Mundo de Pedo

Along with the Spanish empire’s long and lofty thrusts across the Americas, came a common language that has permeated areas far and wide.  Learning that language, however, is just a skeleton for then beginning to understand the idiosyncrasies of one region’s use of it. While generally intelligible throughout for all, certain vocabulary and phrases may be household terms in one pocket of Spanish speakers, but hold profane connotations in others. Pendejo in Argentine Spanish describes a rambunctious youngster or punk, but takes its original meaning from the same word in Spain used to mean ‘pubic hair.’ Golosinas which means candies or sweets in Argentina, takes a more sinister spin in Mexican Spanish as it refers to a prostitute. Even Argentina and Chile, two bordering countries, have their linguistic differences. If an Argentine uses the word pico he is referring to a kiss and not, as his Chilean counterpart might misinterpret it, the male reproductive  organ.

While differing translations of the same word reveal one way in which language settles itself down into the nooks and crannies of specific linguistic contexts, we also encounter totally unique vocabularies and word uses in different locations. One of the most intriguing language discoveries I have made in my time here is in an unearthing of the meaning of the mystical word pedo. Unglamorously translated pedo is the literal equivalent  to our fart. Within the Argentine case, however,  pedo is implicated in all kinds of strange contexts and has a complex layering of meanings that goes far beyond simple bathroom humor.

1. Al pedo- [Literal: To the fart Metaphorical: condition of having no plans or obligations] One of the most common appearances of pedo is used to express boredom or having an excess free time. Come on over, I’m al pedo. What did you do yesterday, nothing I was al pedo the whole day. Pinpointing an English translation for this use of pedo proves rather complicated. While al pedo can sometimes evoke a sense of boredom, it more often designates the nebulous and structureless nature of a particular span of time.

2. Al pedo- [Literal: To the fart (#2) Metaphorical: in vain, futile, useless, worthless]. While you may notice this is the exact same orthography as example #1, in certain contexts the same words can give you a radically different meaning.

1. Ex. I went all the way to the mall, but it was al pedo because the store I wanted to go to was closed.
2. Ex. Al pedo I fixed my bike, because it was stolen a day later.

3.      En pedo- [Literal: In fart Metaphorical: f****d up, crazy]. En pedo refers to a mental state achieved  after the consumption of drugs or alcohol and most likely a potent cocktail of both. Examples: Esa noche estaba re en pedo. [That night I was really f****d up]. Equally en pedo can be used to describe someone who’s not thinking clearly with or without the influence of outside substances. ie What a terrible outfit!? Are you en pedo???

a.       Ni en pedo[nor in fart]—Common phrase using the third definition of pedo describing something you would never do. If some young Argentine,[who you have no interest in] is romancing you in a club and invites you back to his/her car/place, your response Ni en pedo!, Meaning—not even if I were totally f****d up would I do something like that!

4. Un pedo- [Literal: a fart Metaphorical: a hangover] Directly linked to the third definition of pedo above, this fourth meaning is the belated result of being en pedo for any amount of time—having a pedo. What a pedo I had this morning!

5. Me mandé un pedo-[Literal: I sent myself a fart Metaphorical: I made a mistake, I really messed up]. In this case pedo’s meaning leans towards something like mistake or error. Sending yourself a fart can cover all kinds off errors from the most trivial occurrences to much more grave situations. With a cursory glance this fourth meaning of pedo seems rather confounding, however, further investigation  reveals some striking similarities between  the ideas of a fart and a mistake. They both can be embarrassing and unexpected and both are rather difficult to recover from if committed in public.  (A little extra trivia: Along similar lines a parallel phrase is used to express the same sentiment interchanging the word pedo with moco- buger. Me mande un moco—I sent myself a buger.)

6. De pedo [Literal: By fart Metaphorical: By a hair, by luck] ex. De pedo we didn’t crash the car just then. This use of pedo expresses something that just barely happened but then didn’t thanks to the grace of god, or pure luck or in this case a fart. A pedo is not something in which one should put a lot of faith; it is after all gas, microscopic particles of fecal matter, and odor, not a terribly trustworthy combination.

7. Una nube de pedos [Literal: cloud of farts Metaphorical: in a daze, in the clouds] El vive en una nube de pedos He lives in a cloud of farts, meaning that cede person is spacey, unfocused, in lala land, got his head in the clouds etc. This Argentine cloud, however, is distinctively more repulsive than the harmless water based clouds we English speakers let our heads float into.

