Cheia de Saudade

I've always had a thing with words—it's a mix of curiosity and admiration. The ability to appreciate words from three different languages is a blessing I do not take lightly. My favorite ones carry a more complex meaning, almost as if they are trying to explain the inexplicable. 

Serendipity. Ineffable.

As a Brazilian, I only began appreciating certain Portuguese words after moving from Brazil to New York. Saudade, for example, is my favorite word in Portuguese because it sounds poetic and because of what it can mean to so many different people.

Dictionary.com defines saudade as an "untranslatable Portuguese term that refers to the melancholic longing or yearning. A recurring theme in Portuguese and Brazilian literature, saudade evokes a sense of loneliness and incompleteness."

Portuguese scholar Aubrey Bell attempted to distill this complex concept in his 1912 book In Portugal, describing it as "a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present."

Bell continues to say that saudade is "not an active discontent or poignant sadness, but an indolent dreaming wistfulness." Saudade can more casually be used to say that you miss someone or something, even if you'll see that person or thing soon. It differs from nostalgia in that one can feel saudade for something that might never have happened. In contrast, nostalgia is "a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time."

Although I can relate to the definition above, I prefer the Brazilian dictionary's simpler version. It describes saudade as a melancholic feeling you get from being away from a person, a thing, a place, or the absence of pleasurable experiences you've once lived.

My mother, Cleusa Aparecida Paula, moved from Brazil to New York in 1996. I was still a baby. Saudade was a word we used daily over the 13 years we spent apart. I asked my mom to share the first thing she thought of when she heard the word. Her eyes sparkled in an innocent, child-like way. She gave me a naïve, sweet answer, that was able to transport me back to the farm she grew up in, even though I've never actually been there.

"It's been 26 years since I moved to this concrete jungle. I feel lots of saudade of my land. The smell of grass and the sound of roosters waking us up at dawn announcing a new day. The moo from the cattle and the horses' neigh. Happy dogs barking in excitement as they greet their owners. Little birds singing, and the parrots' endless conversations. Oh, how much saudade that makes me feel. I love to live in New York, but this feeling shall follow me forever." 

I missed my mom growing up. There was no such thing as Zoom or FaceTime during most of our time apart. Instead, we saw childhood and awkward puberty photos being shipped from my hometown to NYC, and in return, I'd get pictures of her in NYC touristy spots. In 2006, we got a pixelated, low-quality webcam and a very slow internet connection that made communication a bit more personable, even from afar. 

There's a Brazilian expression, "matando a saudade," which translates to "killing the saudade." It's when you act to ease the feeling of missing something or someone. 

It varies from finally seeing the person you have been longing to see, visiting a place you've been dying to return to, or simply catching up with a friend you haven't seen in years. Phone calls, photo albums, and occasional webcam conversations were our family's way to kill our saudades a little bit until we met again.

Although I missed my mom growing up, our distance took a far greater toll on her. After all, I had a loving family around me in Brazil, and she was very much present, even if from a distance. She enforced rules and disciplined us from another country, and my sister and I had an enormous sense of respect for her. 

While I was surrounded by my sister, aunt, grandma, and cousin, my mom didn't have a family with her. Before she met my stepdad, it was just a phone, photos, and lots of hard work to ensure her family had the best education and childhood possible. Even after she married, the void of not having her children around her wasn't easy to deal with. Still, she did a wonderful job. 

"The saudade I felt away from my girls was so intense that there were many nights where I often felt that emptiness, and I had to bite my pillow so I wouldn't scream," my mom said when asked to describe how it felt being away from my sister and me. "It would hurt so much that it felt like I was being stabbed in the heart," she added. 

She said that the days were often empty and colorless, but that her decision to pursue a new beginning to improve her and her daughters' lives kept her motivated all these years.

Both our birthdays are in April. Hers is April 1, and mine is April 14. I spent the pandemic away from her, and I can honestly say that I never thought that spending our birthdays apart in 2020 would make me feel a painful sense of saudade. While I don't spend as much time with her during our day-to-day routine during pre-and-post-pandemic days in New York, the idea of not being able to do that hurt me. I had a small taste of how it must've felt for her throughout the 13 years we spent apart. 

And if there's one thing I looked forward to when it was "over," was a long hug from mama. And you? What do you feel saudade of?