Are you my host mother?

As promised, here are some thoughts on my Argentine host mother:

My host mom was a diva. That’s right, a DIVA.

I never knew her real height because she always wore heels. One of the first conversations we had was about my leg hair, which had been growing for nine months at that point and was certainly a shock to people who are unaccustomed to seeing women look like women.

She was appalled. “Es muy mal visto acá!” which translates to something like, “It reflects poorly on your character and your upbringing, and your parents and their ancestors going back through the millennia!” She insisted that I come with her to the salon to get them waxed.

As you might expect, she had some unusual ideas about food. She ate little meat for living in a country famous for its cowboys. However, her opinions about chicken were far more extreme; she called it “the dirty animal.” She clarified this statement by saying they eat off of the ground. It is yet to be determined where she thinks other animals get their food from.

Breakfast was strictly limited to oranges. She ate only fruit until lunch. If one doesn’t, she claimed, one would surely get rolls on his or her hips. Mixing sweet and savory was also a no-no -- because sugar.

There were many things she was particular about, such as her need for her outfits to be color-coordinated and her disdain for feminism. I teased her about these traits. We had an easy banter, exchanging sarcasm and trading phrases in our respective languages. As my Spanish improved, so did my personality. Figuring her out quickly became the most interesting part of being abroad. Some people have boyfriends abroad — I had a host mom.

Our first fight was about her opinion that gay people shouldn't be able to have kids, which took a turn for the worst when I used a new curse word I had learned. Her aggressive arguing faltered, and we didn’t speak for a week.

It was then that I realized how much I had overlooked. The sense of playful companionship we had established was sliced by irreconcilable difference — she started calling me fat and would engage in nonsense political debates that pushed the boundaries of both my patience and my language skills.

I came back to the United States with an incredible numbness where I thought there would be longing, and with the body confidence of my first-year self.

After a six-week recovery rafting down the Salmon river, I understand how much I internalized her messages. Although they began as ideas that I could laugh off or explain away as “cultural differences,” they got old. Nothing is more emblematic of this than the fact that I spent $25 to wax my legs in what may have been the most painful experience of my life, minus that time my uncle pulled out the wrong tooth.

But this is not the first time I’ve made the mistake of letting people who are close to me influence my own self-image, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Perhaps the next time I’ll tell it to laser off. OOOOOOOOH!