It’s a family reunion at Nuno’s home. I’m deep in conversation with one of his cousins, who was recently separated –we are sharing experiences– when the doorbell rings. The door opens and I see Auntie Cris and Uncle José coming in. It’s so good to see them. Now in their early eighties, when I met them ten years ago they were still in great shape; he, a tall, slim, straight dark haired man, and she a petite, pale skinned blonde …
Category: Family
The empty nest syndrome is mostly described as the feeling of emptiness that invades parents when their grown children leave home, to live by themselves or to marry or work abroad. First time Having been a divorced mother for more than ten years, I remember having a similar feeling the first time they left to spend a whole weekend with their father after we separated. So far, I had only been apart from them during my business trips, and …
“Didn’t I” is the title of a recent song by Rod Stewart; a poignant song, one might even say a father’s lament about how his daughter didn’t listen to his loving advice and ended up “fighting for her life”. It tells a sad story every parent relates to, no matter what. Even if our children are well and happy today, there was always a time when we feared they would not make it for some reason, namely during their rebellious …
I find her sitting in her chair, as usual, with her eyes closed. I kiss her and say, “Happy Mother’s Day” and hand her her gift: a pink nightdress. She wanly smiles. She likes it and I’m glad. It’s so difficult to give her presents nowadays. Most things will be useless; they won’t even interest her. I now push her chair for a few metres, from her room to the small living room where she used to take her …
It’s coffee time at work and a colleague is telling us how he slept badly due to the fact that his little boy (aged four years old) woke up crying in the middle of the night terrified of some dream he had had. My colleague says this happens often and he and his wife have to let the boy sleep with them, as he won’t stay alone in his bed. All of us parents sympathise of course – who hasn’t …
Saturday morning and it’s still early. I wake up and rejoice in the fact that I can stay longer in bed. Then I remember the boys going out last night; I get up and silently open my bedroom door and look at the corridor to see two closed doors. I smile and walk back to bed to enjoy the weekend laziness. Open It all begins with doors wide open. Well, not exactly – when you bring them home, tiny …
My son Afonso turns twenty-four today. As a storyteller, I have decided to write him a story for his birthday. … Once upon a time there was a boy, who was much loved by his family and had good friends, but even so he was shy; his father thought sports would do him good; after an unsuccessful attempt at basketball he enrolled him in rugby, not too popular at the time in Portugal. He had been told rugby, as a …
Some lessons are learned early in life, the hard way, never to be forgotten. As I was coming out of childhood there was a major upheaval in my life. I saw my family lose almost everything: our properties, our money, and our way of living but most of all our beloved homeland Mozambique. My grandfather, who was a self-made man, lost everything he had worked so hard for during his whole life, and he was devastated as were so …
Love knows no boundaries; it is an energy so strong that it crosses time and space, connecting different dimensions. And I mean love of all kinds, not just romantic love but also love between parents and children, among friends…love may be stronger or weaker, unconditional or not, but it is always a very special emotion, making the world go round. When you lose someone you love and who loves you very much you feel devastated, lost; you feel desperately …
An avid reader since my early years, I naturally began – as I suppose everyone does – with fairy tales and went on to read every book I managed to get my hands on, from romantic stories to crime novels such as Agatha Christie’s and the adventures of a charming thief called Arsène Lupin (yes, very French!); from my father’s collection about UFOs and other forms of extraterrestrial life to my grandfather’s Portuguese classics such as Eça de Queiroz; at …