Life and Death

She was a girl, healthy, chubby and pale. Soon, her dark hair gave way to the blond and her eyes were becoming increasingly blue, as she grew.



"I think she inherited the German blood in the family" The mother explained all the time.



For her, caring a girl was different and rewarding. Laces, ribbons, dresses, what a joy to garnish a baby!



Besides the little girl, the cottage now also housed the mom's parents. 


The maternal grandfather needed special care after the stroke he had suffered. He did not move well and had some cognitive impairment. 


Still, when the blonde baby would fall asleep in the crib, he used to stand beside and watch her for hours, as observing an angel.



He had not a long life, leaving a widow grandmother (she was only five feet) and two sons still single, who soon departed for Rio de Janeiro in search of better luck.

Enciente

The recess lasted 20 minutes and was eagerly awaited. While the children went to the courtyard to play a little, she checked each one's notebooks and wrote praises in all homeworks. In those very well done, she used to draw a star with a red pen besides the word "excellent."

The children started screaming and suddenly gathered in the courtyard. A fight was going on. She ran to separate the troublemakers and to her amazement (and why not say, disappointment) her oldest son was involved in the feud.

After calming the students and putting them back in their wallets, she drew aside the bickering boys, with a fierce look to her own boy, as they left the room.

"I punched him, yes" he replied, resolutely.

"Why, son?" You've never been friend of fights! "

The son's face turned red, and he took several seconds before replying her, head down;

"He called you "enciente". I told him to stop talking like that, but he kept repeating it over and over... So I punched him."

She had become pregnant again in that early winter, and her belly grew disguised under heavy clothing. At that time, it was not common for parents to talk to their kids about some intimate issues, and their kids had no idea they would have another baby in the family in about four months.

"You thought your friend was saying something ugly about your mother? Come on, put your hand on my belly. You know what it means "enciente" in French? It Means "pregnant". See, I have a baby in my belly. "

At that very moment he felt her stomach squirming, and laugh out loud. Then, she spoke to him softly:

"What do you think? Is it a boy or girl, this time?"

Scare

Winter had arrived, and to wake the boys up was getting more and more difficult. But, she didn't pay too much attention to their tantrums and hurried them, so they were set always on time. 


The oldest had to go with her to the school, and the younger with the father to the milk deliveries.

"Bro" (abbreviation of little brother, nickname given by the oldest) loved to hold the liters of milk that the father carefully filled up, and to place them at the doors steps.

They were still half away from the whole day's delivery. The father asked his son to take a liter to a house across the street. Obediently, the boy got out the jeep and started going to the house. 


In fraction of seconds, another jeep appears from nowhere.  It was a police officer automobile, and it ran over the lad. The father only heard the loud and short noise of the car impact! 


But, before he could despair, he saw " Bro" standing up of the ground... He was holding the liter of milk with all his strength, smiling at the victory of not having let it be broken.

The policeman asked them thousand excuses, raising his hands to the sky praising the Lord that the boy hadn't had a single scratch.

The father taught his son about looking at the two sides before crossing a street, but first he hugged him for a long time.

Only after the policeman had gone away, the father whispered to " Bro ":

" We are going to tell mom about this, only tomorrow, ok? "

Substitute

One day, the oldest son arrived at home earlier. The teacher had not been going to give classroom, and the school, so tiny and precarious it was, had not a substitute teacher. And that happened again and again.

The mother went there to know what was going on, and she offered herself to help. She had studied and completed Junior High, and for those children it was more than enough.

The oldest son was very confused, he couldn't figure out if he should call her mom or teacher. But, he was actually a little bit proud to find out that his mother was so clever.

When teacher Woetoo returned, after almost a month of license, she found her students doing very well in all matters. So, she talked to the principal and handed over her class to the new teacher.

The mother's routine changed completely. She had to get up earlier to arrive on time at the school, and before that, she had to help milking the cows, prepare coffee, bridle the horse in the cart and wrap the youngest son up to leave him at the grandfather's home. Then, she would teach up to the eleven o'clock and return to the ranch with the oldest son, helping him at the way back home with some math lessons.

Afterwards, she would begin her second journey: to heat the food up, to put the kitchen in order, to wash and to iron the clothes, to prepare the classroom for the next day, to watch over the boys in the back yard, to do the dinner, to prepare the boy's bath, to set them in bed and to pray with them.

The spare time, she would share it between her husband's needs and her devotion to God. From this last one she got her strength and would never give up. 

School

" What about this lad, is he going to study, or not? " The Grandfather asked.

The nearest elementary school was approximately three kilometers away. It was the same school that the father had studied up to the 4th grade, only.

In the first day, the boy and the mother went to school together and she taught him well the way, so he could go to school by himself. As they arrived there, they waited in the teacher's room until she had finished explained the Portuguese lesson to the class.

" Can he read something, mom? "

" Still not, but he's a fast mind "

And that was really the case. The boy was agile of mind, interested and easy to relate to. Pretty soon, he was leading the colleagues to the games at lunch break, and going very well in Mathematics. He became the favorite student of the teacher, Mrs. Woetoo.

The grandfather was always teasing him:

" "Woe to" you if you don't do your homework… "

That was the only thing he didn't liked about school, homework. The world seemed to call him outside, and he couldn't wait to finish those unending minutes spent on the handwriting exercise books. But, the grandfather was always right... "Woe To"…