Eulogy of a great woman - a portrait

It was a lovely sunny March day, but we were all feeling very sad and gloomy, because it was my grandmother’s funeral. Walking back from the graveyard, a cousin told me: “How sad is it? To think she lived over 90 years and yet is buried just a couple of hundred yards from where she was born…” I nodded in a casual agreement – she had indeed been born in a house near the church old Romanesque chapel, lived most of her life a couple of streets from there and died in the nursing home across the street, aged 91. And she spent all of her long, and mostly not happy life, there, apart from visits to her children’s homes and a few travels in the country; I’m not sure if she even went to Spain, and if she did it was no farther from Badajoz.

So yes, how sad was it? By our 21st Western middle-class standards, pretty much. But then, that was the way most people used to live their lives in Portugal (or anywhere, actually). I often think about this short and modest woman’s long and apparently uneventful life, because I loved her so much, and I cannot consider it meaningless at all; on the contrary, she shaped decisively her children’s lives (and indirectly our own lives, her grandchildren’s), and she was in so many ways a remarkable personality – in another time and place, she could have had a brilliant career in some field, she certainly had more intelligence, strength, will power and sense than most successful people I know. And she used those skills the way she was able to, to make her children successful, and in more than a way she succeeded.

Her long life can be resumed in a few sentences. Born into a rural middle-class family in a small village, she lost her mother at 5 years old to the great flu pandemic in 1918, and her two younger brothers to the rampant child mortality of the times. Left alone with an old and bereaved father that drowned his sorrows for his lost family in alcohol, she was barely schooled and had to run the household since childhood. Forced into a loveless and unhappy marriage at 16, losing her first child and bearing three more, she raised them through dire straits, as her father succumbed to alcoholic senility and her husband lost all their money through foolish ventures. Still she managed to get her children educated into professional careers, then too care of her grandchildren for long holidays periods, then she nursed her ailing husband, and lived to an advanced age with all her wits, dying peacefully one March day – she just hung her head and stopped breathing.
But what a character she was! Such a strong personality, such an incredibly remarkable woman. Ever since I was a small child, her personality and life fascinated me, and I loved to listen to her, and grow to know about her life and times. And there was so much more to it than those few sentences. I always tried to make her talk about it, which was not hard, because she loved to talk, and so I came to learn a lot about her.
Her childhood – she didn’t remember her mother (“I only remember her lying in her coffin”), and she idolized her father – a barber-surgeon, still famous decades after his death for his good deeds and great competence as a healer, he was very learned and self-taught in medical matters (I still found several of his books in the attic), widely respected and loved. Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic, which was attributed to his grief for not having been able to save his young wife and two sons from death. So he married his daughter at 16 to an ambitious young man who he thought would take good care of her – with disastrous results. When I naively remarked “You married so young!”, she answered fiercely “I didn’t marry, I was married off!” (“Não casei, casaram-me!”). But in all her bitterness about her marriage, she never blamed her father, at least as far as I know.

And that marriage was a war, a 60 year war. My grandfather was not a bad man, but he was foolish and short-sighted. A pharmacist by trade, he longed to be a farmer, so he spent all the family money on his failed farming endeavours, falling deeply I debt and near poverty. It was my grandmother who struggled to get their children educated – and she succeeded, they became a schoolteacher, a pharmacist and a Math teacher (my mother).

If I had to choose a word to describe her attitude regarding life, it would be composure. She kept always a dignified pose, she was always extremely strict and disciplined. Raised in a small conservative village, educated by a conservative father and a few aunts, indoctrined by the traditional values of the Catholic Church, she soon acquired a set of strict rules to which she rigorously adhered all her life. Her favourite expressions were “unseemly” (“parece mal”) and “not to be talked about” (“não darem fé”). Those expressions were applied to practically everything, and we still repeat them often today, in a jokingly tender evocation that keeps her alive – I guess that’s the way people achieve immortality, being remembered.

She never stroke me as a particularly religious person, but of course she followed all the main church dictates, because that had been the way she was taught. She would go to Mass every Sunday – but to the first one, at 7 am, so people wouldn’t “talk about” her going to church, and never took communion without confession – but she would go to the nearby town to confess, because the local vicar didn’t have to know her sins (I wonder what she confessed with such a virtuous life!) – and she said her prayers every night and taught us all the important Catholic prayers. Raised before Vatican II, she was always extremely critical of the changes introduced – “Mass was so much more beautiful in Latin!”, “Why would they change the words to Our Father?”, or “It’s very unseemly so see an unveiled woman in Mass, it shouldn’t be allowed” – because that was the way she had learned it. When her children grew up and tried to convince her to end her unhappy marriage, she never even considered: it would be most unseemly to leave her lawfully wedded husband, she would keep to her duties till the end – and she did, nursing him when he became bedridden, probably with a never acknowledged malign satisfaction to have him finally at her mercy.

