The first time Rodrigo Losa left his country, he was 18 years old. He traveled from Quito Equador to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he lived for a year with the Schmidt family. Rodrigo was one of many young Latin Americans doing this in the 70s. At the time, there was a boom in foreign exchange programs for students coming to the U.S. In that trip, my father started to consider the Schmidt grandparents, part of his family.
Carolina is Rodrigo's daughter. She had always thought of her father as emotionally withdrawn and a little bit of an outcast. So she wondered how this American couple who spoke no Spanish ended up becoming almost like mom and dad to her father, a reserved Hispanic man from the Ecuadorian Highlands. She couldn't understand this until she took her own trip to Cincinnati, Ohio.
Welcome to the Duolingo Spanish podcast. We bring you true bilingual stories about travels with unexpected turns, plans unraveled, and destinations unknown. The Spanish in this story is for intermediate level learners, but if you get lost, don't worry. We'll be chiming in throughout the story. Carolina's trip started when her dad got some bad news. Tom Schmidt, his host father from his year in Ohio, had suddenly died. In their family, they called him a boy, a Schmidt. He was 95 years old.
My father was difficult to process the death of the Schmidt grandmother. Sometimes he was sitting in the sofa in silence, without talking, looking at the floor. He walked without a direction throughout the house. Without my mother and I, we were talking, my father moved his head without really listening. Rodrigo was inconsolable over his former host father's death, but Carolina couldn't understand it. Why was he so sad?
She knew they were close because he always affectionately referred to them as mom and dad, which is how she ended up calling them abuelo and abuela. But Carolina had never seen her dad get this emotional about anything. My father never expresses his emotions. He paralysed if he had hugged him. On the other hand, the Schmidt always seemed distant to me.
Carolina had never connected much with the Schmidt's. She first met them in a short visit to the States when she was 15 years old, and then one other time when they visited Ecuador. But Carolina's English wasn't so good when she was younger, and simple things, like their sarcastic sense of humor, were lost on her. My father never spoke much of Ohio. I knew very little about his study years in the United States.
Since she had heard only a few anecdotes about her dad's time in Ohio, she never quite understood how her father ended up feeling so close to the Schmidt's. The abuelo Schmidt died in April. Two months later, my father asked me if I could travel to Cincinnati, Ohio, to be a time with the Schmidt's. Rodrigo couldn't go to Ohio himself because he had to take care of some important family affairs in Ecuador. It was obvious that my father was nervous.
I didn't want the abuelo Schmidt to suffer from depression. Rodrigo was worried that Grandma Schmidt would become depressed. He also thought Charles, one of her sons, could use an extra hand with her care. So Rodrigo pleaded with Carolina to go in his place. She agreed to go. At the time, she was 28 years old. My father arrived four hours late in Cincinnati. I was nervous.
In the airport, he waited for the abuela and his son Charles. When he entered his car, he didn't know what to do nor what to say. He decided not to talk during the trip. One hour later, they pulled into the suburban neighborhood where the Schmidt family lived. The houses there had large driveways, with minivans parked out front. Bikes left unlocked at their doorsteps and well-manicured lawns. The city was safe and quiet. Very different from my neighborhood in Ecuador.
Mary Schmidt lived in a retirement community in the same neighborhood, five minutes from the family house. Her apartment had an extra bedroom where Carolina would stay during her visit. When we arrived, Charles gave instructions on his activities and routines. And a very long list of medicine that the abuela Schmidt had to take. She remembered my father, but she didn't know who he was. Carolina felt suddenly overwhelmed by the responsibility before her.
For the next seven days, she would be taking care of a grieving elderly widow who didn't even recognize her. She imagined the next days with the abuela Schmidt. She would talk a lot in English with people who didn't know her. And remember to give her medicine to the abuela. But those first few days didn't turn out to be as difficult as Carolina had imagined. The abuela was very flexible with the plans. She spoke to her all the time to entertain her.
We walked in the together park. We saw television. We lived a little wine and played the wine. The next day, Carolina met Grandma Schmidt's nurse who was returning from taking a day off. Her name was Kim. She asked Carolina about her life in Ecuador and about her dad. But suddenly, Kim, she said, Who is your father? I didn't know what to say. What was my father's letter? Letters from her dad. Carolina had no idea what Kim was talking about.
Kim then walked Carolina over to a table where she rummaged through a pile of photo albums, receipts and condolence letters until she found them. There are your dad's letters. The paper of the letters was yellow, with the passage of the years. They had red and blue borders and a glass of Ecuador and Ohio. Carolina immediately started reading through them. She landed on one of the earliest ones, written in 1974, one year after her dad had returned to Ecuador.
