It is difficult to underestimate the challenges my great aunt must have faced coming of age in 1940s Mexico. The oldest of three girls, she was the star pupil, the hard worker, the determined one. She was a classical pianist and a flamenco dancer who performed in Bellas Artes, Mexico’s equivalent of Carnegie Hall. She was seemingly uninterested in marriage or kids and instead was fueled by desire to be independent. She came close to marrying one boyfriend, a Swiss banker named Friedrick but the complications of geography and time led to the end of that romance. She was courted by scientists and intellectuals but she was content to simply host salons in the apartment she shared with her sister, Nona. In a culture that pitied spinsters, Toe carried an air that said it was her choice not to marry.
