Devlin Montfort spends semester in Argentina
During three months
in Argentina, I never made a worse impression than I did on Ida. It was
the end of my first week there, and I stumbled into her laundromat drunk
with the humidity, wrung out by a traveler's flu and goggle-eyed with
the newness of a huge city where everyone spoke Spanish. I had a garbage
sack full of clothes, so my intentions were obvious, but I tried to communicate
anyway. What I actually said was something like the equivalent of "I…soap
dog…no…uhhhh…he walked and...no...uhhhh," and then
I gave up.
I mean, I really gave up. I just stood there with my head down, sweating
and waiting for whatever fate fell to me--whether it be clean clothes
or death by plague. I had no energy to care.
Something about my complete failure at what was basically a simple task
touched Ida, though, and turned out to be one of the luckiest breaks in
my life. Her strong, aged face crinkled with a little smile as she reached
up (she was about a foot and hundred pounds smaller than me) to take my
laundry sack. She pantomimed through my laundry options, and eventually
our business transaction was done.
She chose to talk to me though. She obviously thought I had absolutely
no understanding of Spanish at all, so she talked with a rhythmically
personal quality usually reserved for lullabies and prayers Somehow
through my exhausted language faux-pas, I was being allowed to see the
"secret" Ida. Although she was an average person, living a common
life in her city, some random coincidence meant that I got a fully narrated
view of her dreams: and it was undeniably beautiful.
She told me stories mostly, but would fade into repetitive descriptions
of places she'd been, or had only heard about. About the jungle she sang,
"so hot there, very heavy…and so, so hot there…the leaves
and the rain, and it's so heavy hot there." Her eyes sparkled when
she told me about her Golden Oldies field hockey team's trip to Australia,
and I laughed my awkward foreigner's laugh.
I probably did my laundry more than was strictly necessary, and it was
probably rude to not try and explain that I actually understood quite
a bit of what she was saying, but I couldn't let go of her lyrical thoughts.
It was the hardest to say goodbye to Ida. She smiled proudly that I had
"learned" enough Spanish to wish her well as I left, frank and
efficient with our last transaction. I should have thanked her.
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