What a gift!

My dear friend Marli just gave the most wonderful gift I ever possible expect this past weekend. Since she found me at Orkut, we have talked every single day like when we were teenagers and it has brightened my days so much. She went to our hometown to fix something up and she got the opportunity and took some pictures of this very controversy town called Tupaciguara!
Last Saturday she just buzzed me at Msn and asked me if I was prepared enough to come back in time. Wow, what a trip!! Even though I went there this year, in fact I was there to enjoy a great and genuine Brazilian carnaval, it's always emotional seeing the place I was born, I grew up…the place I really belong to.

I was enjoying the pictures and then the most wonderful surprise of all, my uncle João! Marli's house was next to his pharmacy and she went there to say hello to him. So, immediately she took a pic saying that this specific one was for me. I just loved it!
Uncle João is my mother first uncle, I mean, my grandfather’s brother. He is a very nice guy, always smiling and we are great friends. By the way, influenced by him and my grandfather I support the same football team, Vasco da Gama.
When I was looking at his picture I tried to find any of his Vasco’s sticker but I couldn’t find it. I got so disappointed!! But then I thought to myself… it is impossible not having a Vasco sticker at his pharmacy and I gotta look at it again. I was right! It was there, on the display window! This specific picture wasn’t very good, but Marli promised me to take another one.

Well, last morning I called my “tio João” and we had a wonderful chat. He is the guy!! He laughed good when I told him about Vasco’s, and of course he made sure I was Vasco supporting still. When he said that he missed me I got very emotional! I made a joke then, and he laughed a kind of nervous-emotion-crying laugh! He asked me to be always this smiling and happy girl I’m and also he asked me take care of myself! It was simply magic talking to him again!

He is about 75 years old and the youngest of a huge family. This year of 2006, two of his latest sisters, auntie Geralda and auntie Carmélia, passed away and my mom said that at auntie Carmélia’s funeral he looked at her and with a very sad and sorrowful voice he murmured: “Oh Dear niece, all my brothers and sisters are gone. Now, just me here…soon, we all will be together again as we always were!”
Tio João, you are a blessing!

Coming back to my dear friend Marli!
I don’t remember if I posted something about our traveling in time through music. Anyway… we are very motivated by music and we are trying to remember all the songs we cried with, we laughed with, and we loved with when we were teenagers. We have burned about 20 CDs until now and it is just the beginning.
Sometimes we spend days looking for a specific song because many of them are in English and we didn’t speak any English that time but we sure did sing all the songs in our “pretending” English way, what is giving us hours of a hard horselaugh now!
So, there is a song by Elton John that I’m crazy about but I had no idea how to start looking for it. All I knew was one single phrase I kept in my memory and of course it was in my “pretending” English. I tried thousand different spells for it at Google and nothing.
We are so freak for finding our thousand of favorite songs that Marli starts our "cyber day" saying like this to me at Msn: "Good Morning my unique listener! Which music you wanna hear today? Are you going to offer this song to a friend?”
As you can see we have fun! Oh god I’m so prolix!

Anyway, can you believe that today I wrote “the phrase” exactly the way I use to sing to her and she got it like that?? She recognized the song!!! This song is the beautiful “Skyline Pigeon” and I even forget how many times I heard it today.
Music is something so exceptional! Today, for the first time I could read and understand its lyric and it was in complete accordance with all my tumult teenager feelings! Well, it’s strange saying it today, but "Skyline Pigeon" is still in complete accordance with my feelings now.

I always thought that there isn’t nothing more important in life than friendship and now, in this stage of my life I’m completely sure about it. I’m thousand of miles away from my dear friends and family, but this doesn’t impede us of getting closer and closer. We participate directly at each other’s life with intensity as we were there, next door! And with this kind of relationship that I developed with many friends and relatives that every day turn their computers on in Brasil, has helped me a lot to say goodbye to my imposed solitude!

Just to exemplify how we have get together... My dear cousin Éder said to my dear cousin José Ronaldo, after I told each other that they were living in the same city and exchanged their phone numbers, that I’m the member of the family who is living further away, but at the same time I’m the one who is nearest!
I love that!! I couldn’t ask for more kindness!!

There is nothing better than the feeling of somebody caring about you, thinking about you in a lovable away or missing you! I considerate myself a very fortunate woman because my family and my friends are always with me, inside my heart and I know for sure I’m always with them! Family and friends, what a gift!

I grew up in this street, playing and having fun

My house

Marli's house

Uncle João's pharmacy