On a Pentecost Sunday, at a Feast of the Holy Ghost, over 65 years ago, my dad Jesuino, then aged 15 years, and my mom Grimaneza, 14 years old, glanced and smiled at each other from a distance. For another entire year, they did not speak or meet in private, but smiled as they promenaded past each other as they walked around the city of Angra, Terceira, or in the city garden, or saw each other at the Portuguese feasts. It was not until the following year, again at the Holy Ghost Feast, when they finally began to talk and began the romance that lasted ten years. Our super handsome, very energetic and a little overconfident dad, would walk or run or ride his motor bike up the hill from the city every day and twice on Sundays, to stand on the sidewalk and talk to mom. He never missed a day except when he was sick. He would do this in the rain and in the wind, at all times of year and he must have walked hundreds, thousands of kilometers in those ten years. He was not allowed inside the front gate, or in the yard, or in Vovo Carlos’s house. The rules of society were extremely strict and Avo Helena was super strict. Mom stood on the second-floor window to speak to dad, and always in a formal and respectable tone, because Avo was certainly listening from inside the room. No cuddling or kissing, and no sexy talk between mom - a serious young lady who did not suffer fools, and dad - a crazy kid who loved to tease the bulls with his motorbike and deep-sea snorkeling. Thank goodness dad was persistent. Thank goodness mom was patient. He asked her to him on a Holy Ghost Sunday, and they married the following April in 1965. I was born 13 months later, coincidently, on the weekend of the Feast of the Holy Ghost. Mom, a trained seamstress who worked from home, cared for me and made clothes to earn money on the side, while dad worked on the American Air Force base in Terceira.  They remembered this part of their lives as a simple and modest, surrounded with a large extended family, filled with the holy feasts and bull fights. This was strict society of with clear dos and don’ts of how life should be. Women were allowed to work outside the home only if it wanted to be a nurse or a teacher, but only until they got married - then you became a homemaker and mother. The only other choice for women was to join the Church and become a nun. Men who were not farmers and worked outside the home, usually worked in the same company for life, not moving up unless someone died or retired. Opportunities to get ahead and move up in the world were few. So, it is not surprising that my parents followed their relatives to America in 1969 when I was only two years old. Like everyone else who emigrates, their hope was to achieve a better life and make a better future for their children. Lowell was then a place where garment workers like mom were valued, and dad, being fluent in English, had an advantage. They went to work the first Monday after they arrived. What they do not tell you in that American opportunity story is that it is possible, but it is also extremely hard. Their life, our lives, changed forever. From a small environment of families and small cities to an extremely fast and drastically different society of factory workers, different language, unfamiliar social rules, babysitters, piecework, tenement buildings and shabby neighborhoods. I learned to speak English on Sesame Street. Mom made my clothes for school from cheap fabric swatches she found on sale. It was tough to be so young and thrown into such a different life. We suffered culture shook for years, but somehow my parents maintained and passed down their traditions, religion, and language. But as my mother says, ‘once you leave yOur homeland, you forever have one foot in America, and one foot in Terceira. Never truly here, and never able to go back either.’ They never stopped longing for their homeland. David was born in the US, but we tragically lost our little sister at birth a couple of years later. Mom and Dad bought themselves a home and moved out of the old Portuguese neighborhood. That was quite a bold statement at the time. That home became a hub and a haven for so many, both extended family and close friends. In that house, my own family, our friends Judy and her family, and my Godfather John and Sharyn, have called the first-floor apartment their home. That home became a haven for nieces and nephews, who found refuge when they needed it most like Paul, Charlie, and Suzanne. Our foster sister Cindy found safe place to give birth to her son Joshua and other foster kids found a temporary but safe home when they needed it. Children who needed a safe place and loving care while their parents worked for a living found safety there too. That included my own kids, David’s kids, and others like Jonathan and Filipe Miguel who were like grandkids from other mothers. Except for this past Christmas, because COVID robbed us or our last Christmas together as a family, we would gather, eat the overabundance of food mom made, exchange gifts, tell stories and pass on traditions to the younger generation. So many Sundays, while Avo Maria lived with us, we spent on Sunday drives to nowhere. Me in the front seat between our parents and my brother in the middle in the back between the Vavos, who would NOT allow us to open the windows too much because it would mess up their blue tinged hair dos. This was all before we had a car with air conditioning. Sometime after, dad bought his first car with AC, and we never went without AC again. Dad loved a new car. One of the last things he said to me while he could still speak was to make sure I took his car for a ride. One the way home from these outings, dad would always stop for ice cream to eat it in the car. Except for the kids-we had to eat outside the car, so we would not dirty the car. Mom and dad sacrificed and worked hard and expected us to work hard too. There was no excuse that you were too young to help around the house. I learned to dust the living room and wash the floor when I was five.  