We Were Always Supposed to Be Here

Living one strand of the multiverse of the immigrant experience

Today I travel to Buenos Aires with my mother. The flight is delayed three hours until 11:45. 

That’s OK, it’s not the first time this trip has been delayed. It was moved multiple times since 2019–my mother’s cancer, my brother’s death, lockdown, then Omicron. What would this trip have been like had we taken it back then? Could I have appreciated it the way I know I do now?

Here we are hurtling toward JFK—my mother in her chariot from NJ, me in mine from NYC. It will be the first time I return with my mother since we emigrated during the 70s. It’s her second visit back since then. The first time back was with her mother, the second time her daughter.

The sky is pink and red and orange on the horizon and my anxiety is humming. On the one hand we are going to our homeland, where my family lives. On the other hand I said goodbye to my home— Ben, Gertrude and Earnestine. 

The anxiety is about the unanswered questions of my life: 

Who would I have been had we stayed in Argentina?

Who would my parents have been?

My brothers?

Our lives? 

How did Argentina change without us there?

Can the flapping of the wings of a butterfly be felt on the other side of the world?

These questions are obviously unknowable, possibly a waste of time to ask, and certainly more than a touch narcissistic, and yet here I am asking. The answer: Yes, I can feel her wings.

With these thoughts of interconnectedness and internal chaos, I started hand drawing my suitcase packing list for our adventures. Here we are walking down the street where my parents lived when my brothers and I were born. Here is where they were married. Here is where we all said goodbye. And as I made the little Spanglish list of corpiños and pantalones, I felt myself falling into the embrace of history and the sliding doors multiverse of life, the anxious itch of the unanswered and thrill of the unknown. Only from there did I begin to invite the idea of not knowing what it is that will come, and the courage to let that be enough. 

So here I am, stuck in traffic on the Van Wyck Expressway (always traffic) starting to get excited about the adventure ahead and all of the stories I’ll have to tell you. Don’t worry, I brought a notebook to get it all down. 

Hasta pronto. I see my mother at the gate. 🤍