Believe it or not, one could probably squeeze a couple more meanings out of this complex vocabulary word not to mention a slur of related words in which pedo is the root. While the meanings listed above are each distinct, they all seem to lead to one single metaphorical character that is the Argentine pedo. Within this conceptual pedo, we encounter a cloudy, unclear type of no-mans land in which the rules and regulations of daily life dissolve. A pedo’s repercussions are unknown and unpredictable and can disrupt the continuity of regular life. Beware of these Argentine pedos, but at the time one might learn to appreciate them for the vibrant and imaginative metaphors they add to colloquial Argentine speech.

Strange Luján

 To some degree, knowing a place goes hand in hand with knowing its characters. While Lujan is a small town, it boasts a disproportionately large number of folks who beat their own drum. Or an alternative explanation, is that the general populous is abnormally normal or “cuadrado” ((square) a term I have often heard used) thus being that the few slightly strange people, appear triply so in comparison.

            In any event, this post hopes to introduce the reader to three of Lujan’s most prominent characters, nicknamed by myself; bike dude, dog lady and time man. This nomenclature describes my own personal experiences with all three of these people, but equally reflects the experiences of others who have encountered them.

            Bike dude is in his late twenties to early thirties and is robust in stature, girth, and in the amount of hair and facial hair that emanate from his lion like head. Bike man can be spotted at all hours of the day throughout Lujan, peddling away ferociously on his thick mountain bike. His outings are never luxurious ones, instead they conducted at sweat producing, heart-racing tempo. As he zooms by one might notice his hands clenched tightly to the fat rubber grips on his handlebars. Where is he going? Does he have a job? A Family? Nobody knows. His relentless biking is not the strangest part of bike man’s profile. Rather that the outfit he wears, literally never changes. Not for seasonal variation, rain, sleet, nor summer heat. Bike man will reliably be wearing a black muscle shirt, black shorts, and sneakers. For spring and summertime this is not a bad choice, however (despite many Americans misconceptions that it is never cold in Latin America), winter invites bone-chilling mountain winds, freezing rains, and the occasional snow. Bike dude, defies the law of the seasons, and hot bloodedly peddles on in his summer ware, laughing in the face of nature.

Dog lady is older, in her late fifties to early sixties, has dry, ex-blonde hair that falls limply to her shoulders. Dog lady is always smoking a cigarette. She wears long wrinkled skirts that billow around her ankles, and she is always accompanied by at least two, and sometimes as many as five dogs. These dogs, like planets orbiting around a star, keep their distance, go on to investigate strange smells or the behinds of other dogs, but always with the gravity of dog lady in mind. They go where she goes. I have never seen her feeding these dogs, although I imagine that where she lives, most likely in some darkly lit and crumbling hovel, she provides ample food and shelter for dozens of street dogs. I picture her chewing on burnt toast and sipping mate, maybe reading the paper, treating the dogs as family members; chastising one when he bits another, comforting the squeals of a pup, rubbing down the sore limbs of a veteran.

            Time man, to my senses, is perhaps the strangest of these characters. I find this to be so, because at first glance he doesn’t seem out of the ordinary at all. He is an older gentleman, cleanly shaved and dressed, with a rotating wardrobe of (unlike bike dude) pressed brown slacks, and well-ironed buttoned down shirts. He often totes a weighted down grocery bag in hand, so his walks seems to be legitimate ones; he is returning from the store, or bringing something to a neighbor, or running an errand of some kind. It wasn’t until the third time that he asked me what time it was that I realized that there was something strange about him. Perhaps the other glaring clue on this occasion was that he flashed me his watch, complete with the correct time, after asking, and then pleaded that I give him two pesos. Since then, I have felt something spooky about his presence. The slow, but deliberate way his walks down he street, and the innocence of his curiosity about the time, now feels like some cheap trap to lure in unsuspecting young women like myself, and then POW… but this is probably not the case. Most like he’s just another defenseless and senile old man, lost in time.

