So today at work I had a mob of Brazilians invade my little Welcome Center and I loved every second of it. Their weird fitting jeans (especially on the males) and their dark eyes and easy smiles.
I get a lot of Brazilians at work who come as employees at the ski resorts. They always walk in confused and frantic, the outcome of landing in a foreign country with no connections, no home. They always need to use the Internet, and when I ask them, "Onde voces estao?" (Where are you all from) they about fall over in surprise.
"You speak Portuguese? No! But how?" It's as if I pull bunnies from empty hats.
Whenever they come I get a pain in my heart as I think of my families so far away in Brazil; the strangers who took me in and treated me as their own.
They use "saudade" in Brazil to talk about missing someone. It's a beautiful word, full of love and longing.
Six years ago when I left Rinopolis they said that I would forget them. That I would return home and start a new life and their faces would fade.
The truth is I have started a new life but their faces have never faded. I think about them daily, not in an intense longing way, more in a casual, "Oh this reminds me of Silvia," or, "I wonder what Cristina is doing today," type thinking. Like I think about my own sisters, also far away.
But then something little (or big, like twelve Brazilians all around me) will set off that deeper feeling, the one that is overwhelming, and all I think about are the faces of my families, intense and clear as if we were together only yesterday.
No comments:
Post a Comment