetry.  I’ve rarely been so moved. 

It takes a lot for me to be intimidated by another woman, especially since I hate the idea that we are in competition to be anything but ourselves – and not even a competition in that, but I have to admit that when I met Marina, she got to me.  I felt every inch of my 5’2” curvy frame and flyaway hair. A successful business owner, Marina is over six feet tall, a bilingual former model/current actress who is working on her Ph.D.  She’s poetry enough without being a talented writer.  She knows exactly how she looks and the impact she has on people around her, but she talks about her beauty like an accessory she has to wear.  She compares her workouts to trials of a chef who has to be on his feet all day:  it sucks, but it’s part of the job.  And then there’s the other side of Marina (and I’m sharing this with her permission), the one so hurt by her divorce that for a year she could barely breathe without physical and psychic pain.  She kept a blog about finding her way through it one small contentment at a time.  When she first started writing, she couldn’t find one good thing to write about – she measured her relief in seconds, in minutes, in hours, then in days.  She’s a prayerful woman, full of faith and compassion (as well as a love of salsa dancing), but the thing I love most about Marina is that her joy is as raw as her grief.  

Except for her equal intelligence, humor, and beauty, Laura (of “badass in your boots” fame) is nearly the exact opposite of Marina.  A 5’2” blonde self-described tomboy, Laura has all the strength and kindness of the teacher that she is.  Laura left the States to teach in the Philappines for two years and now teaches English in an American high school in Milan.  I love Laura for her humor and grace, but also for her unexpected lapses into potty talk, not potty mouth, potty talk (remember the conversation about deodorant, boogers and waxing).   She has such an innocent face, it’s always unexpected.  The girl can eat, too…she’s impossibly thin and fit, but I’ve never seen a plate she hasn’t licked.

The cool thing about Laura and Marina is that after a very short time, it became clear that we each held a piece of another’s puzzle.  Each of us has something we’re insecure about where the other has a strength, or the wisdom to give us strength.  Not only have we laughed until we literally had tears running down our faces (and I discovered that both of my lovely friends snort), we shared stories that brought the other kinds of crying.  Laura took a great picture of Marina and me in our sunglasses with noses that looked like we were the love children of Rudolph the Reindeer and Pinocchio.  But we were so chic in our sunglasses I’m sure no one noticed.  I’ll stick to the funny ones for sharing:

Marina clearly does sexy far better than I do…but I do sleepy pretty well…

By the end of the night, Teacher Laura and Professor Anna were really tired, but Miami Marina had plenty of energy left…so we decided we’d start a girl band and call it Marina and the Nonnas.  Instead, we finshed our evening by writing a group poem, taking turns in our new journals (thank you, Marina) to write a verse in someone else’s.  The last line I wrote was, “each of us luminous in her own way.”  Wouldn’t you agree?