Chapter 2 - The Rodrigues

SIX MONTHS AFTER MY PARENTS' DIVORCE, my father picked me up from home to take me for a drive in his new car. He was now earning very well and had finally got rid of the ramshackle Chevrolet he had driven since I was born. We went together to a Gelateria that I loved, and there, he told me that he was moving to Espírito Santo.

— I received a very good proposal from some friends I met during graduate school, daughter. They want me to manage a branch of the tourism agency they are about to open in Vitória. It's a great chance for me to grow as a professional, to guarantee a comfortable future for you.

I remember tears starting to flow from my eyes as I slowly put the spoon down into the ice cream tub. I knew very well what those words meant. My father was leaving, and the chances were that I would never see him in person again.

“I don't want you to think I'm leaving forever, my love. It's only for a period until I manage to establish things with the agency, win clients, gain market loyalty.

I had no idea what “market loyalty” meant. I was ten years old. I just thought that my dad was moving far away from me and that I wouldn't see him anymore.

When he dropped me off back at the front door, that new car smell still in his nose, I grabbed him so hard I almost ripped his shirt. I didn't want to let him go. I knew Dad wasn't coming back and that was our last date. From then on, I would be alone on night shifts at my mother's hospital. More tears flooded my face.

— This isn't goodbye, my little fairy — that's what he called me because of my blue eyes, bright like my mother's — it's just a “see you later”. On vacation you can come visit me. There are beautiful beaches in Vitória. We can take a boat ride. It will be wonderful.

The fact is that the holidays never came and I only spoke to my father on the phone. At each end of the call, he promised me that he would visit me in São Paulo soon, but he never kept that promise either. “The father is busy right now”, “I'm completing a package for Disney”, “the team is going to travel to Miami”… It was one excuse after another and over time, I lost hope that one day I would see him again.

His separation from mother and father's trip to Espírito Santo considerably modified the configuration of the Rodrigues family in São Paulo and the more time passed, the less contact I had with my paternal relatives.

Grandpa Licurgo, grandma Vanda, my uncles Luciano and Luiz, all lived in Jardim Europa, less than a kilometer from our house, but I didn't visit them again in that long period of hurt and resentment that took over everyone. in post-divorce.

On weekends, on weekends, my father, mother and I used to participate in the generous Sunday lunches that my grandmother prepared with the household staff. I loved the pasta carbonara that was almost always served there and used to only having Noodles, frozen food and ice cream in my limited daily diet in Itaim, I usually left my grandparents' house quite satisfied.

Grandpa Licurgo's house was like one of those huge chalets we used to see in foreign movies. It had a rustic look on the outside and very modern features on the inside. From the ceiling lamps to the socket mirrors, every decoration detail was imported from Europe and wherever you went in the house, it was quite common to come across architectural subtleties that immediately referred to the times of Brazil as a colony of Portugal, a subject that we studied a lot in the College in History.

At that time, Uncle Luiz was still a boy who had just started studying electrical engineering and he was the one I spent most of my time with at Grandpa's house. He had a video game blaring in his room again and whenever we could, we'd spend hours playing endless games of Mario Kart, Tomb Raider or scarier games like Resident Evil.

Uncle Lu — as I called him — was the liveliest of my father's brothers and he was also the funniest. Whenever I visited, she liked to stuff me with treats like candy, toys, or books, and she didn't mind spending what little free time I had on weekends keeping myself entertained indoors while the adults talked about the boredom of inheritance. around the kitchen table or in the living room, drinking beer.

Uncle Luciano was already more of a grouchy grumbling type and we rarely exchanged any ideas even when we were alone somewhere in the house. He was even more focused on his studies, determined to learn every detail of the profession that all the men in the Rodrigues family had practiced since the beginning, and that made him incredibly boring and predictable.

The second of my grandfather's children was also the one that most mirrored his bossy and authoritarian personality and it was as if he really wanted to become the old man's preferred heir, no matter what the cost. Just like grandpa, Luciano made it clear how much he despised the profession that dad had chosen to pursue in college and whenever he could, during lunches or unpretentious family conversations, the fool managed to pin his brother.

— Ah, but this college to learn to travel the world is easy. I want to see how to assemble an integrated electrical circuit in less than an hour and present the result in front of an examining board without setting the entire building on fire. Now that is difficult!

Uncle Luciano's arrogance bothered me a lot even when I wasn't even old enough to understand the things he said, because I realized how the things he spit out of his mouth with his ironic tone hurt my father. I could see from their expressions how uncomfortable Lucius was with his own family's disapproval of what he was doing, and that, in a way, hurt me too.

The company that my grandfather had inherited from my great-grandfather and that had been in the family for several generations was called Eletroporto and occupied an entire office shed on the corner of one of the busiest avenues in Jardim Europa. It had that name as a tribute to the Portuguese ancestors of the family who had been born and raised in the city of Porto, northwest of the coast of Portugal and was one of the most respected companies in the field in São Paulo.

As he didn't understand anything about the subject and wasn't even interested in anything involving circuits, plates and electrodes, in the brief period in which Dad gave in and became part of the family business, he dedicated himself to working in the company's office. , taking care of the bureaucratic part that he dominated so much. Despite the jokes he usually had to hear from his father and brother Luciano, Lúcio was an important help for the company's growth in that period and knew how to organize all the documentation of the place with his administrative knowledge.

Dad had postponed his dream of becoming a respected tourism specialist so that the financial advance he got from Eletroporto would give his family the basic support they so badly needed in the first difficult years of his marriage to Mom. I understood that he was sacrificing himself so that I could have the conditions I currently enjoyed and that was exactly why I didn't condemn him for leaving in search of his professional fulfillment in Vitória. Although I missed his presence, his caresses and all the little attention he managed to give me with his professional life always so hectic, I could understand what had motivated him to travel so far from me and I forgave him for that.

Even far away, my father was still my great hero and I loved him very much.