Night Out

The special night that I am about to describe began very much the same way that less special nights begin—planless and aimless—arriving at some bar with the idea of drinking the cheapest of beverages provided at cede establishment, and then eventually finding our way home. The evening was cool but breezeless, one that tempts with the prospect of summer without actually providing. Jere, Pato(friend) and I were seated on a bench alongside a pedestrian causeway that was in a recent past notoriously dangerous, but now an area bouncing back with fervor. Bars, hostels and cultural centers line either side of the street along with dark windy trees whose curving limbs create a mottled canopy above. The street is perfect for strolling, meandering or barhopping, all of which are good pastimes for the planless and the aimless.
Reclining on one of the benches that stripe the sides of the street, we may have been swigging a bottle of wine purchased at a grocery store, this being the most economical of all possible nighttime options—and thanks to Argeninta’s lack of open container law, an option that is entirely risk free. A group of glassy-eyed, drum toating, dredlocked youngsters ambled by in front of us; one of them recognizing Jere, broke off from the group to come and give him a big hug. What a long time it had been since they had last seen each other, they agreed, and how was Jere’s father and brother. He was presented to Pato and I as Ricky, and would later become the star of that evening.
Ricky had the ruddy brown and red complexion of someone who had been drinking, sallow, dropping eyes, long straw-like brown hair that fell in matted clumps, motionless on his shoulders. He wore colorful yet unkempt baggy pants and shirt, a beaten-up, brimmed leather hat and had a homemade drum strapped across his back. He was the kind of bohemian whose popularity has faded in the states, but that still lives in Latina America; the roaming nomad, the homeless artesian or musician, living hand to mouth, selling crafts in a plaza, sleeping in parks and along doorsteps.
He knew Jere from the long ago and mythical time when they both lived in “el barrio de la Gloria,” a place that haunts all of the stories Jere tells me about his past, a place that as it has been described to me, is an intense combination of the most horrible social realities paired with the most wonderful human resistance. Poverty, guns, drugs, fear being a constant backdrop to daily life, and the necessity of hustling to get by. Children steal fruits and vegetables from nearby farms, or work for change guarding parked cars from the peril of teenagers, women swindle goods under their clothing from grocery stores to resell, while their men rob houses or cars. These stories are not the subject of this post. Most, if not all of them are not mine to tell.
Hearing these histories make me feel like a child listening in on the memories of her elders. Despite the fact that we are of the same age, the life they describe is so vastly different from the ones that they fortunately lead now. In the midst all of these terrible qualities, within this barrio live some of Jere’s favorite people- musicians, friends and family, more simple and honest than you can find anywhere. World famous musician Manu Chao was said to join in turbulent drum circles here, and some of Jere’s friends who belong to one of the barrios “murgos” (musical group I will describe later) have toured Europe, sponsored by the Argentine government. This is a place that he will never take me. Sometimes Jere returns with his brother when I am at work or have plans. They joke about bringing me along, but the subject is always dropped quickly and soundlessly, like a leaden ball into a river.
Though I had heard many stories about this place, I had never met anyone besides Jere’s family who had lived there. And so on this chilly spring evening, I was seized with a combination of fear, excitement and curiosity to finally see this little piece of Jere’s past standing before me. We shared our wine with Ricky and he offered us a fat joint he was puffing. What were we doing later he wanted to know. He was on his way to the house of someone called Gato (the cat), another friend from the barrio, who had just moved into a new rented abode. It would be a celebration, did we want to join.
