northeastern Brasil, 1945-1954, part one
take this with a grain of salt, or maybe a pound. once upon a time, and 1945 really was once upon a time. very few people who were grownups then exist today, and very very very few UnitedStatesian grownups then can talk about it today. if someone were twenty in 1945 they would be ninety-one today. I don't know anyone ninety-one or older who lived in northeastern Brasil in 1945. I'm just saying that I've waited long enough that I can't corroborate what I remember with anyone who was grownup at the time. but then how could he or she anyway? there is very little shared between the way a twenty-year-old experiences the world and the way a two-and-a-half-year-old experiences the world. you're stuck with me and how magical the world was! I was old enough to toddle and a vast lawn was like having the world as a playground. as I understand it, my father went to the real language school all day, the language school for missionaries. which means, I suppose, that my mother went to the unreal language school, the one for spouses. when my mother was about as old as I am now, she told me she never did learn the language properly. she mispronounced words, misconjugated verbs, and never did learn the gender of nouns. my father thought he learned it well. meanwhile I'd learned the language the way two-and-a-half-year-olds do, by imitation. I didn't yet know the word approximation, but I knew that's what he spoke. so I grew up thinking I spoke the language of kids and young people around me, and maybe I did. in that language, the world around me took shape. there were no robins and there were no sparrows, but there were bem-ti-vi and some big scissor-tail bird that I thought was half as big as me, and was just sure it wanted to play with me. there was an Englishman who had spent his adult life missionarying in northeastern Brasil, meaning he'd arrived before the twentieth century had. he had a grown son who was then a missionary from the English Baptists, even though he had damn near no experience of England, and so was doubly suspect. he was "too native" and he was English Baptist, which was better than being English anything else, but not quite right. I think some American Baptist missionaries were there too, but they were definitely not right. we were Southern Baptists, the real Christians. in spite of that, I had Brasilian playmates for a while, and we laughed and ran and jumped and stomped just as if we were all real kids. my parents were busy. when we moved from the city out to some town where my father was the Baptist missionary, it was small enough that my folks lived out on the edge of town. my father traveled a lot, doing whatever horrible things missionaries do, and my mother was busy with my baby sister, so I escaped as often as I could. I made friends with several other boys who weren't allowed outside their yards, which may have piqued my curiosity. I found my way out of town and into brush in which lived animals I'd never seen the likes of. I found a cave and explored it, deeper and deeper. when sunlight ran out, I stole a candle and matches, and they ran out, so I stole a flashlight - flashlights in 1945 or thereabouts were pitiful things, dim, fluttery, unreliable - and when it ran out I was really in the dark! I remember standing there in nothing but dark and wanting to scream and run around like a lil kid, and stomping all that down. I turned around and used my hands along the wall to walk my way back til I could see the light. I took a deep breath and stepped back into the middle of the cave and walked toward the light. when I got to the mouth, I stood there, half in and half out, and savored the moment. I was no longer a lil kid. I was a boy! then I ran home. tell someone? are you kidding? I had already learned way better than that. but proud? dambetcha! I had found the cave, found my way in, then found my way back out! could you get any more boy than that?
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