Time's Thread.

As a girl, whenever Maria got the sniffles, grippe, headache, or an upset tummy, her bisabuela would dose her with an aromatic tea made from the flowers of the cempoalxóchitl plant - which the English, hard-pressed to replicate the subtitles and nuance of the indigenous language, had named 'Mexican marigold'. To this day, its tart, sweet taste of anise reminded Maria of her great-grandmother, Colel, with her flaming red hair, unusual in a Mexican. She was a ‘roja’, a ‘red’, and her hair was a testament to the European adventurers who came to make their fortune harvesting henequen in the Yucatán.

This fibrous gift of nature - better known to the English speaker as ‘sisal’, so named after the port from which it was shipped around the world - was green gold. It was the stuff which ropes were made of. And the booming industry, of a planet in a hurry, demanded miles of the stuff.

This lowly plant created so much wealth that at the dawn of the twentieth century the capital city of Yucatán, Merida, was reputed to be home to more millionaires per capita than anyplace else on earth. The main boulevard, the Paseo de Montejo, was modeled on the Champs-Élysées. The neo-classical, French influence of le beau monde was written in the architecture of the great homes that lined the street. The surrounding countryside was littered with the massive estates - haciendas - that housed the henequen barons and the hundreds of Mayan laborers, mechanics, washerwomen, maids, cooks, drivers, nurses, and priests that tended to the cultivation of the prized crop and to the ease and comfort of the family that sat atop the social pile.

But the glory days ended. American scientists created artificial fibers, rot-free and strong. And after the great conflict that ended Japanese and German dreams of empire, the curtain fell on this economic boom. The haciendas were left to decay. The great homes on Montejo were boarded up. And the world left Yucatán behind.

But the glories still lived in Maria, even if only as the echoes of her bisabuela’s memories. As a child, she would have her dolls, made from scraps of string and cloth, play hostess to the dashing young men of their acquaintance. Romances blossomed between these inanimate creations given life by Maria’s imagination. Strong-sinewed young men enthralled coteries of coy, flirtatious young women with tales of derring-do in distant lands across infinite oceans.

The young knights would duel to win the troth of their choice, while the young women formed shifting alliances to promote their pursuit of the men highest in their estimation. Parents in Maria’s fantastical world would admonish their offspring for some fault of eagerness or immodesty - such as a glance too long-held to be considered proper in a well-raised, young woman of station.

Maria smiled as she reminisced. In her mind’s eye, she saw the dust motes wafting in the late afternoon glow of a lowering sun. She saw her younger self peppering her great-grandmother with questions of the venerable lady’s youth. They sat sipping the extracted essence of cempoalxóchitl. It seemed remarkable to her that the young girl she remembered had grown up to become the woman she was.

Her great-grandmother lived long enough to see Maria become a quinceañera, celebrating the traditional rite of passage that ushered young Mexican women into adulthood. When her bisabuela had herself been a quinceañera her fiesta would have announced she had arrived at a marriageable age. But contemporary sensibilities accepted that young women had the right to pursue dreams beyond their fathers’ desire to see them wed. The modern version of the event merely granted a young woman, newly arrived at adulthood, permission to attend grown-up parties, pluck her eyebrows and wear makeup, jewelry, and high heels.

Maria had taken advantage of this enlightened understanding of the role of women. She was a first-rate student who excelled at her neighborhood school. She was so promising she came to the attention of Don Fernando Montes Linaje. Señor Montes was a venerable member of Merida’s upper crust, La Casta Divina, the divine caste. This exalted group was the descendants of the ‘peninsulares’ - the old-time Spanish-born residents of the Yucatán peninsula.

Although their fortunes had been battered by the demise of the sisal business, a few of these wealthy families had diversified into sugar and other crops. Some had started retail chains, commercial bakeries, and construction companies or become Coca~Cola bottlers. Wherever there was money to be made, some member of the divine caste could be found making it.

Señor Montes was father to three healthy adult sons and a grandfather many times over, but both his daughters had died young. And while he loved his daughters-in-law and granddaughters, he had made it his life’s mission to find and nurture promising local girls. And Maria was one of the most promising. It was right after her coming of age party that he sent word he would like Maria and her parents to visit his home for tea.

Taking tea was not a common custom in Yucatán, where hot sultry afternoons usually shut down socializing until the sun had set. But Montes had been sent by his ambitious father to be schooled at Oxford. There he had grown fond of the ritual. Besides, air-conditioning was now commonplace in Merida, at least among the well-off.

So one Saturday afternoon, Maria and her parents rang the front doorbell of an imposing stuccoed mansion. The massive door was opened by a man who introduced himself as Señor Montes’ assistant. He asked them to follow him. They walked through rooms with soaring ceilings and tiled floors, furnished with important antiques and decorated with old paintings of men in severe suits and women in long, heavily embroidered dresses. They came to a wall of glass doors with finely wrought iron grilles, shaded by a cloister, that opened onto a garden of local plants blazing a cacophony of brilliant colors.

