May-2015
Remembering… (Part I)
Sitting in the corner of the living room, Dona Custódia da Conceição tries to look where she can see the past and slowly lets her memories out into the air.
She says a good dancer doesn’t settle on her heels, she is always on the tip of her toes.
They would play harmonica, cavaquinho and tambourine at the mouse trap. She can still remembers lyrics from those starry nights. Nights in which no one refused if you asked them to dance.
“Quando entrei para ratoeira
Não entrei com alegria
Na ratoeira não estava
Quem meu coração queria”
“When I entered the mouse trap
I didn’t walk in happy
In the mouse trap I didn’t see
What my heart desired”
“Não quero desafio
Nem estou lhe desafiando
Se é por desafio
Meu barco vem chegando”
“I don’t want a challenge
and I’m not challenging you
If this is a challenge
Then my boat is coming”
Even earlier than this, she would pick oranges and use the peel to make tiny fish. She would make a varalinho, or a little line, sell the fish and say “there’s no fish there, come over here because I have some for sale.”
She would tie small bamboo sticks to a coffee bush and say, “my house is here, miss.”
She recently received a doll and is incredibly happy with the present.
She really enjoyed bull parties, even though they were a man’s thing, since the men would leave their food on the table to go watch when there was an angry bull. “My brother would go play and he would hang under the bull, but he never died from that.”
There are people who are really playful, who know how to play, that was always a pleasure to watch.
“The school was full of students, but back then they didn’t teach you how to sew, just how to read, you know?”
Text and photos: Renata Meirelles
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