Memory Lane
My Father, João Afonso
August 5, 1907 - November 4, 1975
There are moments in our lives that we will never forget and that stay with us to give us strength, or to depress us, because we want to go back and feel them as if we were young, with all our senses sharp. I would like to remember and share with those who read these words some of the aspects of my father's personality, before they are erased from my memory.
Towards the end of World War II, perhaps early in 1944, I travelled with my father to the Azores, on board the Carvalho Araújo liner. Part of the surgery team of the Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon, then located at Campo de Sant'Ana, had been called to the Allied base in the city of Horta, Faial. During the trip, before arriving in Horta, my father tried to dress me up so I would look good. But, because he wasn't very experienced when it came to dressing kids, the buttons were on the front, when they should have been on the back. When we were on the deck, a lady noticed what was happening and approached my father: "Excuse me, your daughter is wearing her dress the wrong way round. I can take care of it, if you want to." And so she did.
In the early days, when my Father was looking for a house in Horta, I stayed with an English family. We only moved to a house with a garden and banana trees when my mother and my sister Helena, who was about three years old at the time, arrived on board the Lima. It had views to the harbour, where warships and the PanAm seaplane - on board of which I returned to mainland Portugal at the end of the war - were always coming and going.
For me, our house was an enchanted place in the middle of the ocean, where dreams overflowed from every door I opened. I remember lunches and dinners with my father's colleagues -Fernando, Óscar, Eusébio, and others whose names have vanished from my memory.
During the week, the betrothed (a beautiful man, they said) took me by the hand to the nuns' school, carrying my lunch box with a meal prepared by our cook Maria do Carmo¾, who looked like a character in one of Paula Rego's paintings. She killed chickens and ducks on the kitchen table and ran after the rats that made holes in the chicken coop net. I remember seeing, somewhat horrified, Maria do Carmo throwing huge centipedes into matchboxes which she then set on fire. She was not evil: it was her way of keeping the house clean.
The Father, João, was always my best friend¾, the man who, despite getting home feeling tired of operating and seeing patients in his office, had always found the time to talk with his family and play his favourite songs on the Bechstein. I often sat beside him on the piano bench, while he played Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, or Sonatas by Brahms, Schumann's Kreisleriana, and other works for piano, such as Schumann's Arabesque¾, one of his favourite. There was a beautiful work that had been banned from the house: Schumann's L’oiseau Prophète . The notes reminded him of his sister Isabel Louise (Mimi), who had died at the age of fourteen. He played it once for me, and never again.
One day he told me that he had almost pursued a career as a conductor, before choosing medicine. For him, music was his way of surrendering to thoughts and dreams¾, and of breaking away from the ties of life.
As he used to say, and also wrote, one must "know how to waste time." But, for him, time spent with music was never wasted
I believe that my father had a real gift of enchanting with his rare intelligence, and his sense of humour, which never exceeded the rules of good manners. He was intransigent in certain things, because he followed a fine line of truth, always confronting his doubts, leaving in the air what could lead to various choices, knowing that making mistakes makes us more human. So, he admired and read Joseph Conrad, and instilled in me the taste for literature.
I often heard him say that war surgery had marked a step in his medical career, because it had helped him to face the great disasters of the body and mind¾and to deal with a disastrous humanity when, for example, he had to amputate a limb. I often saw him in great distress before preparing for an amputation. It was as if demons and angels were pulling him in opposite directions, knowing that it was a struggle where there were only losers.
The noise of this memory torments me to this day. I turned his dreams into my own, when I drift on the crest of a wave, in a precarious balance, just as he would've liked to.
size="30"
Luz Rezende
Luz Resende studied at the Elmhurst Ballet School in Camberley, Surrey and at the Maria Amália High School in Lisbon. She completed her undergraduate studies in Philosophy and English at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) through NATO, in Oeiras, and later online in the USA. She has always maintained her connection to the English language and kept improving her writing skills, which is why her short stories are written in English. "Pruning" is one of her texts, which was published in an American literary magazine from Dayton, Ohio. She worked for her father, as secretary and archivist, and her job consisted on organizing all his works and published papers. Only after her father's death, did she start working for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID/Lisbon). She is still a member of the Society for the Study of the Short Story (SSSS) based in the USA.
Note: The photos are from the family's photo collection and were provided by Alexandra de Mello Sampayo (Pombeiro), João Cid dos Santos' other daughter.