We loved to make fun of all the things she deemed unseemly – though of course not to her, we respected and feared her too much. She would wake up my sisters at 5 am to wash the windows, because it would be unseemly to be seen washing the windows. She loved to watch processions, funeral and wedding corteges go by on the main street outside, but it had to be done from the windows and not from the small wrought-iron balcony, because it would be unseemly to expose her legs. Also, skirts should not be too long or too short – “the knees are there for some reason”. And my poor sisters, her only female grandchildren, were forced to learn needle work, because it was most seemly that a girl did so (to have a “little work” as she called it) – she was an indefatigable lace maker, and she was able to get some pocket money from quilts and table cloths she made. She was always most composed, a very straight little woman, who had actually been beautiful in her youth, although I think she never realized it; I remember once a friend of ours remarking: “your grandmother looks like she’s always running for president!”.

Yet this stern and serious woman also loved to laugh at small and mostly naïve jokes, and to talk and tell stories – I especially loved listening to her telling about the old times, her family and childhood. She would never laugh at my grandfather’s jokes though, usually accusing of disrespect, but even if she badmouthed him constantly, she would never allow any of us to show him the tiniest lack of respect – it would be most unseemly, him being our grandfather. Her apparent sternness and severity hardly concealed an extremely generous nature – used to running a big household with little means, her table was always open to the needed and she used to help lots of people. And there was this very romantic side of her that she didn’t like to show, but revealed to us, especially by her story-telling. She loved to read romantic novels, she had half a dozen of them from her youth that she read and reread all through her life – books like The Mill’s Warbler and The Two Mothers by Emile Richebourg, Honour’s Secrets, Slaves of Love, and a couple by Júlio Diniz. And then she would tell us the stories, speaking the dialogues, acting the scenes (and frequently adding touches of her own invention), with such a gusto and conviction that we were fascinated, even if sometimes bored because she would go on and on and we had heard it a thousand times. But how could one but marvel to watching this wonderful woman giving for once way to pleasure? She looked like a little girl, dreaming of countesses reduced to poverty and never ending troubles with a happy end. I never tired of listening to her.

So she drew from those books an endless repertoire of dramatic tirades that we still often repeat today, it’s a loveable and funny way to remember her. Very composed but always modest – she had very strict ideas about how one should dress and behave, and I think she never once wore any make-up, not even a touch of lipstick, she would still had a kind of girlish pleasure in showing us the numerous items of clothing or jewelry her children and relatives offered her – I’ll never forget a time when she unfolded for us a very expensive scarf, and then said in a slightly mischievous tone: “This was given to me by So-and-so. I never wore it”, the accent revealing a not too subtle innuendo of how she disapproved of So-and-so and her taste and ignorance of how to choose a scarf appropriated for her to wear. She was never attached to her old belongings, which she didn’t value because they were so familiar – she didn’t hesitate in having old furniture cut for firewood or in using antique crockery to feed her chickens – but as soon as she noticed someone coveting an old tureen or vase she would cling to them as if she could never let them go – it was an innocent way to feel envied and valued for something.

We were all extremely worried about her when my grandfather died, fearing that the end of that 60 odd years marital war would leave her depressed and purposeless. Well, fortunately, we were very wrong. She nursed him thoroughly through his final illness, then this apparently frail 78 year-old little woman endured a whole night of vigil at the wake in the cold Romanesque chapel across the street from the house where she had been born, as a dutiful wife should, according to her code. But then she actually blossomed. She decided to finally have the much needed renovation work in her house, something she had always stubbornly refused to do before, she moved for some months to a rented apartment while the work was being done, then enjoyed her renovated house for more than ten years, bickering with servants and visiting her children always in a cheerful mood. We had a big party and family reunion for her 90th birthday, by then she was already very frail and the loss of sight due to diabetes had forced her to move to the nursing home across the street from her house – which surprisingly she didn’t mind, she moved her bedroom there and had a very good time with her elderly inmates. I felt so proud and happy to lead her by my arm to the restaurant in that hot August day, surrounded by all her children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

I saw her for the last time a few months before she died, when I visited her with my children. She was delighted to see us, she kept all her wits, she told us lots of gossip from the nursing home and her latest feud with a cousin from a nearby village, I can’t remember the reason, but still can hear her indomitable and characteristic mischievous tone: “I never spoke to him again.”

