After the meltdown over the nameless faceless poem, I go
through days of self doubt, questioning everything,
completely letting go of all sense of control, and begin
once again to face my fears.

I make two lists… pros and cons… and consider the good,
the bad, and the ugly of this relationship I work so hard to
maintain.   Am I trying too hard?
One obvious obstacle is distance.  Our lives are so different,
and that alone makes so much out of sync.
It takes will and determination to stay truly in touch, and on
the same wave length, and it has to come from both sides.

Meanwhile, his reality revolved around a sick and aging Aunt,
who he was feeling very responsible for, and the next time
I called him, he’d had little sleep in four days.
Exhaustion and frustration led him to vent at me for
doubting him…  a bunch of rage came at me.

It seems the poem was something he wrote to Me….
before I ever even Came to Brasil… it was his alter self,
fearing all his feelings would culminate in nothing at all,
with my never showing up, and he would be
left with pain and sorrow.
“You Didn’t Come…”

That was the poem, after all.  And why didn’t he Tell me this?
I have no idea. Was he embarrassed to show his fears?
So I had been allowed to stew away, and for some reason
he had felt the need to test me, I guess…

Not much was really said, and all I could do was to
leave him with…”well…call me when you feel like talking.”

Finally, days later, he left a message at my friend’s saying
“I want to talk with you”, and so once again I called.

“I trust No one,” he tells me.
“I have been alone all my life…
This is the first time in my life that I feel like I could
be with someone that is an Equal.

“I am never away from you…
but then you know, if this thing doesn’t work out,
well, I can get another woman…
…maybe not one of the Caliber of you…
but…I can do that”

He gives, and he takes away…

He was drinking bloody marys, relaxing after the Aunt
had finally gotten better and come home from the hospital.

“I think I’m going to have to bury the bitch” he says…
which means he knows he has to stay and take care of her.
“I just keep seeing my Grandmother cringing.”

His Grandmother had been the one person who loved and
cared for him, and it seems that Aunt Maria and she were….
… Companions.
She had been younger, and the Grandmother and
Grandfather adopted her, and gave her a new life, after
living in complete and utter poverty as a child.

Grandma and she were life companions from there forward,
and I guess Grandpa loved Grandma so much, he went along
with it.  An interesting twist in an already convoluted family…

So when Grandma died, Aunt Maria was just Aunt Maria….
she’d been there many many years, and was part of the family.
She had all of Grandma’s dishes, linens, and kept her altar
with all the sacred icons set up in a closet in her house,
which I was privileged to see.
They still cooked with Grandma’s pots, even though they were
old beat up Aluminum,  scratched and poisoning the food…

She and Alcir had Grandma as this huge and mutual bond
together, and it was the mainstay of their relationship.
The rest of it was quite adversarial, competitive, and
they just loved to argue….constantly.
In some ways, it was as though they were siblings…

They would fight over Grandmas things too…even the
little glass dishes, and the forks that kept going back
and forth between kitchens.

Then he made it clear that he wanted me to come back to Brasil….
but while letting him know I planned to, and soon,
I now had commitments and plans, and also needed to
make money for the next ticket…. he certainly
wasn’t offering to pay for it…

“I’m not a very nice person when I don’t drink,” he complained….
“This is me…. you know this me….
I am still here, but I’m trapped inside this shell of a looser….
I want MYSELF back!”

…and then he added one last touching thing…
“I want to remake myself from what’s inside you!”