There are moments in our lives that we will never forget and that stay with us to give us strength, or to depress us, because we want to go back and feel them as if we were young, with all our senses sharp. I would like to remember and share with those who read these words some of the aspects of my father's personality, before they are erased from my memory.
Towards the end of World War II, perhaps early in 1944, I travelled with my father to the Azores, on board the Carvalho Araújo liner. Part of the surgery team of the Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon, then located at Campo de Sant'Ana, had been called to the Allied base in the city of Horta, Faial. During the trip, before arriving in Horta, my father tried to dress me up so I would look good. But, because he wasn't very experienced when it came to dressing kids, the buttons were on the front, when they should have been on the back. When we were on the deck, a lady noticed what was happening and approached my father: "Excuse me, your daughter is wearing her dress the wrong way round. I can take care of it, if you want to." And so she did.
In the early days, when my Father was looking for a house in Horta, I stayed with an English family. We only moved to a house with a garden and banana trees when my mother and my sister Helena, who was about three years old at the time, arrived on board the Lima. It had views to the harbour, where warships and the PanAm seaplane - on board of which I returned to mainland Portugal at the end of the war - were always coming and going.
For me, our house was an enchanted place in the middle of the ocean, where dreams overflowed from every door I opened. I remember lunches and dinners with my father's colleagues -Fernando, Óscar, Eusébio, and others whose names have vanished from my memory.
During the week, the betrothed (a beautiful man, they said) took me by the hand to the nuns' school, carrying my lunch box with a meal prepared by our cook Maria do Carmo¾, who looked like a character in one of Paula Rego's paintings. She killed chickens and ducks on the kitchen table and ran after the rats that made holes in the chicken coop net. I remember seeing, somewhat horrified, Maria do Carmo throwing huge centipedes into matchboxes which she then set on fire. She was not evil: it was her way of keeping the house clean.
The Father, João, was always my best friend¾, the man who, despite getting home feeling tired of operating and seeing patients in his office, had always found the time to talk with his family and play his favourite songs on the Bechstein. I often sat beside him on the piano bench, while he played Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, or Sonatas by Brahms, Schumann's Kreisleriana, and other works for piano, such as Schumann's Arabesque¾, one of his favourite. There was a beautiful work that had been banned from the house: Schumann's L’oiseau Prophète . The notes reminded him of his sister Isabel Louise (Mimi), who had died at the age of fourteen. He played it once for me, and never again.
One day he told me that he had almost pursued a career as a conductor, before choosing medicine. For him, music was his way of surrendering to thoughts and dreams¾, and of breaking away from the ties of life.
As he used to say, and also wrote, one must "know how to waste time." But, for him, time spent with music was never wasted
I believe that my father had a real gift of enchanting with his rare intelligence, and his sense of humour, which never exceeded the rules of good manners. He was intransigent in certain things, because he followed a fine line of truth, always confronting his doubts, leaving in the air what could lead to various choices, knowing that making mistakes makes us more human. So, he admired and read Joseph Conrad, and instilled in me the taste for literature.
I often heard him say that war surgery had marked a step in his medical career, because it had helped him to face the great disasters of the body and mind¾and to deal with a disastrous humanity when, for example, he had to amputate a limb. I often saw him in great distress before preparing for an amputation. It was as if demons and angels were pulling him in opposite directions, knowing that it was a struggle where there were only losers.
The noise of this memory torments me to this day. I turned his dreams into my own, when I drift on the crest of a wave, in a precarious balance, just as he would've liked to.
size="30"
Luz Rezende
Luz Resende studied at the Elmhurst Ballet School in Camberley, Surrey and at the Maria Amália High School in Lisbon. She completed her undergraduate studies in Philosophy and English at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) through NATO, in Oeiras, and later online in the USA. She has always maintained her connection to the English language and kept improving her writing skills, which is why her short stories are written in English. "Pruning" is one of her texts, which was published in an American literary magazine from Dayton, Ohio. She worked for her father, as secretary and archivist, and her job consisted on organizing all his works and published papers. Only after her father's death, did she start working for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID/Lisbon). She is still a member of the Society for the Study of the Short Story (SSSS) based in the USA.
Note: The photos are from the family's photo collection and were provided by Alexandra de Mello Sampayo (Pombeiro), João Cid dos Santos' other daughter.