What makes returning Buenos Aires, Argentina so special is reconnecting with friends I haven't known about for over fifty years. I was overwhelmed today when I met Teeny ( a nickname for Cristine when she was very young and still goes by) for the first time since we were twelve years old in 1957. She and I are exactly the same age. We never wrote, lost touch, and when I knew I was coming back to Buenos Aires, I decided I needed to see her. I contacted two of her cousins in the U.S. and searched Facebook until I found her. Teeny Harris Smith is now Teeny Abella, married to Argentine Jaime Abella, mother of four children, and grandmother of ten grandchildren - soon to be eleven!
As coincidences happen, Teeny lives three blocks from the apartment in Recoleta that we are renting. I waited in front of our building wondering if I would recognize her. As I looked up the street, a tall blonde woman waved to me and there was Teeny. We hugged and she said "you look just the same". I don't think I could say that of her. Teeny is an attractive, very tanned (after a summer in Punta del Este, Uruguay, where they own a beach apartment), with a physique that tells you she is a natural athlete. Teeny was a "tomboy" when she was a little girl and always out playing with the boys in our neighborhood. She loves sports and does them all well having been a golfer and tennis player. Now she walks and bikes just like I do. We spoke in English during our visit although she thinks her English is rusty as she speaks only Spanish with her Argentine husband and children. She was raised speaking English in an Anglo Argentine family and her ancestry is pure Anglo Saxon. She had an English and an American grandmother. In reality she has not lost any of her English and speaks in a deep, warm voice with only a slight British accent. Occasionally she will ask "how do you say that in English?" . She is a graduate of Northlands, an exclusive British girls school in B.A. while her brothers went to St. Johns, the boys' school. Her older brother Anthony, later went to Dartmouth College in the U.S. and came to visit us in the early 1960's when my family lived in Washington D.C.
Teeny drove us out to the suburbs as she had promised to show me the street we lived on when we were children. I grew up on 335 Balcarce St. and her house was directly across the street at 330 Balcarce. We spent our childhoods in and out of each others houses. She had two brothers, and so did I and the six of us lived mostly at our house in our backyard. We were the Americans on the block having our supper at 6 p.m. when Teeny and her brothers were having tea, and we were always the first ones to have to go to bed. We went to the American school.
I discovered that Calle Barcarce is now Calle Felipe Julianes a small street still only two blocks long. In the 1950's, you drove down Avenida Aguirre which is now Avenida Libertador and turned right towards the river to get to our house. I never would have found it again. Fifty years is a long time and all has changed. Teeny parked on our street, and when I got out to look at the house at 335 I struggled to find anything at all familiar. There was almost nothing I recognized except perhaps the window above the garage which was my little bedroom. The orange trees that lined Balcarce are gone and when I mentioned that, Teeny reminded me her mother used to make orange marmalade from those inedible oranges. Our house, although still brick, no longer looks the same and has been totally renovated and added on to. Teeny's white stucco house across the street looked more familiar. We took pictures and then walked up and down the street as our conversation turned into "do you remember....?" We reminisced about our neighbors and the children we played with . I wrote about that in my essay that I included in this blog - Growing up on Balcarce 335 .
Teeny lived at 330 Balcarce till she was 20 after graduating from Northlands School and spending a year in Switzerland at a finishing school. By then she had met Jaime Abella in Punta del Este and just before she was 21 she married him and moved out to the "estancia" he inherited from his father. The first years of her married life she lived on their 3,700 acre farm in the province of Buenos Aires where they grow soybeans, wheat and corn. It is not a cattle ranch as I had imagined. I have since learned that Argentina is the third largest exporter of soybeans in the world.. Her husband and now two of her sons run the family farm. After having four children and needing to put them in bilingual private schools, they bought an apartment in Recoleta where she still lives. Her children, Ezekiel, Dolores, Marco, and Nicolas, were raised in B.A but they also had a weekend house to get out of the city.
Teeny drove us around the neighborhood of Acassuso and then to San Isidro stopping at the San Isidro Jockey Club where she has been a member for many years. The Jockey Club is an elegant Tudor style building surrounded by a 36 hole golf course and is still a very exclusive private club that you can only join if you have the proper ancestry. She played golf there for years although she doesn't play anymore as her life is taken up with her many grandchildren. We walked through the club house with dark polished wood floors, oriental carpets, and elegant antique furniture overlooking an exquisite golf course with many tall beautiful trees that you see everywhere in Buenos Aires.
We lunched at a fancy restaurant called the Rosa Negra (Black Rose), one of many restaurants that were rebuilt in the area of where the stables for the San Isidro Race Course used to be. Lunch out in B.A. is always a leisurely, elegant meal with waiters in white jackets in attendance and tables set with white starched table cloths and napkins. Food is exquisite and fresh and delicious and many choices cooked on the parilla or the open grill. Art sampled the cerdo (pork) as did Teeny while I, the non-meat eater in the family, enjoyed a delicious natural chicken with vegetables.
Teeny brought us back to her spacious sixth floor apartment in Recoleta and her live-in maid served us a fresh cafecito which is a small coffee in a demi-tasse cup that Argentines drink all day long. We visited awhile longer and then said our good-byes promising to get together again while we are in Buenos Aires this month. Teeny seemed genuinely pleased to see me and although much has changed- her parents and her older brother have passed away - somehow it was special to be together as we knew each other and our families so many years ago. Families change and life turns out in unexpected ways, but I loved being in Teeny's home full of many happy family photos of her children and her ten grandchildren whom she talks about constantly. She seems very content and has had a good life with a strong 45 year marriage. She told us that Jaime loves to travel and they take a trip abroad at least twice a year. She has been all over Europe, Australia, and traveled throughout the U.S. while this spring they will go to China. She spends summers in Punta del Este, a beach resort in Uruguay, in her own apartment and throughout the year enjoys her grandchildren.
Perhaps reconnecting with Teeny helps me to validate that I really did live here as a little girl, as hard as that is to picture in this city that has changed so much. Our paths have taken us in different directions but at 65, we have matured and come to a satisfying place in our lives and we are content.
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