On: At the Dinner Table, for The Sun Magazine

At the Dinner Table

I lived in Buenos Aires for 1 month with a traditional Argentine couple after I graduated college. My plan was to learn to speak Castellano, the dialect of Spanish spoken with an Italian accent in the foggy ports of this South American city. Mirta and Luis were retired teachers and journalists. Mirta wore skirts and knee high stockings and fussed around the house all day, while Lois would sit in his computer chair and Instant Message women he met through home stay, acquaintances, or work. I was gone most of the day at Language school, and exploring the city. I would come home at 6 or 7pm with my feet tired and my stomach rumbling. Mirta and Lois would ask, “¿donde fuiste?” and, “¿como era tu día?”
I would answer them the best I could, with Mirta finishing my sentences and Lois laughing with glee and surprise at the little things I had done like make it to the reserva ecologia on foot, or how I ate 3 peso choripan and didn’t get a stomach ache. Although they were friendly and hospitable, I felt lonely and spent most of my time in my room. I spent my time in the evenings while my stomach rumbled and my heart was heavy learning to read and write Castellano. I memorized verb conjugations, reviewed the differences between por y para, and wrote 1 page compositions for my teacher Martina to read and critique. Many times after studying for a couple hours I would fall asleep in my bed with the light on, only to be awoken at 10pm to eat dinner. By now hunger had ceased and all I wanted to do was sleep. I went out to the dining room to find my host brothers Hiro (from Japan) and Niko (their son) in animated conversation. Luis joined the table with Palta, his avocado spread, and took out a metal tube of gas to screw onto the metal water pitcher to make aqua con gas. Mirta joined the table with the delicious meal, always complimented with bread, wine and mandarin oranges and bananas for dessert.
Our temporary family ate and drank and conversed about life in our home countries, life in Argentina, art, the past, our families, food, literature and many times even though I was listening, I had no idea what the conversation was about. To me, these dinners seemed to last ages. I was tired, understood little what was being said, and was nervous to respond to questions that were asked of me. Nobody left the table until Lois was finished eating. He was a gargantuan man and would consume 3 plates of Mirta’s food, along with bread smeared with palta and a 40 ounce bottle of beer all to himself. He ate with gusto and looked at me through his left, lazy eye when I softly spoke. He would put a hand to his ear, and I would have to repeat what I said as he looked at me confused, and then Mirta would repeat to him slowly and loudly what I had said. Lois had given up smoking 2 packs a day after he had triple by-pass surgery on his heart ten years ago. Every night I began understanding more of the conversation and developed more vocabulary and confidence to be able to join in conversation, and every night as I watched Lois shovel in rich food and guzzle down beer, I feared that he would have a heart attack on the spot. I had 31 nights in Mirta and Lois’s 3rd floor apartment, and every night the family would go through the same ritual.
After a month with Mirta and Lois, and another 2 months traveling through Argentina, I can converse freely in Spanish. Mirta and Lois are still host parents for several Language schools in Buenos Aires. Some nights while I’m preparing for bed back in the US, I imagine Mirta with her apron on serving nervous students from around the world, and Lois laughing heartily as he leans back in his chair and loads up for his third serving, and I still worry about him having a heart attack.