The strength of a loving hand

 I don't remember how long I spent with grandma and you in the village. I would have been about 9 and should have been enrolled in school but somewhat I wasn't. I have patched recollections of the time spent with grandma and gandpa but none of that helps bring the day to day memories back. Other people tell me that yes indeed I was there and that they had to go shopping for me. They had no sweets, they were my cousins, they were slightly older than I was and in one case a few months younger. How can I ask for forgiveness when I wasn't aware of the reality that was going on. Where was my mind, my conscience? Did I not see that they had no rights to sugar and that they were obligated to get if for me, with no percentage to go to their own sweet teeth? Did I not look at the cravings in their eyes, their mouths, their bellies. I cannot condemn an act that I am not conscious of or can I? A few months later, we were to join my father in France and we were to go on the great adventure. We were to cross the river and if anyone gets visions of crossing the Rio Grand or running through the Sonora Desert, let the thought be put to rest that this was a mere creek and everyone was in on it. Portugal wanted, as it does now for its people to go and emigrate. They would ship money home, they would have jobs that were actually available at home but somehow they did not have the technical know how for and the state would be getting rid of the many mumblings that grew louder by the day. So crossing the river in the Northern part of Portugal was not at all like crossing the Rio Grande. But the fear was there and so was my mother's hand. It was with she that I went. We were to join father, already in Clermont Ferrand, on the Massif Central of France where Michelin had its headquarters. My father would pay dearly for this job many years later but as it was, he benefited from vacations, payed, can you believe that?He wold be able to bring his wife and child. They took no responsibility for how they (us) got there ,but once there, I was given the choice of presents at Christmas, already disappointing my parents by choosing a bunk bed over a sawing machine! But I knew why I wanted the bunk bed. I dreamt that I would get more dolls and they would need to sleep somewhere whereas if I got a sawing machine I would be obligated to do what my mother did which was saw clothes. She hated it so much I figured it must have been a tedious endeavor. She never spoke one way or the other. But now, I am getting ahead of myself, as the tale I want to tell concerns my jumping the river, in this case a tiny creek located in the Northeast of Portugal. father had paid for the transportation by bus to the nearest village and many or a few I do not recall people, mostly women and children and a few men, would join up with the man that would get us across. It was a a joke of sorts. But you paid for the risk it was supposed to be. The communist leader, Alvaro Cunhal, wrote of this many years later under the pseudonym of ManuelTiago. You can't be the communist leader and have artistic tendencies, although plenty he had. Many years later I sat mesmerized listening to an 89 year old man talking about art for three hours with not so much a mention of straight out politics. I bought a series of serigraphs which I should have better taken care of.  Back to the Northeast and it is time to get off the bus cross the creek, be on the watch out for the farce of the police  and make our way to the nearest train station where we would go directly to the city indicated in our ticket no questions asked. The French were reconstructing the country and they wanted people there and if they came from Portugal the better,. The crossing was tremendously scary and 30 years later I took an art and drew a woman holding a child's hand, as they are on the edge of a creek, with a dark, gloomy and utterly inartistic forest on the other side. The creek was agitated and had many boulders. It took many more years to figure that it wasn't my daughter and me but actually the moment where once again the hand of my mother's hand prevailed. The fear, the anxiety, we were one and we took the jump. I do not remember anything more but again I do remember my mother's fear and my fear both transfigured and increased, but with the assurance that mother provided, her warm hand transmitted, all would be well. It was and we got safely to the place father had rented, of which I will speak later. I still have the need of the feeling that our hearts beat as one at the moment of the crossing, looking around for the para military police, waiting for what, wondering about what. Fear was my mother's, I was somewhat bemused but became very scared when I felt her hand grabbing mine for dear life, as I'd felt before. The hand, always the hand!

