It is a sweltering July day in Montreal and I am en route to interview a Chilean grandmother and her husband. My contact, a Chilean aerobics instructor at my gym, has assured me that this is the special couple I have been looking for; very solid, hard-working people, whose grandson, Carlos, a friend of the aerobics instructor, lives with them.

Naturally, I am excited by the prospect of a new story and hopeful of finding the fourth and last subject for my documentary on immigrant women. This project has been two years in the making and has finally been green-lighted by a network in Toronto. I have already interviewed twenty-seven candidates, short-listed eleven and picked my final four. At the last minute, however, one woman has dropped out claiming that her sons do not want her to be filmed. I do not argue because I know that someone who gives into her sons so easily is not going to be forthright in front of the camera anyway. I feel the stress of not having all my ducks lined up but I move forward, clinging to the belief that things like this happen for a reason. Hence, the last-minute plea to my aerobics instructor….it’s always the people you know who lead you to the next step.

The suburb where Maria and her husband Ricardo live is quite far out from the city, on the other side of the river. It is an area I am not familiar with. I cross the Jacques Cartier Bridge and then turn to the directions, hastily jotted down in Spanish on my note pad as they were given to me over the phone. I manage to find all the little streets until I get to the intersection where I am supposed to see a supermarket. It turns out to be a small convenience store and I end up driving around the block just to make sure I have the right corner. I finally ask a friendly cab driver for help and he steers me past the store and onto the cul-de-sac that turns out to be Maria’s street.

I am now very anxious as I look at my watch and realize that I am over twenty minutes late for an appointment with a woman who only agreed to meet me as a favour to my aerobics instructor. I need not have worried. Chileans are always fashionably late and are very gracious hosts, small cultural details I had forgotten in all the years I’ve lived in Canada.

Maria’s house, small and modest but well-maintained, is on a corner lot, surrounded by an immaculate lawn. The front door is already open and she is standing on the stoop, smiling and welcoming me in a flood of Spanish. I notice with amusement that the geraniums in her window boxes are of the plastic variety and that her Christmas lights are still up along the roof. I need colour in winter, she says by way of an explanation.

My ears are delighted to hear not only the language of my childhood but also the intonation that is so particular to castellano, the Spanish that Chileans speak. As we walk into Maria’s tiny living room, my head spins with directorial thoughts…I won’t be able to fit two cameras in here…the walls are white…too much glare…as my eyes pick out scattered Chilean mementos; a miniature flag on the coffee table, small ceramic huasos, the Chilean version of cowboys, on a wooden shelf, a painting of a typically Chilean landscape over the old-fashioned and somewhat worn sofa.

I explain my mission to Maria who at first seems apprehensive and suspicious of my motives. I begin by telling her about my own immigrant experience and how I am now documenting the journey of women who came to Canada when they were young in order to find out how their collective experiences contribute to the cultural legacy they are leaving their Canadian-born grandchildren. Although I am younger than Maria and my reason for having emigrated are different from hers, the heartache of having transplanted ourselves to another part of the world gives us common ground.

I eventually win Maria’s confidence especially when I start talking about my late grandmother. Maria’s face lights up as she tells me that Carlos, her daughter’s teenage son, has always lived with her and Ricardo. She tells me with great pride that although he is their grandson, he is like a son to them. I catch my breath because this statement echoes my own family history. It t is because of him that we are still in Canada, she tells me. We are often homesick, she adds. Now we could so easily go back, she says with longing, but then he would be too far away from us. I note, not for the first time since starting this project, that the sacrifices immigrants make are always endured for the benefit of the next generation.

Although the room is stifling and we are sitting on a woolly sofa, I accept a cup of hot coffee. Handing me my cup, Maria slowly begins to tell me the story of her unplanned journey to this country. Right after the coup d’état that brought Augusto Pinochet to power, her husband was arrested and taken from their home, accused of being an active Allende supporter. After three fruitless days of searching for him she finally turned to an acquaintance, a judge, for help. By the time they found Ricardo he had been beaten, stabbed with a bayonet and had received electric shocks to his testicles.

Some thirty years later she recounts these details to me with a trembling voice. Even after all this time, she cannot erase the painful images of how Ricardo looked when she and the judge helped him walk out of the building where he was being detained. It was only a few doors down from the building where she worked. From one day to the next, nothing in Maria’s world made any sense.

Once home, Ricardo and Maria barely had time to pack two suitcases, grab their two young children and flee, for they feared that the vindictive neighbor who had originally turned them in would do so again. They left their home in the middle of the night, only taking the time to say good-bye to Maria’s aging parents.

Looking wistfully past me out of her living room window, Maria states that it is a terrible thing to lose your home, your possessions, and your country. I take notes and listen intently, wanting to hear even what she isn’t telling me, knowing from experience that this dark period of Chile’s history always elicits pain and sorrow in those who lived it, no matter which side they were on.

I ask Maria how it was to start over in a country where they did not speak the languages and which has a harsh climate. Very hard, she says simply. Jutting her chin out a little, she tells me that although she had been a secretary in Santiago, in Montreal, without speaking either French or English, she could only get domestic jobs. To this day she works as a housekeeper at a downtown hotel.

Ricardo walks in as I am explaining the filming process. He is retired now and has a few health issues. He is not very tall, wears glasses and has thick, white, somewhat unruly hair. He sits down next to his wife and smiles at her. I notice that he is extremely gentle and attentive towards her. He looks at her lovingly and when she speaks, he listens with pride when she explains all the things they have achieved here. He reaches for her hand when they get to the difficult parts. He wears his heart on his sleeve as Chileans are prone to do. I am very touched by the dignity and love between them as they show me their family photographs. I almost lost him once, she explains, so now we hold on to each other tightly.

With difficulty they tell me about the torture he suffered while in prison and the long-lasting effect their defection had on their children. Their daughter was especially traumatized, having seen her father being dragged away by armed soldiers. Maria says that their daughter never got over that and has been a fearful person ever since.

I ask them if they want to be interviewed together, not having even taken the time to think this through, but knowing instinctively that his part of the story, the reason they fled Chile in the first place, is so entwined with hers, that not to tell it from both perspectives would be an injustice to the whole.

They hesitate. I tell them that this story, once told, will help explain a piece of history which is still not well understood outside of Chile and give hope to other immigrants who might be walking a similar path today without knowing how their story will end. It is also a gift they can offer Carlos, who is the first generation Canadian in their family and whose legacy this is. They smile and tell me that I am a good manipulator.

I leave their little house some four hours after my arrival, my heart doing a little dance, for I have found not only the fourth grandmother for my film, I have also found a tiny piece of my own history.