And then there we were, gathered to accompany her body to the cemetery, to join her father and husband in the plot they had bought in the 1940s. And as I absentmindedly nodded to my cousin’s remark, I couldn’t help but wonder – what is a life really worth, what makes it meaningful? My grandmother’s life may have been mostly unhappy and by current standards uneventful, but that didn’t decrease its importance to me in the least. She definitely contributed to shape my life, and all the lives of her offspring. I feel proud to be her grandson, and cherish all I learned from her; even if I disagree with most of her values and convictions, I can’t help to respect her and admire her for who she was and what she did. And to love her.

(Even if she didn’t like to be photographed, there are lots of pictures of her. But I can’t bring myself to publish them, I’m sure she would think that most unseemly.)

A Guerra das Gálias, de Júlio César

As many people from my generation, the first time I heard about the Gallic Wars was through the Astérix comic books - Vercingétorix laying his arms at Caesar's feet, the Roman garrisons in the occupied Gaul, etc. Of course the genius work of Goscinny and Uderzo was mostly a satire about the modern world, but still it planted a seed of interest for Roman times. And now, many years and many readings about Roman history later, I finally read the famous Caesar's comments on the Gallic Wars.

It's a fascinating read. The tone is so vivid and real one can follow the events as a mixture of an adventure story and a journalistic tale. It's an extremely lively depiction of war in those times - and of strategy, politics and cunning. One cannot be but overwhelmed by the Roman's war machine, the way they accomplished astonishing engineering feats with their limited technology, their tactics and speed. No wonder so many of their works are still around, be it bridges, roads, temples or amphitheatres. Rome shaped the Western world as we know it. Reading the history of the Gallic Wars, one is reminded of the multiplicity of the celtic tribes, whose names one can hardly remember today, that became Romans; and the same applies to the Iberian peninsula. The Romans were such a powerful changing force. And Julius Caesar was really a remarkable character, one of the few people one can say it changed History.

Cooking

My relationship with cooking has changed a lot through the years – as also my relationship to work, ambition, family, etc; guess that’s what comes from growing older.
As a child, cooking was something women did, like my mother and grandmother. Then my sisters, possessed of more modern and feminist ideas, tried to make me cook, with very poor results – I remember trying to cook rice and getting a kind of watery soup, or to fry potatoes and having to run away from the kitchen as a kind of Krakatoa explosion took place over the stove because I poured the potatoes with water on the boiling oil. Not exactly very auspicious beginnings.
Anyway, eventually I became able to cook some basic food staples, from my girlfriend, then wife, I learned to cook a decent grilled fish and a few other dishes. But still I considered it a necessary but boring domestic chore.
The first time I took some pleasure from cooking it was when my wife was studying for her specialty exam, and I started cooking for her and the friend that used to study with her, I tried new recipes and got really pleased to provide them some tasty food. It was the first time I had some real pleasure from cooking, seeing the girls enjoying what I had prepared for them.
Later, as a single parent, cooking became a necessity – the children had to be fed dinner every day, and I had to provide it. So I tried to make it fun, and created a routine: I had all these recipe books from every country I visited, and we chose every evening a recipe from a different book for the next day, we made a list of the ingredients, then we bought them at the supermarket and we cooked the selected recipe. And it really worked; not only we had lots of fun and bonding moments, as one of my children became a very good cook.
And now I love cooking, I love to gather my family and close friends every weekend for dinner, and to cook for the Middle Eastern themed café my daughters and I recently opened. Cooking became an extremely pleasurable and soothing activity, from choosing recipes to cutting vegetables and selecting spices.
But most of all, I enjoy the warm feeling of my friends eating what I cooked, chatting and laughing around the dinner table. That’s the real pleasure of cooking, to create something that pleases one’s friends, that makes us feel connected and happy.

