We moved to a new town when I was seven. We grew accustomed to life in the two-story house on Calle 31 in Don Bosco, a town in the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
The train rumbled by every five minutes, its tracks a mere block away. Every time the whistle blew we knew it was the slow train stopping at the nearby station, and not the rápido speeding past. At first, the constant noise bothered us, but we soon grew accustomed to that, too.
Tuesday was market day, la feria. Vendors lined the street by the train station, selling fruits and vegetables, flowers, household goods, clothing, crafts. Town people milled about chatting, comparing goods and prices, and enjoying the warmth of the morning sun and the camaraderie.
Most days we bought fruit and vegetables from doña Lucy’s verdulería, the stand on the corner across from the train station. Her dark-haired curly-headed little boy, Julio, hung out there. He was often seen with his blond friend Roberto. I can’t remember when, but sometime after my parents began a Sunday morning children’s Bible class in our home, the two friends started coming around often, sometimes accompanied by their younger siblings. Julio remembered being there when we celebrated Daddy’s 31st birthday.
You could say we all grew up together in the neighborhood, although my brothers and I were never as free to roam as the other children.
I had a friend, Delia, who lived around the corner and walked with me every day to our primary school, Escuela No. 42, eight or ten blocks across the railroad tracks and to the edge of town. She was also part of our little group and attended Sunday School in our home off and on.
One evening service in our home, all of the living room seats were filled, I sat in the back on the cold cement stairs leading to the second floor. Perhaps the sermon went too long, or I didn’t want to interrupt by exiting to go to the bathroom; alas, I made a bigger scene when I had an accident right there on the steps. My little friend Julio, sitting next to me, felt so sorry for the embarrassment this had caused me.
Another memory stayed with me from when we lived in that same house, Calle 31 No. 33. I came down with the mumps around Christmas time (summer in Argentina) and could not play my role in the program held in our back yard. I sadly looked down from my bedroom window, my swollen cheeks covered with a scarf.
Most of us also attended a Child Evangelism Bible club that met Thursday afternoons in another part of town. We loved our teacher, Carlos Maccio. As pre-adolescents, he involved us in a recording program. Every week we traveled by train to a studio in la capital, downtown Buenos Aires, to perform skits and sing songs for a radio children’s program. I distinctly remember singing a solo, it was Psalm 103 set to music. Other details have faded.
We moved into a different house, much closer to Julio’s, right around the corner. Friendships among the children in our neighborhood grew. The Clausens, a Danish family, lived across the street. Lise, their daughter, and I became good friends, although she was a couple years younger. She and I walked together every afternoon to a shop across the railroad to buy milk. Her tall blond good-looking brother was my age, and I developed a crush on Eduardo that lasted our entire furlough year in the States. But when we returned to our home on Chiclana, I slowly realized that he did not think of me in the same way. Besides we did not run in the same circles. The Clausens were staunch members of a Plymouth Brethren congregation in Wilde, the next town on the train route.
Meanwhile, our own Don Bosco youth group was growing in numbers and closeness. My parents noticed that I was attracting male attention and moved me to the back bedroom where I couldn’t chat with boys from my street-facing upstairs window. Relocation did not totally squelch inner adolescent yearnings.
There were many opportunities for me to gather and also serve together with the kids in our youth group. Physical work in the ministry bonded us together as a community.
Over the years my father, with the help of old and young members of the congregation, built a church edifice we called Templo Evangélico. The young men acquired carpentry and masonry skills as they worked alongside my father. Pastor, preacher, builder, don Solón, also imparted spiritual disciplines. For a long time Dad met with these teenagers for early morning prayer. I sensed that Julio looked up to my father more than to his own. His dad was a pharmacist who rose early for his hour-long train commute and worked long days at a prestigious establishment on Calle Florida—the famous pedestrian street in the capital city.
