Did I mention...

I mentioned I was staying with a cousin in Brazil, but I didn't elaborate. My heritage is Brazilian. Both of my parents are first generation Brazilian. My mother’s parents emigrated from Poland in the early 1930s and my father’s earlier, from Istanbul around the fall of the Ottoman Empire. 

My father is Caroica -- a Rio de Janeiro native. My mother is Gaucha (pronounced gah-oo-sha), originally from the south of Brazil, from the city of Porto Alegre. She moved to Rio when she was 11. My Parents met and married there and moved to the U.S. where my father continued his internal medicine training. 

My older sister and I were both born in the States. When I was two, my parents returned to Rio for a little more than a year (where my younger sister was born) before moved back to Michigan permanently.

My mother is an artist in so many ways. She paints and writes poetry. She's chic and stylish and her entertaining style is unmatched in both generosity and creativity. Brazilian "toques"(toh-kees), touches, color all she does.

Though my parents have lived in the U.S. for the better part of 50 years, my father is still a Carioca at heart. His "saudades" (sow-da-gees), loosely translated as "nostalgic longing," run deep. When talking about differences in everything from how to make a sandwich to politics, he begins many sentences with, "In Brazil..." In many ways he reminds me of the Gus Portokalos character (the father) in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" when he says, "there are two kinds of people -- Greek people and people who want to be Greek." Substitute "Brazilian" for "Greek" and you get the idea. He truly adores Rio de Janeiro.

Back in the early 1970s, one of my mother's childhood friends called to ask if her daughter could come to Michigan as an exchange student. As I recall, she came for about three months. I was 12. That next summer my older sister and I went to Rio for the summer. Every summer thereafter, until I graduated from high-school, while many of my friends went to Camp Walden, I went to Rio de Janeiro.

I, too, fell in love with Brazil and with my enormous extended family and friends. Since then, every few years or so, I find myself booking a flight to Rio to get my fix. I know what suadade is.