"Boa, Boa, Nao E Isto"

“Good, good.  It’s not this.”
(Healthy, healthy-not me at this moment)

My Mom is sniffling & coughing.  Not the dread & what you feel as sudden vulnerability that happens when you feel a cold coming on.  That was earlier in the week.  There was a day when she was in bed, I called, and she only wanted to go back to sleep.  But today, she was talking (and I kept holding my phone at arm’s length, whenever she’s hacking or blowing her nose).

She had just erased a bunch of pictures off her phone because she kept getting a message that there was no storage available. She has 40 pictures. Or had. She erased a bunch. Her phone is crazy and I am resentful of dealing with her Android (i.e. cheap) phone because it has so many crappy apps, and just when I think I've cleaned it up, there's more that appears. And somehow, it was making regular $1.99 purchases which she denies. I am suspicious of that phone (and annoyed that she doesn't know how to use it and refuses to learn. A little like some American/English things, a little like just being an older lady who doesn't want to deal with technology.

(I have 24.789 pictures and I'm still adding, I'd rather delete apps off my iPhone than sacrifice pics. And yes, I have them backed up. On the Cloud, on a thumbdrive, etc. I'm hoarding the ones on my phone because I want to go back to Praia Formosa or Sao Laurenco. Or that day when I first moved back to Manhattan and saw that oil slick that looks like a dog. But I digress)

She had lots of fun and beautiful pictures from our trip (And some accidental shots of an arm). We/She/I tried to record the clock tower of the chapel a block away from Luis' house, right at 12 noon. I had to drive up the hill because she refused to walk. She had tried to get the sound before, but had pointed the phone at the ground. (UGH).

I love the sound of high noon in Santa Maria. So peaceful. It's the same sound as 1965, when my Mom was young and happy there.

"Mom, next time, post your pictures to Facebook before you delete them! You didn't delete the clock video, did you?"

My mom coughs right into the phone as she answers.

"Did you see the picture I posted? Of my friend who is trying to find his sister. The family was in Lajes, Terceira-you know, the army base? She got adopted by someone from Canada when she was 6. He is trying so hard to find her!"

I saw that. I couldn't imagine the rest of the story. People were not so poor that they would just give away children because they couldn't be fed. Maybe if there was a "promise of a better life" thing, or an American couple who couldn't bear children. Or an aunt/uncle/cousin deal who could take the kid. But, no, kids were not just GIVEN to strangers.

The picture is a hand holding a faded photograph of a young girl. She could be anyone from the island. Dark eyebrows, dark eyes, bright smile. That is all he had of a sister.

A Portuguese Professor at UMass Dartmouth said that coming from the islands to America in the 1950's was like time traveling from the Middle Ages into the Space Age.

People could write, but seldom did. Everything existed within conversation. Names existed as acunhas/nicknames, not as formal legalities on a birth certificate. You were know by a birth defect, or a place you were from, or where your family had come from 2 generations ago. Or that you were the son of a guy who went crazy and rode roller skates on the tarmac while playing fiddle. He was generously called "Cuecas/Underwear", but I can't imagine him wearing anything other than the roller skates.

There is just a hand, holding a photo of a girl. That girl came to a land of the printed word, of documents and crowds. She left behind the islands, as if they were a dream. And maybe that is all they were to her during her life.

North America promised a better life, but what did she find?