As young people we helped at an open air children’s Bible club. Five or six of us traveled by train to a neighboring town, and then walked to an open area. When I played the accordion, the children gathered and we taught them Bible lessons. Julio lugged the heavy instrument on the long walk from the train station to the empty lot where the children gathered. In time it became obvious that Julio and I were an item.
Our budding attraction had not gone unnoticed by my parents. I sensed that they disapproved. They looked worried and reminded me often, "Next year we are returning to the States." They wanted to protect me from an impossible relationship. When our five-year missionary term ended, I would have to leave Argentina, and go back to the US with the family. And it was expected that I would attend Grace College in Indiana. There was no guarantee that I would ever be able to return.
Yet, our boyfriend-girlfriend friendship grew. Julio won me over with his forthright genuineness and vibrant personality. And he adored me. We dared to imagine an impossible future. I was an American missionary kid, and he an Argentine. Such relationships were unheard-of back then.
What my parents did not know was that Julio and I were seeing each other more and more often. Julio lived a mere two blocks away. He waited for me at the corner every morning and walked with me to the bus stop. I attended a high school for teachers, the Escuela Normal Mixta de Quilmes, two towns away by public transport.
Time spent together progressed from the waiting for bus No. 24 to joining me on the twenty-minute ride, and then finally walking with me the dozen or so blocks to the school. He did this even though it meant making his way there and back, at his own expense, only return a few hours later for his classes. The Escuela Nacional, a secondary school to prepare for university, met evenings in the same building.
My physical education class met one or two afternoons a week in a gym in another part of town. Julio would often wait for me afterwards. I recognized him from afar wearing the textured woolen sweater his mother knit for him every year. He loved it when I ran to meet him and I was happy to see his smiling dark eyes.
When apart, we left little notes in nicks in the classroom walls or tree hollows in the school yard. Usually these were rolled up bus tickets where we had written Te quiero (I love you) over and over and over. Once, to surprise me, Julio procured an entire roll of tickets from a friend whose father was a bus driver.
One morning Julio lingered outside the school fence. We were surreptitiously talking when the disciplinarian, the preceptora, noticed us, and came over. She reprimanded us harshly, and called me into the office. I, the perfect little student, was sent home, suspended, not allowed to return until the next day, and only if accompanied by my parents.
Julio waited for me outside the school to hear the outcome of the discipline, and went home with me. He was there to explain and take the blame. “What have you done?” asked my mother as soon as she saw us. I was not in school, appeared very distressed, red-eyed, tear-stained, and with Julio! No explanation sufficed. We were in big trouble. My parents tried to keep us apart. We did not meet much after that and I became more reserved and secretive.
One rainy afternoon, Julio and I snuck out for a walk around the block sharing an umbrella. Perhaps it was then that he gave me a magazine picture we treasured as the ideal of love and marriage--a young couple pushing a baby carriage.
In retrospect it is hard to imagine a sweet and innocent friendship like ours. We had no television, our minds and hearts were not yet overrun by a sex-crazed environment. We never spoke of sex, nor did it cross our minds. My parents may have imagined otherwise. One morning I heard Daddy weeping loudly and always wondered whether I was the cause.
When the time came for my parents' furlough from missionary service, the parting from my friends, and Julio in particular, was very difficult. At the airport, we snuck away and kissed for the first time, perhaps in an attempt to seal our promise of an ongoing relationship. We honored that commitment for more than two years through faithful eagerly-awaited correspondence.
Finally one day, Daddy said, “You can do what you want.” However, I gave up the idealized image of a future with Julio. The happy-couple-and-baby-carriage image was gone. I saw no way that Julio could come to me or I go to him. Distance was the more obvious obstacle, but living in different worlds was the invisible one at the time. The pain of the break-up faded. Eventually the treasured letters were either lost or burnt. I never knew what happened to the little bronze heart he fashioned for me.
We each married within our own culture and have growing families. However, that first love still remains a sweet and powerful memory.