Why did you leave your place of birth, I asked

 On migrations and heartbreaks

My father disliked this country from the moment he landed at JFK in the now distant year of 1974. His, was a golden opportunity, one he never enjoyed and fully took advantage of. He was given a partnership in a business, in a city that was bustling with growth, Washington DC. As he also often said, he could have returned to his country of birth with duffle bags full of money. He did well, but he never did as well as many others with the same opportunities. This was a hospitable country, one of opportunities and coming from a recently freed from

fascism Portugal, a country of small minds and smaller pockets, this was indeed the land of riches. Yet something lacked. His family, his sisters and nieces, his hometown, above all his hometown, a small city up in the Northern part of Portugal. His identity was emmeshed with a town he had left at the age of 18 to go into the army. 

He left the town but the memories never left him. He would return almost yearly, joyful, walking to his sister's house, seeing old friends, driving to the farm and to other localities and he felt in his element. He always returned and only then, would he rest and find some tranquility.  He did not have pleasant childhood memories, indeed they were of a kind that you mostly read about now. Wanting to study, there was no money for the exams, loving his mother above all, he saw her lead a life of poverty and sadness, one of loss and heartbreak. Seeing his brothers drink, he resolved to never do it.  

No, memories of a golden childhood he did not possess. But his compass was turned to that land and it drew him like a homing pigeon whenever he could break away. He left this country as soon as he could and settled for the rest of his life in the town that saw him born. He kept Portuguese time, followed the phases of the moon, his only religion, and always knew what time the sun set, wherever he was, to the minute, to the second. The sky was his reference, the same sky he had in that other place. 

America can be good, but I would bet that were it not for the opportunities, many people would do as my father did and return or never set foot here again. When I speak of America, I speak of many wealthy countries people are driven to, out of necessity, and often sheer desperation. Would they could choose, they would stay, stay in their communities, surrounded by family and old habits, by familiar tongues and foods. By the color of the sky and the familiar skyline. Most, would indeed do with a little less but with a sense of home. A little less is not famine, war, rape, torture and natural disasters. 

So, again, the world is in a mad flux, as it had not been since the beginning of the 20th century. Displacement is the word of the day, people taking to routes, deserts and seas, subject to merchants of death, attempting to escape a vile destiny. Arrived at the land of milk and honey, they work long hours and do the lowest biddings, they don't understand the languages and they sacrifice lives meant to to borne out in toil. 

Those are the refugees, the peasants and the poor, the war ravaged poor, of the poorest countries, or the unlucky ones who serve as proxies for empires. Migration is not limited to those, though. There are restless souls and odd marriages, love and other callings. And to those, the pain of leaving what you know behind, also leaves a hole in the chest and a sadness of longing. We are by nature a peoples on the move, and have been so since the beginning of time. We spread out to all continents, we made our way to the Northernmost Pole and the Southernmost islands. But we did so throughout millennia, time barely moving. Industrialization changed all of that and before then, the great movements of ships during the times of Magellan, Vasco da Gama and of course Columbus. The Mongols transversed Asia and the Macedonians reversed the way. People have been in flux for millennia, it's true, but never has this worldwide movement of migrations to and forth, this restlessness brought out by an unregulated globalization that has uprooted most people, and disconnected us from our ancestors, our familiar birth sky colors, familiar skylines and sights. Never have so many felt so lost and so homesick. COVID brought an added desperation, and a stop to the frenzied tourism, which restlessly awaits its degrading and destructive paths. I love my country, I love my countries, I have one foot in this great America, with deserts and soaring mountains, deep forests and vast plains, this country so vast and so wild and so untamed...I also miss my little corner on the western most part of Europe, a small, old and almost unknown country, that many think is part of the bigger neighbor to the East. It almost is. It's tiny and it's mostly coastal, friendly and as it was to my father, it is in the end, the one I really call home. 

I get immigration, I get emigration, I get displacement and I also get what  it can represent to many. I get it because I have been a student of it. I have spoken, written and read on what makes someone get up and leave the familiar. It is often the first question out of my mouth, where are you from and why did you leave. 

I mostly get it though, because it has made me suffer so...