SHOULD WE STAY OR GO, BUT ALWAYS TOGETHER

I was born in my paternal grandparents’ home, the eldest of five children. I left my island more than half a century ago, and my journey has been a combination of doors opening at just the right time.

I remember my family—my mother’s side more conservative, my father’s more social—walking in Ponta Delgada along the seaside avenue and in António Borges Garden, going to the Legion School when I was very young and carefree.

Summer weekends were special. We went to the beach, on picnics to Sete Cidades or Furnas. The aroma and taste of the orange cake my mother baked still overwhelm my senses today. My brothers played outdoors barefoot, coming home with stubbed toes that tested my mother’s patience. My sister and I would stay home reading or embroidering with some of our neighbor friends.

I recall other unforgettable moments: sleeping with my sister and brothers, the four of us in the same corn-husk mattress bed, falling asleep to the music on the Santa Maria Island radio with its request-dedicated songs.

My memory is filled with the island’s green, the blue of hydrangeas, the fuchsia of azaleas. I see myself happily walking to the Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres festivities, holding the arm of my father, whom I adored.

The news that we were moving to Canada caught me by surprise. Fighting back the tears, I asked my father if I could stay with my paternal grandmother. His answer was: “We stay or we go, but always together.”

I met João the year I arrived in Canada, and after five years of courtship, we married. As we welcomed the year 2002, he left me due to an aortic rupture.

At 45 years old, I buried my husband, and the very next day, I was a mother of two daughters—one a teenager, the other a young adult—without the balance of a father in their lives. Consumed by loss, I focused on them and returned to work a week later. Work always saved me. To such an extent that, even though retired, I have been the president of the Casa dos Açores of Montreal since 2023.

As the doors of my life opened and closed, I always felt myself intertwined with the thread of my roots, forged in the warm and iron-rich soil of the Azores!

By Aida Baptista

From NósnosOutros

https://www.facebook.com/nosnosoutros

Translated into English as a community outreach program by the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL), in collaboration with Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno. PBBI thanks Luso Financial for sponsoring NOVIDADES.