My baby turns 6!

My baby turns 6, today!! A day of celebration!! Having a boy after 3 girls has truly been an adventure, and a very humbling experience for this mom who, with 3 children under her belt, felt experienced and confident and thought she was prepared for anything... Today, I am grateful for my little sunshine, for this bundle of energy, who keeps me on my toes and never bored, who makes us all laugh, who makes us pull our hair out, who keeps us wondering how in the heck do genetics work...

Today is a day for good thoughts!! So, for today, I will try to forget how truly painful it was to deliver a 10 lb 2 oz baby "au naturel", with no pain medication....

... For today, I will repress the memories of that time when he decided to give my carpet a shampoo treatment or when he took it upon himself to add that certain "zing" to his bedroom...

... or when his scientific endeavors caused a clogged toilet and a subsequent flood downstairs, which forced my husband to remove the toilet and crawl under the house to remove an airplane stuck in the pipes...

... or the day when he turned the water on in the laundry room's sink (upstairs) just before we left the house for two hours...

... or the time when the neighbor came to warn us that he was dancing on top of my car butt naked... No big surprise, since Alex spent half of his toddler years butt naked (inside of the house and out)...

... For today, I will try not to think of that day, when he was three, and he actually drove my car, backing it onto the porch at the local antique mall!! Still to this day I can't figure out how he managed to take the car key away from me, get in the driver's seat, turn the key on and back the car onto the covered porch... All of this in just about one minute!!

... Of course we just about forgot about all those trips to the emergency room...

Yes, today is my son's birthday!! And I am no longer thinking about this morning, when we revealed to him his grand present, a brand new bicycle, waiting for the squeals of delight, only to be met with an empty glare and a "it's too big for me!", as he turned his back and walked away...

Today I am trying to laugh at all those things that have made me cry, scream, run.... What a true joy it is to have this little boy in my life!!! Never a dull moment, never short of stories to tell the grandparents, never missed photo ops...!!

Yes, today my baby turns 6... Measured in white hairs, it is the equivalent of 60!!! But, what a trip it has been!! I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world! I love you, Alex, will you stay my baby forever??!!

A grandmother's legacy

(This was a post first published in my other blog, Maison Douce, a few months ago)

A few days ago I received an email from my father... He had attached a scanned 21-page document hand-written by his mother a couple of years before she passed at age 95. In it, my grandmother, Matilde, recalls the numerous trips she took from the time she was a youngster traveling with her family to her travels as a married woman. A few pages before the end, she started writing about meeting my grandfather... We all knew the story, but seeing it in my grandmother's own writing struck deep into my core and brought back a flood of memories and emotions!!

My grandfather, Heinz Feist, was a young jewish salesman from Solingen, Germany. His father, Joseph, owned a cutlery manufacturing company called Omega, and my grandfather would travel all over Europe as a company salesman. Twice a year he would visit Lisbon and Porto, in Portugal.

My grandfather Heinz and his father Joseph

In 1930, while on a three-week stay in Lisbon, he attended a Mardi-Gras dance at the German Club, and my grandmother happened to be there, too. She recalls that, at that time, it wasn't proper for ladies to dance with gentlemen they hadn't been formally introduced to, but that night, the club director, wanting the party to be a bit more informal and fun, announced that everyone should consider themselves introduced to each other!!! Heinz went over to Matilde and asked her to dance... They danced all night, song after song!! She said in her long letter that my grandfather announced to her that night his interest in pursuing her...

It was late, and as Matilde was getting ready to go home, she realized she had misplaced her handbag. There was confetti everywhere, which made it harder to find... Heinz offered to look for it and bring it to her house the next day, which he did. This is where both of their stories differ: she said he hid the handbag on purpose so he would have a pretext to see her again, and he said she left if behind intentionally so he would come to her house and see her again!! This sweet argument was still going on well into their late years!! After a few years of long distance courtship, they were married in August of 1934.

My grandparents on their wedding day

Because of Hitler's rise to power, they decided, after a short stay in Germany, to settle in Lisbon. Heinz was an only child, and eventually his parents left Germany and followed him. Some of his family members had a tragic end, and I still recall stories told about cousins and uncles and aunts hiding from the Nazis. If it wasn't for his decision to settle in Lisbon, I wouldn't be here talking to you... Portugal was considered a neutral country during WWII, and a safe haven for many Jewish people (it was also, due to our window to the Atlantic Ocean, a fairly secret port of departure for many jews who eventually settled in America)

Rosel and Joseph Feist, my great grandparents

My father was their firstborn. He would be followed by a girl and a set of twin boys. I have very fond memories of my grandparents, as I would often stay with them when my parents traveled. I grew up eating sauerkraut and rote grutze, playing in their piano, and learning cross stitch from my grandmother. Even after almost 60 years of living in Portugal, my grandfather still had a very strong german accent, and, when I worked for the family business, to which he was the patriarch, I still remember him following us around the office turning off all the lights in empty rooms...!! I still have a memo we got from him asking us to utilize used envelopes for internal comunications, and proudly announcing that he had NEVER purchased a paper clip in his life, but simply re-used the ones he had received!!! These life lessons still echo through me to this very day...!!

My father, Pedro

On the last day of this diary, my grandmother revealed that, even thought she was a devoted Catholic, she had decided, already in her eighties (and with much pressure from her husband), to convert to Judaism, for the sole purpose of being allowed to be buried together with the love of her life in the Israeli Cemetery in Lisbon. She asked that her tomstone read "Jewish for Love".

In 2003, the year my son was born (on her birthday!!), she passed, quietly sitting on a chair, after a Mother's Day lunch with her loved ones. She now lays side by side with my grandfather, who had died 9 years earlier. As she said in her last written lines: "I converted so we could stay together forever, so that no one could touch us, after we died... After all, it is the only religion, I believe, where gravesites are eternal."