
The morning was spent working on the water boxes; the first is nearly dry, because we somehow left open a valve, and water ran to a running toilet all night, and the second has been dry for months while in need of repairs to it’s bottom.
Since there was no water in them this was a good time to pound out the two interconnecting lead pipes, high and low, and patch the concrete side walls with some freshly made mortar.
By early afternoon the pipes were out, side walls patched, and the pvc flange on the second water box had been repaired. All we lacked was a compression fitting to join the new flange to the house’s water pipes. It was in search of that one inch coupling, and groceries, that Dad and I ventured down the hill in the slowly drizzling haze.
We walked slowly, ambled might be the best description, and found one shop on Rua do Catete that was out of the coupling, and another that was already closed. So we gave up on the second water box for today and moved on to the groceries.
A half hour later, and a now-full backpack, we stepped back into the soggy afternoon and started back towards the hill. Just before we got off the Rua do Catete dad asked if I’d like some “sexy coffee” – i.e. good coffee. “Of Course!” I answered reflexively. So down another block we went to a local bakery (Padarias, as they are called in Brazil, are on almost every block in town).While we were standing at the counter swirling our coffees around in plain little glass cups a small girl and her father ducked in out of the rain. Shortly, they each had something to drink, and she began to play a tune by Luiz Gonzaga called Asa Branca on a flute. The tune is simple enough to be “learner’s music”, even for children of five or six.
We were bustling out when she finished playing the song for her father. I did not know it yet, but the simple notes and wavering rendition she’s delivered lilted, flickered and wafted slowly down through layers of memories long dormant. The effect was a bit like a dam breaking. The earliest signs, just the refrain itself repeating involuntarily inside my head, were entirely un-alarming.
We retraced our steps back along Catete, then turned down the street that leads to the bottom of the hill. I noticed that the only remaining hardware store on the way home was closing, but when asked if they had the part Dad and I were needing they happily scrounged around in the back and found it. Dad had probably not seen me stop, and so continued trundling on ahead. I paid, ducked out the half shut door, and set out after him with the coupling on my finger and Asa Branca ringing in my ears.
Something about seeing my father bobbing down the wet sidewalk brought to mind how much I cherish even these most pedestrian moments we’ve shared together. It was just the simple realization that I will not always have the simple joy of accompanying him on a walk back from the grocery store, plastic bags slung over his shoulder, ducking the eves of oncoming umbrellas.
We arrived at the bottom of the hill to find the next Combi headed up nearly full, it needed just us, and it was ready to depart. When we were almost all the way up I noticed I was humming the refrain out loud, not having noticed sooner, I wondered if the other passengers minded the droning repetition of the tune.
A couple of minutes later, groceries emptied into the icebox, I watched as my father reflexively coiled the plastic bags between his fingers put a loose knot in them, and tossed them into his “puxa saco” (a bag of bags) for later re-use. Something about that habit of his, how well worn all the movements are, also struck a chord in me, another small thing that I’ll miss.
I picked up the pvc coupling and went outside into the drizzle to find some teflon tape and an adjustable wrench. By the time I’d found the tape I couldn’t see what I was holding through the flood of tears that overtook me. The dam had broken.
The song had sank down from the present to the roots of my childhood, to when I’d first heard it. I remember it well because mother so loved it, often singing or humming along as it was played. At the time, we were living in the far north of the country where that kind of music (Baião) originates. There it is a touchstone, an emblem, a marker of a common culture, history, perspective, and experience for an entire generation who suffered through hardship together.
The notes had sawn through me, stitching together the past, long lost, and the present in one long nostalgic arc. Even though I’m trying to resist feeling – or acknowledge feeling – that these are the last days I may ever get to see my father, the fear of loss has left me trying to consume everyday moments as though they too will soon be gone for good. As if to ensure the moment lived becomes the moment remembered.
Today I felt it, another layer of gossamer Brazilian memories dusting down onto the sedimentary deposits of my memory. This rainy nothing day, looking for a fitting, with grocery bags and a little girl playing the flute while Dad and I drank hot coffee standing at a glass counter, becomes another moment in my life that will again lite up the next time I hear Asa Branca.