The Minor Diplomats of Buenos Aires

Through some connection of Jewish aunt to Jewish aunt, Jess was directed to meet an immigration official from the U.S. embassy.  We met Steve & his wife, Katie, and their tiny, blue-eyed baby in our first weeks in Buenos Aires, getting the official low-down on the country & its politics over an insane amount of meat at a parilla near their posh, government-supplied apartment up north.  Katie is a Penn State alum---we talked PA while Jess caught Steve up on Milwaukee.  They told stories of their pair of skinny Egyptian dogs---George & Gracie---who, only a few days after their move from Bahrain to BsAs, learned to open the front door, sneak into the elevator, and slip past the guarded gate to freedom.  We finished the day with Volta ice cream, feeling a little more comfortable knowing some adults in this city.

Last night, Steve & Kate hosted a Chrismukkah Potluck, attended by several lower-downs in the embassy, another Jewish Aunt Connection, and us.  Before the wine & champagne smoothed the rough patches of small-talk terrain, everyone went through the meet-and-greet necessary at a party half-comprised of strangers.  Steve 2, a metro-section journalist for 12 years, lost his job to the Decline of American Newspapers in 2008.  Boy-faced and pale, with a crisp green button-down undone casually at the neck.  About to leave Buenos Aires after a four-month internship to finish his master's in public policy.  He brought chard & mixed mushrooms in balsamic.

Ryan, a tall Young Republican with her curly hair chopped unflatteringly, told stories about herself calculated to elicit the admiration of others.  With a false tone of self-deprecation, she told the whole table about walking home last week and being suddenly confronted by an Argentine man who said, apparently, "Your beauty will kill all others."  She had too-pale skin and a mouth full of teeth.  Maybe this impresses Argentines.  Steve 2 sat next to her at the dining table conspicuously.  Maybe mouthfuls of teeth impress him, too.  Ryan brought a 4-cheese risotto that, she boasted, her maid had made.

Annie was very excited.  She seemed to be a minor diplomat in the level of Steve 1, and she followed conversations with an eagerness that almost suggested phoniness---No way am I really this interesting, you'd think---but she seemed to be listening and could pull up things you'd said earlier in the conversation when necessary.  After talking a while, I had to believe she was genuine.  Annie wants to go back to school for writing, she says, when she can quit her State Department job and let her Ottawa-native husband win the bread.  Her husband, Mike, has traveled all six inhabitable continents.  He has roadtripped through the American southwest: Las Vegas, Zion National Park, Yosemite.  He's driven from Sydney to Rockhampton, 30 hours in 2 days, to dive the Barrier Reef.  Mudjumped from Bangkok to small islands off the Thai coast, slept for a week in a bamboo hut on the beach.  Pushed through bazaars in Marrakesh.  London, Berlin, Barcelona, Prague, Paris....  The bearded, soft-spoken Canadian then followed Annie from Ontario to Buenos Aires.  They brought couscous and a caprese salad.

Brad, the other aunt connection, tele-teaches for the University of Phoenix.  What he teaches, I don't know.  He brought peanut butter pie, though.  What an amazing human being.

Neal and I learned to spin the dreidel from Jess and Steve 1.  Neal is a stay-at-home dad to a pretty baby girl whose name I don't remember.  I don't remember the name of Neal's pretty wife, either, though I do know she's another low-rung official in the embassy.  They're being moved to Africa in a few days to begin another post.  After a few years in the embassy game, the diplomats will get to pick their placements, settle in with their families, grow comfortable and unAmericanized and old.  But these young families, at the bottom of the embassy hierarchy, now only get to suggest where they would like to go--the government decides where they will live, and for how long, usually only a year or two.  Neal and his wife brought the salad and a passion-fruit cheesecake.

Steve and Katie made latkes & tenderloin.  Jess brought pear/bleu cheese empanadas.

The candles burned down in the wrought-iron menorah.  Blue lights blinked on the Christmas tree, and a holiday mix played on the satellite radio.  After dessert and coffee, everyone a little drunk and overfull, we took our ziplocked leftovers and spread out into the city: Steve 2 to his empty apartment in Palermo, Brad to his wife sick at home, the couples to their homes together, Ryan to, perhaps, her maid---the holiday spirit wearing off with the wine buzz.