It was a new day.
I returned to the house, picked up Ana, and we went to the Sunset Beach café for coffee. I do not drink coffee at home, but when in Europe I allow myself to indulge, and it is always heavenly. People here know how to make it properly (without being called anything fancy like Barista). I just need to ensure my coffee dates are sporadic so I don’t get hooked on that wickedly addictive substance again.
Ana and I went to Maria de Luz’s house and had a nice visit with her and her husband Lionel. And, as I fully expected, when Ana asked her about the long lost poetry and plays of her grandfather, she said, “Sure, I have a copy of one of his poems, it’s right over here,” then plucked a paper booklet from a shelf and gave it to us. I'd had this feeling the only place we’d find a copy of it was shoved in a box in one of the aunts or uncle’s homes. And here it was. I had thought he had written a play, but it was actually a 45 stanza poem. And we now had it, written in 1951 by Luiz de Medeiros Cabrinha, Ana’s grandfather. It is a two-part poem, the first describing the event, and the second a mother’s lament for her dead son. It is powerful and sad. Ana is so grateful we were able to track it down. I did an initial translation with AI but am going to do more work on it before posting it here.
From here we drove to the central market to pick up vegetables for the big family dinner we’d be hosting tomorrow. While there, I realized I was slinging out the Portuguese today like the fish guy was slinging sardines. I was small talking with vendors. I was negotiating. I was counting bananas. I was striking up conversations with strangers. Back at Tia Maria’s I had been making jokes and they were actually laughing, and not just politely. Damn, it’s fun to have a good Portuguese day. Maybe it was the one week of full immersion in the language, but something definitely clicked. Yet another reminder that learning a language while not immersed will only take you so far…and it’s not that far.
After the ladies did some souvenir shopping we stopped for lunch at a downtown café then headed home. The distances here are incredibly short; you are rarely more than a fifteen minute drive away from anything.
We had a bit of time to consume before our 7:30 date at family friends Cidalia and Francisco’s house, so Tio Manuel got out the anise-infused moonshine and we had a couple of shots. Maria also partook, and the healing booze seemed to instantly straighten out her back, improve her mood, and put some spring in her step. Magic stuff.
We had a lovely evening of eating, drinking, laughing, and extremely loud and fast storytelling with Cidalia, Francisco, their son, wife, and new beautiful baby, Paul Fernando, Natercia. I tried to keep up as best as I could, but by the end of the night those aerodynamic Portuguese words were entering one ear, whizzing right past my brain, and exiting the other side without registering anything. And because I was driving, I didn’t have the luxury of using any alcoholic elixir to slow down life speed to an understandable velocity. So I sat in sweet ignorance, still having fun listening to the rhythm and cadence of the language, picking up what I could, but putting down little.
