A Year Older, A Year Younger

random story that may or may not need be told.  trying to get better at non-fiction.

 On the cusp of a rainy Saturday night, the streets of suburban Santiago were drenched and cold, like a stray city dog.  You could hear the cars whimpering through the puddles, the bright window lights shivering up and down the cozy block, and the drops shattering in noisy protest against tin roofs in the damp twilight.  From the outside of every house, it seemed the whole street was listening to the clatter in hushed expectation, yet with subdued disappointment.  The whole world was holed up, some never intending to leave.

Inside of one house, I was at a birthday party.  Despite the sound of it, take every nostalgic image of balloons and cake out of your mind; imagine instead a twenty year old gringo in the middle of six middle aged Chileans sulking around one flickering television set in a cozy den.  The news spewed forth tragedies and the adults sat around, making sparse commentaries in the din of the TV and reclining on couches in a way that preached professionalism and apathy all at the same time.

I was too young for these people.  That became clear early on in the night, but surprisingly not so clear over the phone when I was invited earlier that day.  I had heard plenty of other Americans getting invited to random birthday parties and thought that I should try and not be rude and decline.  After exiting the metro stop and waiting for the twenty-seven year old birthday girl to pick me up, I briefly wondered why I was going but quickly gave up.  When you're huddling under a bus stop hang over in cold freezing rain in the middle of foreign suburbia, the why becomes very unhelpful.

After some more comments and some awkward hellos, the six middle aged Chileans and I adjourned to the table and began to eat dinner.  The food was delicious and the meat tender, and the group became more lively.  A thirty-year old man with light hair and a calm demeanor at my side began chatting with me about what I was doing in Chile, and I explained I was an economics major and somewhat haphazardly let slip that I was dedicating my life to helping the poor.  He mulled over this fact a bit while chewing a piece of meat as a married couple shuffled into the room and sat down next to me at the end of the table.  As we began scraping the last bits of corn into our mouths, the man next to me asked me how people are going to get out of poverty.  I responded as best as I knew with some garbled answer about attitudes and resources, while he nodded like one nods to a kid with a great imagination.  He turned to his plate, pondering my response like a less than satisfactory piece of modern art. I might has well have been in diapers.

As plates were collected by the birthday girl's mom, who I affectionately called "abuelita," tea, coffee, and mugs were passed around to everyone and the short matriarch meekly took a stool from the kitchen and sat down at the table.  As the whole table lit up with talk of adult things, I politely refused tea on account of my insomnia.  The wild eyed man who had sat down to my left looked slyly and at me and commented "I guess only old people drink tea, huh?"  The end of the table settled into chuckling while I nodded along.

Soon, the everyone at the table began talking about the country side, a foreign concept for most people in Santiago.  "I prefer to be where the people are," the wild eyed man said proudly.  "I would go crazy out there with nothing but countryside."

Suddenly, the matriarch of the household began to lift her eyes and speak in a slow, seasoned tone of voice.  As she spoke, awed silence descended on the whole table.

"I remember living in the countryside.  Everything was very spread out, and your neighbor might lie miles in another direction and information ran slow.  In fact, I remember during the earthquake, it was hard to hear about how everyone was doing, because no one had televisions and very few radios.  Might have to travel a while till you came to a place that had one.  You know that main plaza west of the center of the city?  I remember there was one television there, and the whole world gathered around it.  That was how we got information.  That's how it was."

She sipped her coffee, while all seven of the guests sat in reverent silence, pondering a thing beyond their pondering.

"I suppose nowadays we carry TV's in our pockets," I said.  The whole table nodded along, eyes grasping their dinner plates.

"Now," abuela said.  "Who wants cake?"

We sang happy birthday and ate the delicious cake.  Despite the fact that one person was getting older, everyone felt just a little bit younger.

~Jared