I Bought a House in Portland, and I’m Not Moving
by Solomon Olshin
““I bought a house in Portland, and I’m not moving.””
Jackie Candel is a Legacy Emanuel Randall Children’s Hospital Spanish interpreter. An immigrant herself, she works with native Spanish speakers every day, hearing their stories and helping them feel at home among the unfamiliar backlit walls of the emergency room.
She sees the disparate experiences of Portlanders through her job and lived experience and tackles her relative privilege as an immigrant from Spain when compared to patients hailing from poorer Latin American nations. Her vision of home appears markedly different from those of her enfermos, but they coexist satisfied within our city limits.
Jackie grew up in Murcia, Spain and moved to the United States to attend college. She lived in Illinois until 2000, and moved to Portland seeking better espresso, more urban density, and a sense of place. Her patients move from economically and governmentally crippled nations seeking safety and hope.
“It used to be that when I lived in Illinois, I would return to Spain to visit my family. I told my friends there I was ‘going home.’ Spain was my home. Once I moved to Portland and bought a house, this city became our home. Now, I visit my family in Murcia, but I do not ‘go home’.”
Illinois was Jackie’s state of residence for several years, but it was never home. “I didn’t like Illinois. I felt no connection to the landscape, the environment, or the people.” She never found a family, a neighborhood, nor (most importantly) any great cafés. Jackie explains that the piety of her fellow Illinoisans made her feel out of place, stating that “they’re in church all day.”
In Portland, by contrast, she feels a closer-knit sense of secular community, where “people care for each other. There’s a little sense of a family, and you can walk around the close-knit neighborhoods.” Jackie especially enjoys the density of urban life in Portland, and the ease of travelling around the city and exploring varied cuisine and Voodoo-esque oddities by foot.
At this point, you might have an image of Jackie in your head. She speaks in a smooth, calm Spanish accent, one that “Americans see as European, not Latin American.” Her voice is sometimes charged with passion and distaste for home — love of her new home in Portland, and bitter reflection on her time on the plains of Illinois. She feels firmly rooted to our city –plugged into the food scene, surrounded by friends, and a few hours flight from family. Her home is graceful, easy on her not-so-green thumb. “It’s easier to grow plants here, too. They just pop up — and I do not do much to help them.” Her soul is at rest.
“I have no intention of moving anywhere. I think for some Americans, they like moving. They want a bigger house closer to work with better schools. But my house here is an anchor — for me home is, in the most physical sense, a root.” Jackie has lived in the same home in Portland for nearly twenty years, and she tells stories of her time venturing out into the rain to visit with neighbors, savor local restaurants, and enjoy the outdoor adventures she relishes. Jackie loves to spend time in nature, something that proved quite difficult in Illinois, and her excitement is audible as she explains the shift her move made. “I was so happy to be in a place where not everything smells of diesel fumes and garbage.”
Jackie says Portlanders are not the social butterflies she grew up with in Spain.
Residents of the Rose City, she says, are more willing to connect deeply with fewer friends. She explains “in the South of Spain, people talk to everybody everywhere. People talk like they’re family, but relationships are not that close. It seems like superficially, they are your best friend, but your connection is just on the surface.”
Jackie explains that in the North of Spain, where weather is cooler and rainier during the winters (hmm, sounds familiar), there are similarities to the Pacific Northwest. “it’s harder to get people to actually have a conversation with you, but once you do, you develop the closest relationships.”
As she continues to reflect on the transition from Spain to America, Jackie’s tone shifts to a serious one. Through her daily work with distressed parents as an interpreter for families in medical distress, she hears the stories first-hand of immigrants — documented and otherwise — from socioeconomic backgrounds vastly different from her own.
“People from Mexico, Guatemala, many times they’re escaping horrible conditions.” Many families, she says, escape dangerous lives in Latin America with the hope of a more secure future.”
Gone are her quips about espresso and church-goers.
These Latinx come to America primarily to keep their children safe. “Coming here [to Portland and more broadly to the United States] is about finding a place where you’re going to be safe and where nobody’s going to shoot your face. Home is being with your mom or siblings nearby and being safe.”
Jackie explains that for many immigrants struggling to afford a place to rent, it is often challenging to feel at home in a house. Rent in Portland has skyrocketed more than 30% in the last five years, and rising rates of gentrification and displacement are making access to essential social services and community hubs more challenging to people who would benefit most from living in a centralized culture-concentrated hub of immigrant life. (CBS News, CNN) She explains the troubling nature of this problem — “Envision that you come to Portland and rent the cheapest apartment you can find. There is mold in the walls from all of the rain, so your kids get asthma. Everyone has to work harder so you can be able to afford another one, because the landlord won’t do anything about it and you can’t risk complaining.”
Her sympathy extends to their perception of home as immigrants, and what it means for the families with whom she works to feel truly at home. It is, she explains, not so much of a sense of rootedness as it is an immersion in secure togetherness. She illustrates that “for people coming from other Spanish speaking countries [i.e. not Spain], the attachment to home is not to their apartment in itself, not the furniture, not the soil in the garden. Home is about family. If you’ve seen your dad shot in front of you, you are not so concerned about being home. What you want is safety.”
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While Jackie’s love of Portland is genuine and deep, it is rooted in her earthy belonging here. She walks down the street feeling a part of our community, tied to the peat mosses that grows up through the cracks in the rain-beaten sidewalks, and enveloped in the gentle, encouraging hand of the Great Outdoors. Her patients have a very different connection to their home here — one of protection, familial togetherness, and peace. Their two worlds connect at the hospital, but both Jackie and the Spanish-speaking immigrants share the amiability and welcoming nature that Portlanders harbor towards the other — one of inclusivity, grit, connectedness, and exhilaration.