dear son taue…
dear son peter…
we were in recife at age 10…
watching soap-opera with my cousin mariana…
( who was 18 at that time…)
and my grandmother’s sister… tia lurdes…
and my grandmother… mother of my father…
who was pretty well healthwise…
( she passed away two or three years later…)
they were my only companions there…
because… as I mentioned before…
I had travelled from rio to recife earlier than my parents and brothers did…
so I could do the admission-exam to the middle-school…
which happened on a time earlier than the one scheduled by my parents…
to move from rio to recife…
to me… those times… were interesting…
in the sense of finding myself… for the first time in my life…
distant from my brother… sisters… and parents…
I found myself in the companion of two nice old-ladies…
( my grandmother… and her sister… tia lurdes…)
in a house with a super-good mood… very calm…
with that kind of good-mood typical of the northeast-part-of-the-country…
( different from rio-de-janeiro...)
a house... where everything functioned without stress…
there wasn’t those eternal fighting between my father and my mother… anymore…
there wasn’t that monotony typical of rio-de-janeiro…
… immersed in those environments full of concrete… of appartments…
… together with a total absence of dirt-ground… and trees…
in contrast… there… in my grandmother’s house…
I felt like I was in paradise…
the house was inside a huge big yard… full of trees…
I used to spend all day doing nothing…
climbing and then sitting for a long time…
on the branches of certain trees…
specially the rose-apple-tree… ( the “jambo” tree )…
at this age… ( ten-years-old )…
all that a child used to live in an apartment… wants…
is to be able to enjoy nature… to climb the trees…
to walk barefoot…
and… the interesting part is… those weren’t trees outside... far in the neighborhood...
or... in a public place where everyone could pass by…
the trees were located inside my grandmother’s yard…
in her property… it wasn’t a public place…
it was like a private paradise immersed in the world…
but… at the same time… with a total privacy… protected by a (short ) wall…
which delineated the border between that private “sanctuary”…
and the confusion of the world outside…
where there was an already present… traffic… pollution… bad-vibes… etc…
those things which… today… we are so used to deal with…
and the yard was simply… huge…
something really gigantic…
I used to climb each tree…
as if they were living things… ( and… indeed… they are…)
I used to climb it’s branches… conquering each region of its interior…
the goal was always to reach the highest branches…
but… as time passed by… I learned… that each tree had its own secrets:
it liked to be climbed…
but the process of climbing… had its own limits…
each tree had its ideal-point of climbing…
beyond that point… its branch would get thinner… and thinner…
and the fall would be… certainly… unavoidable…
--- --- ---
I used to write to one of my friends in rio-de-janeiro…
telling him how good it is to climb the trees…
he replied to me… telling... in details…
how the goal of the flamengo-soccer-team did happen…
with illustrative sketches drawn by himself…
describing through a dotted line…
the trajectory of the ball towards the goal…
as I read his letter… I could start realizing…
how different our universes were…
in the sense of what I really liked…
and what my friend liked…
the world for him... was… soccer…
for me… I wasn’t much caring…
to see how was the shape of the trajectory...
which conducted the ball...
to the goal of the flamengo-team...
what really did make me feel happy…
was to be able to enjoy the harmony I was experiencing...
inside an enormous tree… way up there…
feeling the wind to swing its branches…
feeling a happiness which I had never felt in my life…
the happiness of being able to play in an yard like that…
barefoot…
in the peaceful mood of my grandmother’s house…
--- --- ---
at night… after a nice-little-beans-soup with spaghetti strips…
and with a nice-little-taste of “coentro”…
( an herb typical from the northeast-part-of-the-country…)
it was time to watch television…
with my cousin… my grandmother… and her sister tia lurdes…
tia lurdes had broken her ankle…
it was at the bus-stop…
the bus took off… squeezing her ankle…
between the bus-wheel and the side-walk…
she used to spend all day sitting…
in front of the television…
with the leg in a plaster-cast…
sometimes she used to cry…
one day when she was crying…
my cousin mariana arrived closed to her…
and hugged her…
comforting her…
this scene was kept in my memory…
I found it very beautiful…
the scene of someone comforting the other one in her suffering…
I wasn’t used to see scenes of this kind…
my parents didn’t have the habit of hugging each other…
and... my brother and sisters… neither...
so… this scene was like something new to me…
--- --- ---
I was ten years-old…
my cousin… eighteen…
one day she invited me to go out with her… and her boyfriend… erick…
who had the habit of going out with her in a certain day…
once in a week… at night…
he came over to pick us up at home…
with his cool… neat… volkswagen-bug…
very shiny…
he also… all neat… and bathed…
really well-shaved… with a certain parfum…
ready to date…
as we got into his car…
him… on the driver’s seat…
my cousin… on the passenger-seat…
and me… on the back-seat…
about thirty-seconds later…
after we were all accommodated on our respective places…
and the car already moving on the road…
erick says to my cousin…
… " it seems like you’re acting differently tonight "…
at this point she comes closer and gives him… a true-love-kiss…
very slowly…
and I… who wasn’t very used to see such scenes…
for me… it was like a sort of “shock”… in the good-sense of the word…
then… I started thinking to myself…
that she didn’t start kissing him from the very beginning… ( as usual…)
probably because of my presence…
but… as soon as he gave her the hint…
( “ it seems like you’re acting differently tonight”…)
she let her shyness go away…
and acted normally… as usual…
I realized immediately… how pleasant it must be… to go on a date…
--- --- ---
a few days later… my family… my parents… my brothers…
arrived from rio-de-janeiro…
my old family…
in the new-paradise: in my grandmother’s house…
full of trees…
but my family… wasn´t too much caring about the trees…
my father’s obsession was to be able to transform my sister ana emilia…
into a new world-record-champion in the swimming-sport…
should we stop here…?
we should stop here…
a big hug on both of you…
with tenderness…
your father…
…luis antonio...