The Relativity of Being

Steel pillars rise in a colonnade then arch into a canopy over the marble-tiled floors of Retiro Station, where sunlight filters through ribbons of glass, stained yellow by decades of diesel. The canopy forms a nave for trains to dock in, and when my daughter and I depart this tunnel and the train bursts through into the late afternoon sunlight, I am startled by the sudden glare on the villas miseria of immigrants who find even this shantytown an escape from the fatal poverty of Bolivia and Paraguay.

The contrast is all the more striking when the train arrives in Belgrano, one of the most elegant and modern barrios of Buenos Aires and the traditional escape of the upper-class. Here, beneath spiring jacaranda trees, and tethered to their Bichons Frises and Chihuahuas, Manolo-shod ladies who refuse to leave Fifi in the hands of one of the many paseadors de perros (professional dog-walkers), pick their way among the leavings of previous pooches. Yet the sidewalks, Marissa tells me, have been really cleaned up since she was here two years ago.

I am on a pilgrimage of sorts, a journey to my past, though I have never been here before. In fact, I am from the opposite end of the world.  But growing up in the wilderness of Alaska, I used to dream of travel to such a faraway place (though every place was faraway from where I lived). I envisioned myself in an intimate but sophisticated cafe, sipping an exotic wine and-quite erudite and fluent, of course-conversing with fellow travelers in their own languages. For various reasons, the dream never materialized.

My daughter grew up knowing my regret, and in that way that children have of realizing their parents' unlived dreams, when she turned 20, she announced she wanted to spend a semester abroad. Within two weeks, she was on her way to Buenos Aires, taking my dreams and regrets into the tree-lined barrancas of Belgrano. Now she has returned, bringing me to see the university, the little grocery, the Chinatown, the streets where she walked.

As twilight darkens, we turn onto Echeverria, where sits La Cavada, an intimate but sophisticated pizza bar that offers its hospitality to groups of international students that once included my daughter. There is no mistaking me for a college student now, with lines in my face, my hips having been rounded by pregnancy. Our waitress is Teresa-my daughter's age, who spent a semester in Philadelphia studying dance. I am torn by pangs of jealousy for the common bond they share. She brings us freshly made empanadas filled with meat and cheese and fresh vegetables, along with malbec, that tangy red wine whose grapes, like most of the families of Buenos Aires, were transplanted from Europe. The malbec is delicious, smooth with a spicy exoticness to it. I look around me, trying to picture myself as a young college student, laughing with friends over Italian food-a heritage of the portenos who founded this city. I consider how my life would have been had I made this journey at age 22.

Across the table, my daughter smiles and shares with me a memory of her time here. At once it's as if I am reminiscing of a time in my past, remembering the remembering of it, as if it had happened to me, sharing my dream through her reality.

Behind the bar, the TV plays soccer in a language that to my daughter is like her own but is not yet mine. In the corner, a group of neighbors has gathered for dinner. Although it is early fall, the weather is warm enough to carry through the open window the scent of flowers from outside, where, in the corner kiosk, the neighborhood security guard puffs a cigarette. The breeze catches the whiff of smoke, curling it up towards the towering trees that during the day compete with newly-built high rise apartment buildings for the sun and now, at evening, guard the quiet streets from the faint and distant street lamps.

It is a perfect moment, one in which I abandon regrets of a life unlived in order to absorb the present-to appreciate that my daughter and I have grown into friends comfortable enough to travel together. I would not have had this contentment at 22.

Back in the elegance of our room at the Hotel Jousten, long after the moment has passed, the realization comes like a slow sunrise-a dawning apprehension of the ephemeral nature of time. In a little Italian restaurant with my grown daughter-trying to envision her Argentinian experience through the filter of my own college-day dreams-I lost all perspective of a chronological life. Someday after I am gone, she will be telling her grandchildren of this time, perhaps sharing their memories of Buenos Aires.  In this way, my dream and I shall live on.

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