Histoire de la Violence, par Édouard Louis

I was extremely impressed by this book. I've admired Édouard Louis ever since I read Pour en Finir avec Eddy Bellegueule, and I have followed his articles, and I admire his clear mind and his political engagement, so rare among young people today. I loved the issue of Les Inrockuptibles he edited. I don't always agree with him, but he's a remarkable young man, and he writes beautifully, in a strong tone, so unlike the melancholic nostalgic one that I feel it predominates in French literature, but with a strength and enthusiasm reminiscent of Romain Gary or Hervé Guibert. I really highly recommend his books, and am looking forward to read his last one.

Seven Deadly Sins

Reading a small essay by Ursula K. Le Guin about anger got me thinking about my own relationship with anger, which is definitely my main deadly sin.

The seven deadly sins – enunciated by religion, which I’m totally immune from, but reflecting a moral issue pertaining to us all. So, how am I affected by these seven scourges? It’s an interesting question to consider if one wants to have some insight into one’s character,

I’ll start with Greed – that one I’m pretty sure I don’t suffer from. I’m quite content with having enough, lagom, like they say in Swedish. Materially speaking, my ideal is just to have enough so I don’t have to care about pressing needs; I’m fortunate to be comfortably set, and I always found it difficult to understand the people who always want more, more, more.

As for Gluttony and Lust, I admit having some times being subjected to them, but only for short periods and they were never very important to me. I mostly agree with the famous Wilde aphorism – the better way to deal with temptation is to yield to it; it’s no big deal and it ends up being actually boring. Once you check what the intriguing noise in the cellar is – like just a mouse, for instance – you just don’t care anymore.

Sloth is a slightly trickier question. I think I’m too lazy sometimes, and I’m prey to inertia too many times for my moral standards. Yet, I’m very self-demanding, and I manage to attend to what I feel are my obligations and duties. So I guess I am often tempted by Sloth, but am able to resist it adequately.

It’s harder to analyze the other three, because they have much more power over me.

Pride – yes, I’ve always been too proud of my intelligence, that was praised since I was a toddler. I’m sure I have often bothered other people with this pride, which translates is a frequently arrogant attitude (of which I don’t feel proud, I think it’s one of my weaknesses); and I also feel proud of my culture and common-sense. But I never felt guilty about it, because I always feel aware of my limitations and shortcomings, so I know my apparent pride or arrogance is more a pose (a trick of self-defence) than a genuine trait.

Envy – this one has haunted me since childhood. Having been raised by demanding parents who expected nothing short of excellence, I used to look at every people I thought more accomplished than me with envy – either because they were more beautiful, more successful, more popular, whatever. It took me a long time to understand I was actually quite privileged and didn’t need to feel jealous of other people’s achievements, and nowadays I am much less subjected to envy. Even so, there are still times I can’t help to feel envy towards people who manage to be happier than me. It makes me feel ashamed, and I think I’m slowly but steadily vanquishing this weakness.

And then there’s Wrath / Anger, the deadly sin I’m most prone to and most ashamed of. I get too easily angry, and it makes me being insulting, abusive, and especially to lose self control, which really bothers me. I try to fight it, but I must admit I haven’t been very successful. So, what Ursula Le Guin tells about anger? “Anger is a useful, perhaps indispensable tool in motivating resistance to injustice.” “Anger continued past its usefulness becomes unjust, then dangerous.” “Certainly an outburst of anger can cleanse the soul and clear the air,” ”Anger indulged rouses anger. Yet anger suppressed breeds anger. What is the way to use anger to fuel something other than hurt, to direct it away from hatred, vengefulness, self-righteousness, and make it serve creation and compassion?” She connects anger to fear, a reaction to fear of some kind, but I don’t think that’s my case, my angry outburst are not related to fear, maybe more to a feeling of being disrespected, something she also acknowledges as a cause for anger. I guess that’s what makes a wave of anger rise and dominate me. And it bothers me terribly, because afterwards I feel guilty and ashamed to have lost my self-control. And then I have heard countless times the sentence “you were right, but then you were no longer right because of what you said” (usually referring to verbal abuse). Well yes, I think I’m usually right, and I don’t think I stop being right for being verbally abusive, but I agree it’s wrong to speak that way. How I wish I would be able to keep a cool head! My angry outburst are always short-lived, and I don’t hold grudges, but I know other people do, and it has caused me trouble more than a few times. As I get older, I’m getting calmer and more controlled, but still sometimes I slip and give way to wrath, and I actually fear the emotional violence I’m able to summon – where does it come from?
So, Wrath is my main mortal sin, something I try to fight too many times, with variable success. I can’t explain it rationally, I just hope that the wisdom that comes with age will help me overcome it.