When word got out to the rest of his crew that Pato had a mode of transportation, we were triply invited. They had been planning to walk which would have taken, as we soon realized, close to an eternity. We all piled into Pato’s vintage 1980’s truck and we were off, heading north along the main road.
In Mendoza’s center, the street San Martin, is a hubbub of people and commerce. Four lanes wide, it is well lit at all hours, and lined with generous sidewalks, tall manicured apartment buildings, elegant stores, and government offices. Without turning once this same street evolved before my eyes, violently shedding all indications of luxury the farther north we went. Street lamps became less and less consistent, instead of fortified buildings, small crumbling brick homes replaced them, and a thick layer of dust began to spin its web around houses, plants, automobiles and the street before us. Just before the road and all signs of human life dissolved completely into the dessert and the night sky, we arrived at our destination.
Gato lived in a little cottage on the back of his landlord’s property. We stumbled along the brick path and entered his new home. The house was enchanting. Ducking under the low doorway and emerging into the house’s main room, felt like peeking in on the lives of fairies or forest gnomes. Thick wooden beams striped the low ceilings above, archaic stone floors met our feet, fantastical swirls of color and pattern decorated the walls, and a slab of tree trunk formed the surface of the kitchen table. The handful of guests sat on low stools and benches cradling their various instruments between their legs, and across their laps. After a subdued exchange of greetings and welcomes, the murgos began.
A classic murgos consists of two elements, percussion and voices. Groups of murgos can have as many as fifteen people, half drummers, half singers. On this evening, everyone was doing a little of both. The rhythms began. Those without traditional drums found empty glass bottles or scrap metal to clang. The beat was contagious, the tiny room swelled with heat and energy and bodies began to pulse. Then the voices started up. These were songs that were either classic murgos tunes, or ones specifically created in La Gloria. About eight or nine of the group were well practiced, and performed complicated harmonies, singing boldly and even carelessly at the top of their lungs. Their voices, like hammers, were radically unselfconscious of where their sound might land. Those who did not know the words joined in at the choruses, silently shook to the beat, or simply sat back and listened. Wine in tin cups passed around the circle; weed in various forms accompanied it. Besides being musically and rhythmically enthralling, many of these songs tell captivating stories. The majority of them talk about life in the barrio, about a distrust of conventional authority figures like police and politicians and even academics. They talk about the resilience of the people who live there in the face of such terrible conditions, about the university of the street- the street being a source of all kinds of unconventional knowledge that is unrecognized by mainstream society.
Ricky was often the one to lead these chant-like songs. Banging on his drum, he would throw his head back, screaming the words. His voice was hoarse from exhaustion and chain smoking, and yet no one cared when it cracked, when he became so inebriated that the words to his songs were hard to distinguish, or when he discarded his drum altogether and began a stilted and awkward dance across the floor. He hardly stopped talking for more than five minutes all throughout the night. If he was not singing he was recounting a story, or a joke. He was the centerpiece of that party, the kind of person who lives every moment of their life with a dangerous and reckless passion, a passion that at any moment might hurtle that individual into death or destruction. For this reason people like Ricky are magnetic to those around them. We crave and yet are terrified of the passion possessed by the Rickys. We love to be near them because we ourselves feel more alive, more adventurous, but we are careful not to stay for too long. We return to our warm beds in our rented or purchased houses, while the Rickys either sleep alone, or don’t sleep, or find another clump of people to mesmerize. Later Jere told me that Ricky was dying of cancer. Like a star near the end of its life, he would be the fiercest and brightest just before disappearing altogether.

