Just for the record: my mother is not a subject of study of anybody. (At least for the time being). It is just that since all her kids left the nest (her appartment in Belgrano), she decided to host students as she hates to live alone. As almost any jewish mother she needs somebody to take care of. Besides, it helps to pay the rent. She calls them "my students". I just don't argue (what for?).
Yesterday evening all my family gathered for dinner at "Mom's home". Pablo, one of my brothers who currently lives abroad, was leaving back to the U.S.A. Suddenly, one of the students that lives at "Mom's home" came in. My mother always introduces aaaallll her family to the new comer in her broken English. This time the student in question was John (I am sure I am misspelling his name), from Norwaig. My mother hurries to tell us he is twenty and that his parents are very young. Next, she introduces us: "My daughter (
me), my ex husband (sometimes she calls him "the father of my children" - yes, they are
that civilized), twins - she goes on referring to my twin brothers Mati and Joel, and last but not least Pablo, (his English is much more fluent now that he moved to America). John immediately joined us for dinner. Nice guy.
I told him that in the last weekend I watched a Norweigian film on cable that I really really liked. I started to tell him what the film was about. Two Psychiatry patients that were realesed from a mental institution and moved to an appartment in Oslo under the supervision of a social worker. Beautiful movie. I strongly recommend it.
John was very surprised that here in Argentina movies of his country are seen. I explain to him that we are very fond of European films and that I particulary enjoyed that one, because it treats a very difficult theme (mental illness) with a lot of humor, optimism and realism.
Then he told me that is his favorite movie and that he made a research at school about it.
He is studying Spanish down here. He is a backpacker and he is planning to go up to Mexico. Very nice trip. I asked him a lot of questions about why he decided to come to Buenos Aires and how he got the information related to Argentina. I got very interesting and funny answers. He searched on the web, went to a travel agency to get the air tickets and bought the Lonely Planet Guide. But at some point of all that process, he told me that was his mother the one that made the most serious research on the subject. A website called
www.mom.com should be on the web for main directions in life, he said. And it does exist after all. That was really a good one. (And I am the one on therapy - I am joking, I am joking).
Anyway, after dessert my mother wanted her Kodak moment of the evening, so she got her wreck camera ready. John took some pictures of all of us and then he got his own digital camera to take a picture of all of us.
My mother used to play the piano when she was a little girl. The very same piano is now in her living room. On the wall, just above the piano, is a large picture of my grandparents and all the grandchildren they had at the time. The pictures was taken in 1977. I was seven. In that year we were 12 grandchildren. Today, year 2005, we are 18 grandchildren and a bunch of greatgrandchildren (believe me - a lot). When a new comer student arrives at my mom's home, the ones that are already "settled" there (veterans) show him/her the picture above the piano, as it if were a sort of Olympic Torch. A simbol. A family at the bottom of the map.