David was a little smarter; he would pay Paul to do his chores. When we were little, Dad would take us to his work on Saturdays and Sundays. He would let David ride on the forklift with him. David had the privilege of working with dad at Joan Fabrics too. They would go to work on Saturday mornings together. Our parents worked in several different factories and industries, that at one time, were the backbone of this city. They made it possible for us to travel every summer on long road trips. We made it as far north as Canada, as far west as Pennsylvania Dutch country. Every July vacation week, Mom would pack a suitcase, a cooler with Coca Cola and beer and we would drive all day to a different destination, turn around mid-week and come back home. Dad would only need a map and a brief case of tools in case the car broke down. They never made reservations and they had no credit cards. This was before GPS, but dad had an excellent sense of direction, and he would find a way to where we wanted to go. David and I would fight to lie stretched on opposite sides of the back bucket seat. When I got sick of fighting for space with him, I would lie in the back window and watch the sky go by. No kids’ seats. Nobody wore a seat belt. Sometimes dad would let me sit on his lap and steer the car. It is amazing what we got away with in those days. Fast food drive-thrus were a foreign idea back then, so we would have a big breakfast in the morning at whatever restaurant we found along the road. Mom always packed cheese and butter sandwiches and fruit for snack until we stopped at a motel for dinner and for the night. My brother and I were always on the look-out for a motel with a pool. Sometimes dad would stop at a dozen motels to check for vacancy and price, and always ‘what are the pool hours’ trying to keep us happy. Because what we wanted to do most on every vacation, was swim. If we found a heated pool that was open late enough or early enough that we could get in a swim before we set off in the morning again, that was the best vacation day ever. We are full of wistful and wonderful memories of weeks in Cape Code searching for crabs in the shallows at low tide, to rock surfing on the Kancamagus highway, to boat rides on Lake George New York in a thunderstorm. There were weekends grilling and picnicking on the lake or pond with friends where dad tried in vain to teach me how to swim. When we got a little older, we went to Portugal where we learned a hard lesson, the necessity of hotel reservations. We would hire a taxi and driver for the day and see all the sites we could squeeze in. Sometimes dad would rent a car and we once drove from Lisbon to the border of Spain in a little European compact. Both of us, and my friend Cheryl squashed into a compact back seat in a car made only for four passengers. Our mother would hide her head on the crazy high speed European highways every time someone would try to pass us. We saw so many cathedrals and Roman ruins and castles and little fortified towns. That entire vacation is a stream of memories like a medieval movie. We eventually did go back to the Azores several times, the last time when our own kids were little, and we toured the observatory where dad grew up and Avo Abilio worked, the house where our grandparents are had lived, and the garden where I once roamed and played. He saw volcanoes, caverns, and hot vents and bulls grazing in the wilds of the Azorean hill country. Of course, more cathedrals, and castles. Julie and I shared a joke about how mom could not pass a town without stopping someplace to pray. We visited so many families and friends; I still cannot keep their relations straight. Mom told all the stories of when they were children and the places our parents played and grew up. And there were so many graves to place flowers in remembrance. I must mention the cemeteries because we visited as many dead relatives as living ones and mom knows all the relationships and has a story for each ancestor. When we were adults and raising families of our own, they went back to Azores together, but also took cruises to Bermuda and the Mediterranean with their own friends. These vacations seemed tedious as a child and boring as a teenager, but now I understand the value of what we experienced and how much we learned. And the love they put into including us in everywhere we went. We now treasure every minute we shared together as a family. And I must admit that the Azores is a beautiful place, rich in history and tradition. I do not know how they had the courage to leave, but I understand now why dad missed it so much. Dad was so much to us, but few know how much he meant to others. These last few days, others have shared how they felt about HIM, and I hear things like, ‘a gentle soul, a true gentleman, a good worker, a spiritual man, a good friend, and always ready to help. There are the countless people dad taught to drive. The new immigrants that dad helped find jobs. The places he took people because they did not drive or could not speak English. He would take Dan to doctors and service appointment and very often to school. When we had visitors from abroad, he would take them to see Boston, the mountains, museums, Cape Cod, all over the place. He helped people fill out forms and applications. We would always stop at Browns at Seabrook Beach for a snack, and when money was tight, we would share a box of fried shrimp in the car. But there were always cheese and butter sandwiches and fruit in the trunk. There was always a special sandwich for dad because he did not like cheese, butter, or tomatoes. No one ever went hungry at our house, in fact mom considers it rude if you do not agree to take a plastic container of leftovers home. Anything my mom wanted to buy or do, he never said no. There is not a single thing at home that my mom and dad did not buy together. There was nothing my parents would not do to help others in need. Dad was an outstanding father, even better and more patient as he aged and became a grandfather. He adored his nieces and nephews. He loved to help my mom bake and set the tables when they would come over for the holidays. He was a best friend to me. I would joke with him that he was my live-in handyman and landscaper.  There is not a room in my home that I can walk in that he did not help me paint, or wallpaper. Some rooms we had done more than once; the bathrooms at least twice. Every wall, every doorknob, every switch plate, every plant in the yard reminds me of when we did this together or he showed me how to do that. All his tools are just where he used them last. I walked by his baseball cap hanging on the cellar stairs the other day. It still smells like him. His car is in the driveway, just like he had just come home from running errands for mom. His loss leaves a whole in our lives that would take several individuals to fill. His presence left a richness of love, an aura of comfort and calm. I can still hear him in my head, find myself thinking, ‘I need to ask dad about that.’ We love you Dad. We think we did not tell you enough and how much. We miss you terribly, but we are glad to have you as our guardian angel now. May your legacy and love follow us all the rest of our days, and your stories inspire family yet to be born. Thank you all for joining us and letting us share these memories on this difficult day, Saturday, July 17, 2021.