How to Find Home
“Hola. Intento salir adelante. Me ayudas?”
We were stopped at a red light. A man put 5 packs of tissues on the taxi’s windshield, each for 100 pesos (around 50 cents at that moment). He held the sign and looked at the drivers with their cigarettes hanging off the side of the hot car. As soon as the light turned green, he grabbed the tissues with the robotic motion of a windshield wiper. I tilted my head back into the headrest and peered through a slit in the plastic shielding that separated me and COVID-19 from the driver. There was a faded “$” symbol above the slit, where he collected 400 pesos by chicken winging his arm so he wouldn’t have to turn around.
I landed at Argentina’s Ezeiza airport on Sept. 21, 2021 in the early morning. At the time, I was one of the few tourists in the entire country since COVID-19 restrictions barred foreigners from entering. My dad, who is an Argentinean citizen, chaperoned me into the country so I could be reunited with the girl I fell in love with earlier that year. I’m currently working on getting an Argentine passport so he doesn’t have to do that again…
Most of my family still lives in Buenos Aires and we try to visit every year. But this three-month trip was the longest amount of time I’d ever spent there, and it was the best few months of my life. I stayed at an Airbnb on the corner of Humboldt and Soler in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires.
With astronomical inflation, my dollars went very far there. I maybe cooked two or three times, opting to try amazing restaurants such as El Preferido, Don Julio, Fukuro Noodle Bar, Piegari and Cantina Palermo, where I befriended a waiter named Adrian who taught me that the best wine in the world is the moment.
My weekdays consisted of running to Megatlon in the morning for a workout, then working until 6 or 7 p.m. at my computer. Throughout the day, I would stand on my eighth floor balcony and observe my favorite city in the world. For me, it’s the buildings that define the city’s identity, along with the sidewalks with their square tiles and an occasional dog shit surrounded by tiny flies.
After a month, I had lost the sense of time. I was eating breakfast at 11am, late lunch at 3pm, merienda (or snack/tea time) at 6pm and dinner at 12am. And each meal felt like it lasted hours. Making the switch from English to Spanish made meals feel longer. By the time our double and triple dates ended at 2 or 3am, I was mentally exhausted and couldn’t pronounce “buenas noches.” But my Spanish got better and I began to understand the city and my family’s story in it.
One day, I drove to Olivos to visit my cousin and her baby boy. My aunt joined us too. We ate lunch at Bike & Coffee near Puerto de Olivos. Talking to my aunt, I learned more about my parents during their adolescent years in Buenos Aires, specifically, when my father was drafted to fight in the Falkland Islands War in 1982. He wrote letters to his family and my mother from the trenches, not knowing if 18 years on Earth was all he would get.
I remember when COVID-19 restrictions cancelled my plans to visit Buenos Aires in July 2021 so I could meet my girlfriend. I was pissed at the dinner table and my father said, “It could be worse.” I replied, “How can it be worse?” I understand now. The scenario was different but the feeling was the same, and I didn’t, or couldn’t, process his words at the time.
As a writer for one of the biggest wine publications in the U.S., I made invaluable contacts within the domestic wine industry, specifically, winemakers who are ushering in Argentina’s Golden Age of wine. I also met journalists and wine pros helping communicate this innovative moment, including Alejandro Iglesias, Joaquín Hidalgo, Marina Gayan and Amanda Barnes. Toward the end of my trip, I flew to the country’s famous wine region of Mendoza and did some research of my own for 10 days.
I visited Mendoza earlier that year with my father. But this time, it was just me and a Nissan Altima for the first part of the trip. The car took a beating on the rocky paths, and I often worried about a tire popping. I did not trust that the 2G service from my T-Mobile international plan would save me on this empty road to the Clos de los Siete winery. When I visited Mendoza in March 2021, we stayed in Uco Valley, south of the city. But this time, I spent more time in the actual city, where I learned more about local life outside the vineyards.
One Sunday, I decided to drive around the city. It was a quiet afternoon and the streets were empty. I got ice cream at Dante Soppelsa, who’s owner, Flavio, takes detail to the next level by working tirelessly to carve out an elaborate design on each order. I later drove to Plaza Independencia to sit down on a bench and rest. I barely read the book I had with me, and decided to walk around the plaza. Two friends played chess. A woman sold water out of a cooler. A young kid sat near the fountain with his head down. A group of hippies juggled and climbed ladders. An old man sat on a stool as parents and their kids walked by his life’s work. A young lady gazed straight ahead with what appeared to be a broken heart. A man played the accordion with no intention of collecting money. It felt as if the instrument was his last string connecting him to youth.
Beauty seems to be born out of prolonged sadness that dissipates much slower than it begins. The nostalgia one finds in Gabriel García Márquez novels is present on a Sunday in a place that has not lost its identity to technology. The people there have big, honest hearts and stories as visible as the Andes on their faces.
Argentineans are passionate, social, kind and insanely street smart. You have to be in a country where inflation jumps over 50 percent and things don’t work. Half of the country is considered poor and teachers make about 300 dollars per month. It would take a whole year to buy one flight out of the country. But still, they find a way or make one.
On one of my first days in the city, I cut a lemon in half and squeezed it until all of the juice dripped into my glass of water. I took the seeds out with a spoon since I didn’t have a filter or that fancy lemon squeezer my mom bought off Instagram. My girlfriend taught me to squeeze the lemon above my hand, and separate my fingers just enough to let the juice go through, but not the seeds. It was a small change that represented the most valuable commodity every Argentinean holds: creativity.
I left Buenos Aires on Dec. 26. I learned slang, ate too much meat, drank too much wine, got my head buzzed by the late Ricky Fort’s barber, saw Messi score and drove through the Lagos de Palermo, where kids played with bubbles by the water during the day and cross-dressing sex workers and horny taxi drivers roamed at night. I didn’t know why I was leaving this place that made me so happy and curious…probably for my cardiovascular health.
The first week I got back, I watched No Country for Old Men with my little brother. In one of the last scenes, a Texan says, “This country is hard on people.” Those words keep playing in my head. This country is hard on people. I’m sure my father would say the same thing about a country that sent him to war with no food or training. I think about it because I’ve lived here for 25 years and still can’t call it home. That’s up to the heart to decide. Not the place, but the feeling. And a Sunday afternoon in Mendoza was the hint: Home is where you can look under the rug and see the spotless wood that never changed.
