First Monday of the year and a lifetime ahead.

After the holidays that (I know!) touched the hearts of many people, I thought of publishing a more positive post for a new beginning.

Cris Guerra wrote in the last post of 2016 that ” grieving is moving to a kind of armored cell” – the truth. I felt like a resident in this place for a long time. At the same time, I had an impulse of life inside me that carried me forward to look for new places, physical and emotional. I moved to Rio de Janeiro in the most difficult phase of my history in order to be near the sun and the sea. I arrived in the summer and here I am. And that made me think how changing the landscape, even if in a radical way, did me good.

The invitation I want to make is much simpler and more feasible:

How about enjoying the summer and taking your sorrow for a walk?

Sand between the toes, watermelon juice, children on vacation, chairs on the sidewalk. Blue sky, colorful dresses, street vendors, coconut water, iced tea or Popsicle. Chatting with friends, tears when remembering other summers, diving in the sea, complicity. Grape Popsicle, pink sunset, a waterfall bath, a bicycle ride.

It is a good idea to try.

There are no side effects.

And we don’t have to deny our sorrow in order to enjoy summer.

On the other hand: we can just go for a walk, change the scenery and take everything with us inside the bag. Hope, faith, patience. Longing, sadness, frustration and pain. All of them are also welcome in the summer. They are part of life, they do not have to be punished and left home. If it does not do you good, just come back. But who knows all this light from outside may enter through the window and finds the weak light that shines inside you? And it can make your eyes shine, your heart beat and half a smile appear on your face, even if only for a few seconds?

And in the middle of the winter I finally

I learned there was an invincible summer inside me.

(Albert Camus)

The most luminous season of the year waits for us right around the corner.

And I hope summer dwells inside us all the year.

*****

A small family history

My paternal grandmother, Maria, died in 2012 at age 97. She was beautiful, wise and lucid. She considered life ‘huge’ and illuminated the street with her smile and positivity. But, from the age of 90, she began to charm and say, every beginning of the year, that this would be her last. It was not a health problem, it was a desire for us to say, “oh, grandma, come on.” And every year we invented some great excuse, like “this year it is going to be the family trip”, or “Bernardo’s 15 year old party, her great-grandson,” or any other important event, so that she would always respond “ah, I can not lose this one so I’ll stay. ”

In her last year here, we said she could not die because we would like to write a book about her life. She was so vain then she got thrilled with the idea and my sister and I came to interview her from time to time. Although I was always a great listener, I was delighted with how she worked out her reflections and memories in the face of the challenge of being a co-author and main character in a book. When I asked her about the secret of her happiness and how she dealt with the sorrows of life, my grandmother told me: “My dear, the secret is to educate your temper. Only you can help yourself. “And from there, she told me that in one of the most difficult moments of her life,” I went out to see the ocean in Santos, to take a walk, to see people … the pain was still with me but I took it for walk for a few hours and that would do me good. ”

*****

Itamar Assumpção soundtrack

Milágrimas  (A thousand tears) – FREE TRANSLATION –

In case of pain, put ice

Change your haircut

Change as a Model

Go to the movies, smile

Even if it is a weak smile

Forget your broken heart

If you are ever bitter

Get rid of it now

Get rid of it all

Lose your mind, forget criteria

Follow all senses

Make sense

For each thousand tears a miracle takes place

In case of sadness turn the tables

Eat only the dessert

Eat the cherry only

Cheer up

Sing the rhymes of a song

Suffer only, live only

If it is only madness

Maybe it will heal when you marry

Nobody knows what they are looking for

Make a promise, pray a rosary

Be something else, live somewhere else

For each thousand tears a miracle takes place

But if it doesn’t matter,

Crying is inevitable

Feel the taste of salt

Feel the taste of salt

Drop by drop, one by one

Two, three, ten, a hundred thousand tears, feel the miracle

For each thousand tears a miracle takes place