He wrote to the Schmitz about how he had been accepted into military school. Another letter, this one from 1976, talked about how Rodrigo was hoping to win a scholarship to study again in the United States. In 1977, he wrote them from the University of Colorado Springs. He spoke about plans to visit them on December 25, in Christmas. The handwritten letters were around two to four pages long. In a few of them, Carolina read about her father's anxiety when he was in school.
My father wrote about his difficulties in the University and one of his relatives who didn't work. He also wrote about his parents' divorce in Ecuador and how distant he felt from his family. All this happened before I was born. Carolina found it thrilling to read these dispatches from her father. Letters that weren't meant for her to read because she hadn't even been born yet. For Grandma Schmitz, the letters offered a window into very fond memories.
When I read the letters, the grandmother listened to the letters and with her eyes closed. In 1983, after finishing the University and receiving her diploma in history, my father wrote about his return to Ecuador. In that letter, Rodrigo told them he was training to be a combat pilot in the Ecuadorian military. He was already affectionately referring to them as Mom and Dad. I am a combat pilot but I am not happy. I came to Ecuador to be the best pilot possible, but things were not as I thought.
Rodrigo complained of how his superiors mistreated him in the military, about how he didn't see the discipline and sense of duty he expected of the institution. He was obviously my father, not adapted to Ecuador. This was news to Carolina. She had never heard about her father's frustration with being back in Ecuador, or with his military career, which he never quit.
She was also surprised to find out that the Schmitz were the first people her father decided to confide in about this, not his friends or family from back home. He spent the day of the mother with the grandmother, so that she could not think about the death of the grandmother. We had a late breakfast, we walked a little and we continued reading the letters. In 1986, my father spoke about the relationship with his family in Ecuador.
In this letter about his family, Rodrigo wrote, Rodrigo wrote that he noticed a distance growing between him and his Ecuadorian parents. One night, Grandmashmit's sons Charles and Tim came over for dinner. They shared stories with Carolina from the year her dad spent with them. Charles and Tim told me stories about my father, for example, about how he participated in the conversations, because he didn't speak English.
They told her about how he learned to swim at their golf club, how in the nearby town of Blue Ash, he bought his first suit for his graduation party. They showed her the garden he would cross each day to go to school. In the house, they still have paintings that bought when they visited Ecuador, in 1989. And in our bedroom, Carolina saw that the Schmitz had six photos, five of their children, and right next to them, one of Rodrigo, her dad. The night next to our dinner, called my dad.
He spoke about the grandmother, Charles and Tim. The man Carolina knew to be strong, disciplined, and kind of obsessive, only asked one favor of her. My dad told me to bring her grandmother back to her. That she give grandma Schmidt a big hug for him. Over the day she spent in Ohio, Carolina learned that the values she most appreciates in her dad are ones he learned from the Schmitz. From them, he learned the values of the word, perfectionism, and dedication to the family.
Thanks to them, Rodrigo also learned to navigate American culture and fell in love with it. When he was little, my dad heard Simon and Garfunkel. He also read books and said jokes in English that I didn't understand. His love for English eventually motivated Carolina to learn the language and make it a part of her life too. Thank you to English. Today I am a journalist. As a journalist, Carolina has worked with the United Nations, Vice News, and even the New York Times.
All thanks to her English. Now, it made it possible for her to accompany Grandma Schmidt and to read her father's letters. Towards the end of her visit, Carolina remembers reading one that really struck her. In those last days, I remember that I found a letter in particular, from 1984. In that letter, Rodrigo wrote, I don't know when I will return to the United States. Thank you for everything, Mom and Dad. Thank you for everything they did for me. I will be in contact. I promise.
When Rodrigo wrote those words, thanking them for everything they had done for him, and saying he didn't know when he'd be back in the United States, I will be never thought that one day the one to return would be his daughter. Thank you to my dad and his sacrifices. I was there. Now it was Carolina who was overwhelmed with emotion. Yore, yore pensando en nuestras peleas, nuestras dificultades y diferencias.
Carolina remembered the many times she felt embarrassed by her dad, and complained about his peculiar ways. It suddenly clicked for her that her dad's quirks could be traced back to this pivotal time in his life, to feeling lost and alone in Ecuador, and yet loved and supported by this American couple. Thousands of miles away in Ohio. She could now appreciate all that they gave him, and how he had, in his own way, given that to her. Pense en esto por unas horas.
Más tarde decidí escribirle por mensaje de texto. Inspired by her father's words to the schmitz, in the letter she had just read, Carolina texted her dad to thank him for the sacrifices he had made for her. Él me respondió. No es necesario decir gracias. Es parte de mi trabajo como papá. Carolina Losa León is a journalist, en quito Ecuador. You can find a transcript of this episode and the rest of the episodes in the series at podcast.duelingo.com.
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