Border-Crossing

Last weekend, in order to keep myself from being an outlaw, I was obligated to flee the country and cross the border into Chile. Argentine law gives any traveler a 90-day tourist visa that comes free without any strings attached. This system of tourist visas is a little bit of a joke seeing as I literally left the country for less than three hours, spent that amount of time waiting in a bus station in some non-descript border town in Chile (non-descript in that I can’t describe it seeing as I remained in the bus terminal), only to pop back on a bus going in the opposite direction. I later understood another reason that this system was flawed when I calculated that my round trip bus ticket across the boarder cost me more than if I had just overstayed my visa and eventually paid the corresponding fine. In any event, this entry does not aim to look at the silliness of Argentine tourist-visa policies and rather at the silliness of Argentine border crossing, and its vast contrast with the Chilean equivalent.

Observations on the Importance of Things

An American’s life is plagued by things. Keepsakes, chachkas, trinkets, knockoffs, hand-me-downs, and superfluous appliances of all kinds overwhelm our closets, attics and garages, lurk in our dusty corners, and haunt the spaces beneath our beds. Things come easily and cheaply. For evidence of this, one need only visit one’s local thrift store where a twenty-dollar bill is more than enough to refurbish a kitchen, create a wardrobe, or decorate a home.
Thrift stores are not only evidence of the effortless way in which things can be acquired. They equally reveal how willing Americans are to throw away. Donation based thrift only survives in a society in which people don’t give a damn about their old things- are not interested in selling them or re-gifting them to friends. The donations on which these thrift stores are based, are not the result of kind-hearted souls parting with their precious goods so that they might brighten the lives of others. These donations, tellingly delivered in oversized black trash bags, are as good as garbage to their owners. Some mysterious sense of guilt or shame prevents us from outright throwing these things away. And so, donation provides us with a painless alternative that is almost as easy as abandoning them by the curbside (which we also do).
Old things are discarded for newer things. Instead of repairing we replace.
Things fill our lives with such an abundance that they loose all meaning. They blur together into an amorphous blob at which point they are renamed ‘junk’ or ‘clutter’. Some of us hoard, some of us throw away; both being legitimate responses to lives bombarded, weighed down, and assaulted by things.
I was of the later of the two camps mentioned. Things were everywhere, cluttered everything I knew, and as a result I despised them- wanting to watermark the coffee tables on which I was told to use coasters, misuse appliances, accidentally lose others favorite items of clothing, all in an attempt to reveal the meaningless of things that I saw to be inherently true, yet overlooked. When I moved out of my apartment after graduating, I wanted to purge my life of the tedious collections, the nameless keepsakes, and the ratty clothing that I had been accumulating for years. I burned old love letters, trashed memorabilia from the places my friends, family or I had been, and discarded books, papers, and old journals. I wanted a new start, free of unnecessary items, an existence in which my drawers and cupboards gleamed with the brilliance of their emptiness. To me, a clutter-free home meant a clutter-free mind.
While I have far from abandoned this perspective, I have been forced to seriously reconsider. Here, things are sacred. While at first I was amused by Jeremias’ various collections of cardboard boxes, tacky trinkets, and lamentable keepsakes, I have come to understand the profound meaning that they embody for him. Things are hard to come by, thus the things that one does possess are revered, cared for incessantly, repaired and re-patched and refurbished. Here, the sparcity of things gives each individual one importance. Things that in the U.S. would automatically be considered garbage have importance here. Old newspapers, scrap metal, cardboard, can be manipulated and reinvented to have new meanings and uses. Todo sirve para algo- Everything can be used for something.
This huge difference in the mentality towards things now seems obvious to me, is as pervasive and all-encompassing as the air we breathe. Yet it took a while for this distinction to dawn on me, and looking back on several occasions I could have interpreted better had I been aware.
The first occurred just after I had arrived on one of my first visits to Jere’s family’s house. I remarked with muffled surprise that a box in which I had delivered a gift to his mother, six months earlier, was perched on a ledge on display for all to see. Although it was a sightly box, I remember thinking that in my own home, that same box would have long been misplaced, filed away, hidden along with all the other meaningless collections we had amassed.
Another example of this mentality arose as we were moving out of our first (and current) abode into our second. All of my things fit into two suitcases, as I had recently arrived, but Jere’s things seemed never ending, most of which appeared to me to be ‘junk,’ Cardboard boxes stuffed with old papers and magazines, half broken chairs and tables, rusted nails and screws. I remember laughing and pleading him to get rid of some of his things so our move would go smoother. He flushed and became angry. These were his possessions within which he could visualize each hour of hard work he had traded for them. “These are my things”, he told me, “me han costado [they have cost me].”

