My Parents' Voyages and My Life

(Written on Saturday, March 24. I didn't post it earlier because I was looking for some photos. I couldn't really find any and decided to post this anyway, but I found them just now!)

This afternoon we were at our friends’ house with a group of Brazilian folks from church. Pretty soon, my parents were the center of the attention and the conversation. I had just gone to help in the kitchen, but I only needed to hear a word here and there to know exactly what they were talking about.


I know all those stories by heart, since I heard them during my entire childhood. It was one of the topics of choice in my parents’ conversations with new acquaintances: their three years an a half in Europe back in 1969-1972. I outlined some of the facts here (items 1-14), when I talked about my birth, but I never elaborated much upon this subject. This afternoon, when I had some moments to myself, I smiled when I reminisced about the influence that my parents’ experiences and “adventures” have had in my life and I immediately wanted to write this post.

I think it all began with the slides. I may have “inherited” my passion for photography in my genes since my dad always took lots of photos. Their photos from Europe are mostly slides, though. During the years my parents worked at a boarding academy in the Brazilian Southern countryside my dad often made slide presentations of the trips to Europe to the students in the Friday night vespers meetings. Once in a while, pretty rarely, in fact, he would show them to us at home.

There was a big box of postcards too, but I didn’t like to look at them too much, I preferred real photos, taken by my parents. To this day when I travel I don’t buy many postcards, unless they portray exactly what I saw or offer a panoramic view that I couldn’t have otherwise. I feel that postcards are so “artificial” in a sense; I like the real experience which is reflected in photographs. So what I liked the most about my parents’ photos and slides was that they had really been there and seen that. (Oh, my dad did take photos of some postcards to make slides – I really disliked those, since I felt cheated! - the photo on the left may be one of those slides, I have to check with my dad).

From an early age I was able to recognize European cities by looking at pictures of them (I happen to have a “photographic memory” too) and I never tired of hearing the stories of my parents’ trips. This afternoon they recounted a bit the story of my birth (I promise to write more about that some other time, it’s pretty interesting), but as the conversation drifted towards current issues, they went on to talk about their visits to Islamic countries. These occurred as part of the 4 months long camping trip that they took with my maternal grandparents and I. They traveled in my parents’ old, falling to pieces, Kombi VW van and toured most of Europe in it.

Here is the van parked in Berlin in the summer of 1972.

They visited Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and wanted to drive to Israel, which wasn't possible because once they had left an Islamic country and driven into Israel, they wouldn't have been allowed to drive back. The only way out would have been to put their car on a ship to Greece in order to return to Europe. To make matters worst, this part of their trip coincided with the events of Black September (1972)!! (Last year we watched Spielberg’s Munich together with keen interest). That must have been so scary! The borders were all closed, police and armed officials were on the roads. I think that in Jordan, they even "escorted" my parents with an army guy inside the van twice (one of these guys actually put his hand on my mom's thigh - ugh!). Then my mom, grandma, and I (barely 12 months old) stayed behind in a campground in Turkey with the van while my dad and grandpa flew to Egypt and then Jerusalem since that was their once in a lifetime opportunity to visit those places. So, as you can imagine, they have countless interesting stories to tell! I have to get these written down someday. I guess I have to help my mom write them.


I was busy in the kitchen, helping my friend prepare snacks for the crowd, but I returned to the living room for a moment, just in time to hear my friend ask me: "So, do you remember all those trips?" “Oh, no,” I replied, “I was just one year old!” And then after a while I thought to myself, yes, I don’t remember, but all these stories have defined my life and made me be who I am today. Even though I can’t have actual recollections of them, my parents’ adventures have left indelible marks in me so it’s almost as if I did remember.

I wish I could remember when I had my first birthday. My parents were visiting London and camping in Greenwich. Later when I learned about this place’s importance as the main “date line” I always felt connected to it somehow for having been there on my first birthday. A few days later they celebrated the occasion in Belgium with a little cake and if I “remember” correctly, some people in the campground gave then some delicious cookies or wafers to celebrate the occasion.

I wish I could remember the day I started walking. They were in Berlin, in front what I think is now the parliament building or something. I haven’t yet been able to determine which building it is and when I was in Berlin in 2000 I just felt a burning desire to know for sure where it was -- please check the van photo above, since I started walking across from that building and maybe one of you can help me determine where exactly it is. And here is a shot of me, all excited. That's my mom in the background:
I wish I could remember this little boy dressed in long black Arabic clothes with whom I appear in a photo. I don’t know exactly where either, the San Marco Piazza in Venice, perhaps? since there were lots of pigeons around...

For the longest time I longed to see the place where I had been born, the country that denied me citizenship, a fact that I deeply resented because I had to spend most of my life explaining to everyone who happened to find out where I was born that “No, I am not Swiss.” “Yes, I am Brazilian, as if I had been born in the Brazilian consulate, which is technically Brazilian soil.” “No, Switzerland doesn’t give their nationality to children of foreigners who are born there, they say that ‘cats that are born in the oven aren’t bread’” and so on…

I had mixed feelings when I finally got to go to Geneva back in 1999. I was there for 39 days, taking French classes in the same school where my father was studying when I was born (a small school in France, just across the border with Switzerland). On my 28th birthday I walked to the hospital where I was born although I didn't go inside and I had no idea in which building I had actually been born. And the following year, I went there with my husband too on our backpacking tour of Europe (We went on my father-in-law’s birthday, how interesting! How irrelevant! How I like digressions! :)

My parents’ time abroad is probably the reason why I’m here today, living as an expatriate. I took the next step, the one they didn’t get to take. Partly because my dad never received a call to go work as a missionary as they wanted, only one to go back to Brazil to work there, and partly because my mother was so homesick she just couldn’t take life away from her family anymore. And she still is full of saudade, the Portuguese language word for homesickness, longing, missing someone, nostalgia, etc… (Some say this word exists only in our language, it's out "contribution" to the world... ) This time my mom feels saudade of my brother who is living in China, and of us here. Her two only children, living abroad, so far away. It breaks her heart and I feel for her, but they planted the seeds, with all those stories, those slides, those recollections of things we had never lived, but longed to see nevertheless.

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And I’m glad, in fact delighted, that I’m learning to write, am I not? I don’t have to tell you everything as I’m generally wont to do. I can come back another day and tell you more. Dreams, little ones, becoming reality, bit by bit.