dear son taue...
dear son peter...
my grandmother zenaide… ( my mother’s mother )…
I think you… probably don’t remember too much about her…
because when she passed away…
you… ( peter )… was only a newborn baby…
and you… ( taue ) was about three-years-old…
since the age-difference between you two…
is two-and-a-half years…
that means that if at this time… you ( peter ) was…
let’s say… 6 month-old…
( that is : half-year-old… ) …
then… consequently… you ( taue ) would be…
precisely… 3 years-old…
( since… two-and-a-half… plus… half… equals… three…)
but… leaving aside the math…
and… returning to the “main-menu”… ( my grandmother…)…
… she was a person…
who I have… fond memories of…
--- --- ---
when I was… about 13 years-old…
and… my family had just moved from ipanema…
to this huge-two-story house…
at jardim-botanico…
I had my room…
clarice had her room…
ana emilia had her room…
tuipe used to sleep in a very-tiny-little room…
all the way up on the third floor…
( where… there was nearly nothing…
…only the roof-of-the-house…
…and an area where I used to study… on a little table…
…which I placed there…
…so I could study and “bask-under-the-sun”… simultaneously…
…besides a tiny place…
where tuipe accommodated himself there… just to sleep…)
( that’s why I had said before…
…that the house was… a two-story house…
…but if we consider the two extra-levels…
…the rooftop deck…
…and the garage…
…in this case… the house could be considered…
…as being something like… a four-level one…)…
but none of this has any importance at all…
my mother… loved the fact that she found such house…
when… still living in ipanema…
my parents decided to move… to a quieter place…
( jardim botanico )…
since my father… couldn’t sleep…
with that infernal noise from the buses…
at prudente-de-moraes street…
I… ( being only 13 years-old )…
simply moved myself…
together with the family…
the family moves itself…
the child age 13… doesn’t argue…
he just goes together…
he follows its movement…
without thinking too much…
…about anything…
…he simply… accompanies…
--- --- ---
only after we moved…
I realized that…
I was in a “sticky wicket”…
caused (unintentionally) by the move…
--- --- ---
at this time…
I was surfing intensively…
I was in a phase…
where the surf was… let’s say… “the reason of my life”…
my muscles were already developed to a point…
where I could ride the big waves of arpoador…
when the southwest wind showed up…
the posto-cinco point… at copacabana…
used to be… just “perfect”…
--- --- ---
before the move… from ipanema to jardim-botanico...
all that I had to do…
was to grab the surfboard…
cross prudente-de-moraes street… then vieira-souto avenue…
and… that’s it… I was already at the beach…
now… after the move…
it was an enormous difficulty… to be able to reach the beach…
I had to wait for the bus…
in order to transport me from jardim-botanico… to ipanema…
I had to leave the surfboard in my friend ronaldo’s house…
who allowed me to leave the board in his building’s garage…
the surfboard had to be chained with an special padlock…
around the fins…
in short :
I had to pass through a series-of-obstacles…
which didn’t exist before…
but the worst of them…
was the dependency on the bus…
in order to reach the beach…
--- --- ---
nowadays…
I realize… as I write these lines…
how… all this “misfortune”... that I used to feel… at that time…
is nothing but a “misfortune” of a pampered boy…
“pampered” in the sense of being used to have everything…
and… simply by the fact of…
“suffering” the experience of moving…
to a place a little bit farther away from the beach…
in a neighborhood… where it was necessary to “take-the-bus”…
to go to the beach…
the fact that this small “loss-of-quality-of-life”…
made me feel…
like the “unhappiest-guy-in-the-world”…
…makes me reflect…
nowadays… how my personality…
in a certain way… hasn’t changed too much…
even today…
being 57 years-old…
I… in a certain way…
keep… preserving… such characteristics…
of a pampered-boy…
as I felt… so sensitively…
the contrast between the quality-of-life…
that I had in hawaii…
and the one that I met in our ( dear (?) )…
brasil…
--- --- ---
so…
if we think… carefully…
we can see that… deep inside…
life is always… bringing us…
…changes…
and… obviously… we feel…
the consequences…
( the good… or the bad ones…)
perhaps… one of the “secrets” of the art-of-good-living…
could be… to try to see the good-aspects…
that this change could offer…
and… consequently…
be able to explore…
… and… develop… these good-aspects…
that we were able to see…
--- --- ---
and… returning to my grandmother zenaide…
she used to live in a little-room…
in that house-which-my-mother-loved…
and… the same one which I suffered… ( just a little-bit…)…
with the loss of the sea-of-ipanema…
there… right at the corner…
my little grandma… zenaide…
a very sweet person…
with a very good… heart…
she used to spend hours…
trying to untie… patiently…
the knots in my hair…
which reached my shoulders…
after all… we were living in the era of… the beatles…
rolling stones… jimi hendrix… etc…
I… with my hair on my shoulders…
after the shower…
only my grandma…
with that endless patience…
could untangle them…
as she was unraveling the knots…
she was… at the same time…
talking…
talking…
endless stories…
telling stories…
I… used to listen to her stories…
and… simultaneously…
feel in my hair…
her caressing…
through the comb…
I was feeling happy…
to have a grandmother… like her…
so good…
who wish me… so well…
--- --- ---
when she passed away…
I wasn’t living with her anymore…
we were all living…
already in ipanema…
you ( taue )…
were three years-old…
you ( peter )…
only half-year-old…
I…
studying at impa…
( institute of mathematics pure and applied )…
was in a good phase in my life…
where I was… very satisfied…
professionally…
because I was doing my master’s…
earning a salary from the government…
just to study…
and… this… was what I had always wanted…
to be paid by the government… to study…
( which is what I… really… like to do…
… from the professional standpoint… )
--- --- ---
well…
I was… at impa…
focused on my studies…
when…
the librarian… called me…
saying she had a message to tell me :
“ my grandmother… had passed away “…
I went to the funeral…
at the cemetery in botafogo…
a small crowd was there…
friends of my father…
of my mother…
relatives of my mother…
…of my grandmother…
relatives of relatives…
friends of friends…
--- --- ---
when I arrived there…
I didn’t have the courage to see her…
in the coffin…
I stayed outside…
as I found my mother…
I hugged her…
and… I fell into tears…
a compulsive cry…
out of control…
I was crying out loud…
I couldn’t control myself…
I left the place…
I went home…
when I got home…
I picked-up a little-bench…
I sat leaning on the cradle…
where… you ( peter )…
were sleeping…
… an innocent sleep…
without knowing what was going on…
--- --- ---
suddenly…
my parents arrived… to visit me…
they came closer…
and found me leaning
on the cradle…
they stayed a few minutes…
… and… went away…
I liked their visit…
they rarely went there to visit me…
it was good… their visit…
--- --- ---
I say a (temporary) good bye…
with tenderness…
a big hug…
your father…
…luis antonio…