Meet the Family

It took a while for the ice between Jere and I and the fam with whom we shared our living space to thaw, but once it had, we began receiving visits from various family members, not just grandma.
One of the first afternoons that this occurred I was alone in the patio, stringing up laundry. Mariela (Mama duck) emerged from her end of the house, with a reluctant Fiama (her oldest 16 year old daughter) in tow. Physically dragging her by the hand towards my front door, poor Fiama, at the ripe age of puberty and family related embarrassment, blushed beet red.
“We have a question for you, Juana” the rotund Mariela barked across the patio.
Still a little unsure about our relationship, I was nervous. Had we offended them in some way, did they need more money, were we using something we shouldn’t be?
“Yes?” I responded cautiously.
“Doesn’t this jacket make Fiama look thin?”
I had not been expecting this kind of question and was silent for a moment. I had always considered the young girl before strikingly beautiful and had never noticed her weight. She was not a stick, but she was healthy, with dark billowy locks, almond eyes and a soft and round face so magnetic I had hardly noticed anything else about her. But now, that Mariela mentioned it she did have a little bit of a tummy.
I insisted that she always looked thin and that the jacket didn’t really change anything.
The answer I provided, however, was unsatisfactory.
“You see,” Mariela continued, now stroking her daughter’s torso, “Fiama is very panzona (bellied), but I think that this jacket is slimming. So what do you think Juana, come on!”
The article of clothing in question was a corduroy blazer, perhaps a size or two too small for her, but according to my American sensibilities of sugarcoating and political correctness etc, I repeated a different version of the answer I had given at first. Coming from a mother the size of a small refrigerator, her daughter’s tummy hardly seemed relevant.
Eventually giving up on my illusive opinion, the conversation diverged to eating habits, and that I looked like a vegetarian, and then eventually the pair wondered back across the patio.
From this day on, relations warmed between us, and like two bordering countries after a recent blockade, we began trading goods and services with fervor. Negotiations were never direct. Instead the three youngest members of the family became peacekeepers, sent from one side of the patio to the other to return favors and solicit sundry household items. Martina (6), Camila (3) and Candelaria (1) were Mariela’s minions, sent to our door to retrieve milk, sugar, eggs, bread, matches, a bicycle pump, the keys for the front gate, spare change, anything imaginable. Two or three times a day, without fail, I would hear the scuffle of light footsteps, then the beating of three sets of tiny fists on my metal door accompanied by a chorus of “Juana, Juana, Juana.”
The one child actually suited for this kind of activity was Martina. At the age of six, she was the only one who had the mental capacity to remember what she had been sent to retrieve. Candelaria, the youngest of the trio, remained mostly silent except for a few squeaks and half-formed words. Then there was Camila, who was often sent to head the group when Martina was out with her friends or at school, but whose age and linguistic skill inevitably made her visits difficult to interpret.
On one occasion, Camila arrived while Jere and I were eating lunch. She padded in through the open door and clung to its frame. “Juana” she muttered, her thick and unruly brown curls bobbing.
“Yes Camila” I responded waiting for the request.
“Uhh…. Uhh….” Her gaze darted about the bright room.
“Yes Camila. What do you need?”
“Uhh…..”
Giving up, we resumed our meal and the conversation we were having. Camila remained sucking on her lips, and clinging to the door, a voyeuristic ghost in our midst.
About ten minutes had past and I had just about forgotten she was there at all, when a whisper of a voice reminded me.
“Cebolla (onion)” she uttered in a tone so soft and unimposing that without looking at her, one might think that this little girl was asleep, and her words described the world she encountered in some nebulous dream of kitchens, mothers, vegetables and disproportionately large onions.
On another occasion Camila and her younger sister were dispatched with nothing more than the word “bottle” in their heads. They arrived once again in a chorus of “Juanas” and a light thumping of fists on the door. “Botella” the pair repeated over and over, Camila initiating the chant, followed by Candelaria who could only accomplish the second part of the word “tella” “tella” “tella.” Unlike the vague and tenuous character of many of their visits, this time the team was unwaveringly resolute in their demands. The one problem was that I had no idea what kind of bottle they were looking for. I showed them a variety of bottles I had lying around, empty tomato sauce bottles, wine bottles, used water bottles, dish detergent bottles, all to no avail. They continued their battle cry for a ‘botella’ ‘tella’ ‘botella’ ‘tella.’ After exhausting all visible possibilities I told them to come back when they had a better idea of what they were looking for. Camila scurried off but Candelaria remained watching me with a furrowed brow, chomping on her cheeks, still muttering ‘tella’ ‘tella’ ‘tella.’ The one-year-old seemed angry and dissatisfied but was unable to communicate these complex feelings to me. She had a job to do, a role to fill within this family, and here I was, an outsider, impeding her ability to do so. Realizing she was alone, she eventually waddled off, a heavy dipper slowing her pace.
In addition to the messengers, Grandma continued to drop in on us, thankfully, on these more recent instances, fully clothed. She always arrived looking for someone or something: her aunt Analisa, her husband’s toolbox, the keys to the front gate. She would mistake us for her nieces or nephews, brother and sister, or long lost friends.
“No, this is not my house,” she would explain to me, “I don’t live here, I’m just visiting relatives.” And then she would enter my kitchen and gaze searchingly around and on into the next room, “Is Anna around? You see tomorrow, I am leaving and I’d like to say goodbye.”
“No, I’m sorry,” I offer apologetically, “But I’ll tell her you stopped by.” I nod and smile, placating the ill-fated hallucinations of a woman lost in time.
We discovered one day that a series of garden pots we had left outside was missing. One by one, they were recuperated from distinct hiding spots within the family’s house with the exception of one. Later that day, Jeremias found the last pot out in the front of the house next to a few other abandoned plants. Inside it, Grandma had feebly stuffed the roots of a handful of weeds into the dirt, dutifully attending to the garden that was no longer hers.
I hope that these anecdotes help to illustrate that space is not the only thing that I share with this family. The moments that I describe brighten my days, as I grow to know each member’s personalities and idiosyncrasies. However strange and dysfunctional the whole equation might appear at times, each one of them make living in this space feel like a home.