Once upon a time, in another life, there was a little girl who loved books. At four she read the newspapers headlines, as if she were in a hurry to learn how to read, so that she could learn all the stories in all the books in the world. On Sundays, when her father was home, he would sit her on his lap and she would show him her progress, and he would unfailingly kiss the top of …
Tag: grandmother
Life is seldom simple, and neither are mother-daughter relationships; as much as we may love our mothers, and they love us, it always seems complicated. At least in our family. For many years you fail to understand why it is so. You try, you try hard. And then one day, suddenly it all becomes so clear, and you finally grasp it, and it becomes so much easier to understand – and forgive. Old times Take Granny, for instance. …
Your birthday was on the 4th of April. You were born on a distant day of the year 1918, in the city of Lourenço Marques, in Mozambique (nowadays Maputo, a name you hate, I know). You were the third child of Manuel de Freitas and Marie-Agnès Grabowski, what we would call today an “international couple”: he was Portuguese, born and bred on the island of Madeira having emigrated to Mozambique in his early twenties in search of a better life; she …
