Fogland Reunions Gather The Generations And Dredge Up Memories

Family reunions have always been a part of our summers, and year and year the summer house filled with family and friends. My mother issued an open invitation at the beginning of the season, and we expected company. Every weekend we watched yet another vehicle slowly pull into the yard and a car full of guests spill out.

Consequently, I know my relatives, even the most distant of cousins. We ate and swam together; and when they left, they brought home souvenirs: an assortment of shells, sea glass and polished stones.

Fourteen summers ago we learned that Aunt Beatrice, my father’s last surviving aunt, was visiting her children in nearby New Bedford. A feisty octogenarian, Aunt Beatrice lived in the Azores all her life, even though her sisters and brother had long ago immigrated to America, as well as her own children. I learned that she was a wealthy woman by island standards. Her late husband had been a successful businessman, and she lived in a fine house with servants.

It seemed the perfect opportunity to host the first Martins-Andrade family reunion, and my father called his cousins and arranged the date. The difference between this reunion and the kind we usually hosted was that the language spoken would be Portuguese. Aunt Beatrice could not speak English; and since the event was being held in her honor, we would defer to her native tongue.

Although I understand Portuguese, I have a great deal of difficulty speaking it. My grandmother always spoke to me in Portuguese, and I answered her in English. She refused to speak English for the more than 50 years that she lived here, even though she understood every word. It was the last vestige of her homeland, and she would not give it up. If you wanted to converse with her, you had better learn Portuguese.

Sadly, my grandmother passed on when I was eight months’ pregnant for my second child. I was grief stricken, shaking hands with countless people at the wake and funeral, while the baby kicked yearning to enter the world that my grandmother had just left.

One of the reasons I looked forward to this reunion was because Aunt Beatrice resembled my grandmother, her older sister. When she finally arrived on that beautiful Saturday morning, I took one look at her and was filled with joy. She was short with a deeply creased face and was the spitting image of my grandmother. I hugged her warmly and touched her face saying,  cara da minha avo (face of my grandmother). She smiled and said, “This is minha festa (my celebration).

In Portugual, festas are feasts or festivals held usually in honor of saints. Growing up in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, I attended many festas at nearby Portuguese churches, where the cuisine and music of the Portuguese homeland transported the displaced people back to their island. Celebrating with her American family, Aunt Beatrice must have felt blessed.

The first thing we did was invite everyone down to the beach. St. Michael’s, Azores, is surrounded by the ocean, but the sea can be treacherous as it pounds the rugged coastline of volcanic rock. I remember the first time my husband’s aunt, a recent immigrant, came with us to the beach. When her young daughter wandered a few feet from the water’s edge, she screamed, ran to the child and dragged her up the beach. Later, she explained that near her native village, she saw children washed away and drowned by the powerful encroaching sea.

Keeping a comfortable distance from the water’s edge, Aunt Beatrice spoke with her nieces and nephews; and her Portuguese phrases were the stuff of my childhood, the familiar-sounding syllables that greeted me every time I stepped into my grandparents’ house. The two sisters were mirror images of each other but had lived separate lives with an ocean between them. Aunt Beatrice was a girl when my grandmother left the old country to never return. She never saw her mother again. When I was in my late teens, Aunt Beatrice visited us; and the sisters greeted each other as strangers. The bond had been broken long ago.

Back at the summer house, my relatives filled the picnic table with Portuguese delicacies, and we feasted all afternoon.

As the hours passed, I stopped noticing all the similarities between my great aunt and my grandmother. Aunt Beatrice was a lovely, warm and fun-loving woman; but I realized I would never be given the time to get to really know her – and even if I did, she could not replace what I missed and longed for: my grandmother's presence and love.

ABOUT SEA, SKY & SPIRIT: Drawing from the many seasonal faces of Fogland, Linda Andrade Rodrigues paints vignettes about nature and spirituality.