No Time to Spare, by Ursula K. Le Guin

I waited several months for the reedition of this book, and it was really worth it. It's a collection of small essays initially written as blog posts - curiously, she got the idea of writing in that form from reading José Saramago's blog. And she achieves a perfect pitch - alternating between very different subjects, from her lovable cat to more serous issues like her relationship with literature and her readers, her writing, economy, nature, politics, class, attitudes regarding science and faith, etc, it makes for a delightful reading, highly entertaining but always intelligent and thought provoking.

Vastly cultured, with a clear reasoning served by an equally clear writing, anchored in solid humanist moral values, compassionate and passionately engaged, never losing a witty sense of humour and a solid common-sense. Her mind is curious and inquisitive, so she writes pretty much about anything. The first essays, about ageing and the present day society attitude to old age, are simply brilliant and sometimes hilarious.

Most important of all, reading this book makes you think, and makes you want not only to share her opinions but express your own - because of course one doesn't always agree - and that stimulus to engage in meaningful debate is extremely relevant, at all times.

The Favourite, by Yorgos Lanthimos

This is a good movie, a dark comedy about the backstage struggles for power, in the guise of a period drama - in this case set in Queen Anne's court, even if we actually don't get to see much of the court itself. It's mostly the inner rooms we see, where the ruthless fight between two beautiful women for the status of favourite to a vulnerable and ageing queen takes place.

The story is based in true facts, although reasonably adapted for dramatic purposes and easier appeal to our present conceptions - that kind of historical distortion has a quite time honoured tradition in the movies. I find somewhat annoying the fashion now to present the past as excessively gross regarding sex and language - probably as inaccurate as when it used to e presented as sexless and what used to pass as "noble". I guess the truth lies somewhere in between these two extreme depictions, but of course we'll never know for sure, and historical novels and movies end up by telling us more about the present mores then the past ones. For instance, I never watched a period movie regarding these times that approached the lively portraits in Saint-Simon's memoirs or the Princess Palatine's letters, or even Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

But that said, this movie is still very entertaining, especially thanks to the superb acting of the three protagonists, and I think Olivia Colman's Oscar was totally deserved. I knew her from her work in Broadchurch, and she's really a great actress.

Roma, by Alfonso Cuarón

This is a very good film, tender and moving. Not explicitly presented as a childhood memoir, it clearly comes out as one by the matter-of-factly, non-judgemental way the story is told. We get the depiction of the ordinary family life of a middle-class Mexican family in early 70s Mexico City (I had to google to know that Roma refers to the neighbourhood where they lived), including the take for granted family servants, an integral part of life then, considered as belonging to the household, beningly treated as long as they kept to their place, and the background social and political events, viewed as they would be remembered by a child - vaguely confusing and not analized, just experienced.

I think that's why the main character Cleo, the maid, seems so passive and devoid of class consciousness - she is seen through the eyes of the children she cared for. But class relations are very much shown through the way her life is shown, and her relationship with her boss, the kind and upset mother - she's cherished and protected but always clearly like a lesser person, a kind of child in a way, a member of the extended family, as faithful household servants used to be considered at the time.

The movie is beautifully shot in black and white, and aesthetically it works. Yet, I somehow would like to have seen it in colour. I was a child at the 70s, and I remember those times as an epoch of garish colours - the clothes, the tiles, even the furniture - it was a time of boldly unapologizing bad taste, and I'm sure it was the same in Mexico as it was in Portugal and Cape Vert, where I lived at the time.

Other People's Love Affairs, by D. Wystan Owem

This is a very nice book, sweet and moving. I was reminded of Raymond Carver, one of my favourite short stories writer. Owen's stories are beautiful, the writing is elegant and insightful. His characters feel real, and he manages to depict a world of emotions and feelings in short stories, which is just remarkable in a writer.

Out of the Blue

I was so happy to witness the success of my dear friend Joaninha Costa Rosa's first Lisbon exhibition. The pictures speak for themselves, she's a wonderful artist. Her paintings are dreamy and impressive, a window to her beautiful soul.

We've been friends for many years, and I feel privileged to have been able to follow her development as an artist. I admire her talent and the courage to express her inner world in such a beautiful and sensitive way.

This was the happiest moment I had in a long time. Such an extraordinary artist, and she's my dear friend.