Beyond the garden was an exquisitely tiled pool surrounded by slabs of brilliant white limestone carved at a local stone yard. Purple jacarandas, pink tabebuias, royal palms, and African tulip trees cast splashes of shade.

The assistant led them through the garden, and around the pool, to the house’s private quarters. The massive entrance rooms were for parties and to impress guests, but living took place in more intimate surroundings. The assistant opened a door matching the ones they had passed through to the garden. Señor Montes himself walked forward to greet them. He bowed low over Maria’s mother’s hand and shook her father’s with vitality.

He cupped Maria's elbow and suggested she sit next to him on a severely angular but comfortable looking sofa stationed by a wide glass and steel coffee table. He waved his hand toward the sofa’s twin on the other side of the table to show Maria’s parents where they should sit. Montes asked if they would like tea. Assured that they would, he pressed a button. Soon a trim young woman came in, carrying a substantial silver tray. Before them, she placed a tea service and a selection of cakes so fine a dowager duchess would have sung their praise.

Thirst quenched and hunger assuaged, Montes got to the meat of the matter. He told Maria’s parents that Maria’s headmaster had informed him of her academic record. Her achievements had impressed him. She was a rare talent, Montes said. And like a hot-house flower, she needed to be nurtured to realize her gifts. He was himself somewhat florid in his speech. Natural perhaps in someone with a Latin love for excess combined with an English love of analogy.

But in the main, his message was simple. Montes would sponsor Maria at a private boarding school in Mexico City. And, depending on her application to the task, and the results ensuing, see where it might go from there. Maria hoped her parents would not object. However, her father looked as if he might have something to say on the subject. But Maria’s mother was determined Maria should get ahead in life. She had known doors slammed in her face because of her gender and she would see those doors open for her daughter - even if she had to knock them down.

The matter was soon resolved. Plans were made. Forms filled out. Bags packed. Plane tickets arranged. And Maria put a foot on the next rung of her life’s ladder.

It was a resounding success. In the early days, Maria took some good-natured abuse for her country accent and provincial manners. But she was so full of self-confidence, humor, and general lack of care for status, that she sailed serenely on, impervious to the petty jibes. She was recognized for her talent and inherent authority. She showed ability in all subjects but excelled in the sciences. And she graduated at the top of her class.

She would email both her parents and Señor Montes to report her progress. It was hard to say who was most proud. Her father was sure to tell the neighbors of her success. While her mother lived a vicarious life through the achievements of her daughter. And Montes’ heart was full of quiet paternal satisfaction.

Maria enrolled at Stanford. Her work was exemplary. She earned BAs in Chemistry and Philosophy, a Masters in Material Science, and an MBA in marketing. Both her parents and Señor Montes attended her various graduation ceremonies. After each one, Montes would take them out for a celebratory dinner. They would overeat and drink immoderately, just as families do when things are going well. And well they went.

Corporate America knocked on Maria's door. In the end she crossed the country to take a position working on new material technologies at DuPont’s corporate HQ in Delaware. Within five years, she was head of their Performance Materials Division. And just when the door to the executive suite was opening, and her position as one of DuPont’s youngest ever senior executives seemed assured, she resigned.

Her ambition stretched beyond corporate success. Since graduation she had talked with Señor Montes about business and opportunity. Initially hesitant, he had come to recognize the sense in her ideas. He spoke to his business partners about this electrifying young woman. And they too became believers.

Agreements were created, amended, and signed. Money was promised. Proposals written. And then came the hard work. Land had to be bought and the right people spoken to about access roads and utilities. Fees were paid both on and under the table. But finally, their project came to fruition. Maria opened the doors of South-Eastern Mexico’s first nanotechnology facility. To attract the best talent she had scoured Universities in both Mexico and throughout the Americas.

She was looking for the hustlers, the go-getters, the young men and women with drive, smarts, and something to prove. She found them. Soon she was getting noticed by national defense departments, global technology companies, and others with deep pockets. And for the first time since the zenith of the henequen trade, a Yucatan business was making a mark in global markets.

As hard as Maria worked, she still enjoyed the custom of the siesta. Not the three hours or more the traditionalists enjoyed. But maybe thirty minutes, when she would close her mind to business and let her imagination roam. And it was during one of these moments of reflection, while she sipped her marigold tea, that she wondered what her bisabuela would have thought of the whole thing. Although she believed she knew.

Because whenever her great-grandmother told her stories of the games the young men and women played, of the parry and thrust of romantic conflict, and the psychological wars waged to establish primacy, the young men strutted and preened, but it was always the young women who won.