La Mujer De Mi Vida (The Wife Of My Life)

In my country in my level of society a girl had to be a virgin until she was married. My cousin asked me to take the little sister of her friend to her house. She was a little thing, all the women in that family were small, but at 14 she was a pretty little thing. When we got to her house we sat in the car and talked. She let me touch her hand several times, smiled when I pushed her hair back to see her eyes. It was after dark, the sun sets early in the tropics. She just looked so, appetizing. And a girl had to be kissed sometime anyway, and kissing her was something I had to do.

It was dark, but not that dark, and her mother saw us from the window kissing in the car. Her father stood at the door, looking mean and angry and when the girl saw him she lost her composure and jumped out of the car and ran in the house, into her mother's arms. I had to face the old man. I was a university student, and like I said she was 14. A kiss on a 14 year old girl at that time was enough for her to have lost her virginity to an older man.

Society is not forgiving, she was forever tainted, her honor could only be saved by getting married. The wedding was small, first the lawyers for the civil marriage, then the priest to hammer it home. I was 24, a year from becoming an engineer, she was 14 in her 2nd year of junior high school. Our honeymoon was a weekend at the beach resort. Alone in the room she was only a little girl. Exercise my rights to her or let her grow up? That was my choice on my wedding night.

My conscience took over and I chose to let her grow up, when she was ready she would be my wife. I went to Carnegie Mellon for my MBA, she went to high school. One night after a very tough exam, she came to me and told me she wanted to be my wife. Girls from my country become women when they are young, and this young woman was now mine, my wife. Better late than never, it was the most beautiful night of my life.