True Stories I Found in the House I Grew Up

Digging up the true stories and bones I left behind

Emotion always gets me when the plane is approaching land, and I can see the jungles and the green forest below; I see mist and low clouds, and I become flooded with memories of when I was a kid growing up in Brazil. Many people my age don’t have the luxury of visiting the house they grew up; for now, I still have this treasure that belongs to my sisters and me. But not for long

The true stories come from two houses. The first is my parents' house, which I was raised in until I was a teenager, and the other is my Aunt Lucia's house, a few houses down the street. I consider them both to be the houses of my past.

My Aunt Lucia was married to a construction guy who built both houses—one for her and the other for my parents. After Aunt Lucia died, my parents bought the house that then belonged to her daughter. This house is part of my later adult life.

My Aunt Lucia was an intelligent and fascinating woman. She married a man of humble beginnings, to whom my aunt was a source of guidance and self-improvement. She fell in love with him because of his raw power, potential, looks, and thirst for success, which later turned out to be disastrous for both. 

He started as a genitor of a construction company, and later would become the owner, and then hit the jackpot by winning a government contract to build a highway connecting Rio de Janeiro to the mountain town called Petropolis. This was a huge deal.

Petropolis was the summer town of Portuguese emperor D. Pedro II, who was inspired by his father, D. Pedro I, who wanted to create a small European Shangrila in the mountains. A beautiful region with mild temperatures up in the Serra da Estrela mountain range that reminded the emperor of Europe. D. Pedro II then brought 500 German families to colonize this town. It was the cutest and coolest place to live in the 1960s, with a small population, beautiful scenes, and homes.

The city of Rio de Janeiro’s elite would build beautiful summer homes near the Imperial family to escape Rio’s infernal summers. Many of these beautiful homes still exist today, but the town struggles with an ever-increasing population and little infrastructure.

Petropolis was once a placid, temperate, tropical town with a European accent but has now become overpopulated with poorly constructed dwellings encroaching up the deforested mountainsides. Severe social inequality in Brazil has left visible scars everywhere. The streets now are filled with cars in never-ending swarms of delivery moto-boys cruising at high velocity and defying their good luck, carrying food, pizzas, or propane tanks. I call the ones with the propane tanks moto-bombs. But let’s go back to my Tia Lucia.

Lucia was an intelligent, beautiful, and stylish woman who loved to spoil me when I was a kid. After her husband's big financial success, all she wanted was to become a big socialite in the small pond of Petropolis. She dressed in beautiful designer clothes and hats and was eager to build the coolest house in town, just like the Rio's elite would do with their old money.

The house was not to be traditional at all but strictly modern, following all the design etiquette of the time. And the hottest thing at the time in Brazil was the American designer Frank Lloyd Wright's mid-century modern architecture. However, in Brazil, Wright’s design was of course infused with architect Oscar Niemeyer’s futuristic and minimalist lines, all in a tropical Brasilian utopian fantasy. Sergio Júdice, a renowned architect at the time, designed the house.

She loved to entertain and bought expensive modern furniture. She had a game room, a bar, and a giant fish tank acting like a wall dividing the living room from the dining room, a popular thing in the 1950s. Her only daughter threw little festinhas - animated little parties. 

But the good life would not last. Success and money went to Lucia's husband's head, and soon, they were in a constant quarrel. A bitter divorce would soon follow, in which both would spend the rest of their money in legal battles over their grievances.

After both my parents passed away, they had lived in this house for thirty-five years. The house is now in disarray. My younger sister, who still lives in Petropolis, rented the house because we couldn't bring ourselves to sell it. First, it was rented to a hoarder during a scary infestation of scorpions in the neighborhood; the second tenant was a crazy woman who never paid her bills, cleaned, and nearly destroyed the house, leaving a mess behind that took weeks to clean. 

Coming to the rescue

After a somewhat turbulent landing, we arrived at Tom Jobin International Airport in Rio de Janeiro. Even though we landed in Miami amidst Hurricane Milton for our connecting fligh. Landing in Rio rattled my nerves just a bit more.

As our ride out of Rio makes the final turn, I see the street where I grew up. Nothing has changed. It is a steep and crooked street paved with old cobblestones. I know several of those personally, like old friends. Thin rain falls just like in the old days, and there is an exciting but somewhat eerie feeling about returning to this place. 

I look at the house from the car, and I get the feeling that this is going to be hard. The house is in shambles, just an empty shell of its former self. The walls are filled with mold stains. The swimming pool is like a green swamp infested with mosquito larvae. Rotten doors need to be replaced, and bad handymen have done a terrible job sanding the once beautiful wood floors and leaving them unfinished. 

I opened the gate and saw my first ghost—my dad. It was like he was there. The last time he greeted me at that same spot, he cried to see me; it was the first and last time I saw my dad crying. I see my parents everywhere. 

I look at the left side of the gate, and my aunt Lucia's ashes are buried there in the garden, as well as my other aunt, Zadira's, in the same spot. There are so many gosht here. I don’t mind them, and I enjoy the memories. As we age, we get used to ghosts.

This house is an amalgam of deep memories of my family and all the people I knew; little of it remains. Families are born, grow, and fall apart. That is our natural cycle of things. But sometimes, I think of how my precious family could have vanished in thin air like this. It feels like we are in the future, and the future doesn't look so great.

There is a kid ghost of me asking my aunt for candy, the ghost of my teenage friends, and the ghost of all my family and friends having Sunday lunch. We had such a lively and social life here. Sometimes, I look at a corner and see my mom reading a book or simply napping. It’s all gone now, and few people can share these memories with me.

There is a tropical forest near the house, and the birds wake me up at five in the morning. There is a particular one called Sabia Laranjeira. I wish you could hear it live. These sounds are imprinted on my DNA. A feeling of tranquility takes over me, as it used to be when I napped on my parents' couch after Sunday lunch. There is nothing quite like it. And to have this feeling once again was rare and precious.

My younger sister now lives in the house, but it is too much for her to pay. It is a white elephant way beyond her means—a huge house too big for only two—her and her young son. We need to sell this house as soon as possible. If we don't, it will fall apart further and further, thus making us hardly any money.

We finally found a good realtor who took good photos of the house. And I hope to find a suitable person who loves and cares for the home like our family did. 

Now it’s time to patch some holes and heal the wounds of the walls and floors. We do the best we can at least cosmetically. There are no tools in the house, and we have to fix things with what we have. At least to make a good first impression on buyers. I hope to find someone who loves style and sees the potential of this house. 

I found an old water pressure cleaner that belonged to my dad, and miraculously, it still works. However, there is no hose to attach it. I found some pieces of a hose, but there is no way of mending them. Lucky for me, I still have the help of Francisco, a man who used to work for my dad. 

Francisco magically finds the little improvised tools that can mend it with an ancient plier and some rusted wire. But water gushes from the junction, and soon, the two sides come flying apart under pressure. He said, "Don’t worry. Can you find a nail?" 

I found a nail, and Francisco pierced it through the two hoses with an ancient hammer that belonged to my dad, guaranteeing they would never come apart. I was touched by Francisco's simplicity and spirit of improvisation, and at that moment, I felt that anything and everything could be possible if we kept going forward. Necessity is the mother of all inventions.

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This house is my last connection to this old world of people and the social situations of my past in Brazil. Once the home is sold, this connection will be gone. But maybe we can keep going and keep mending things with the precarious tools we have. Perhaps I'll buy a new, smaller home with the money from the house and keep my connection to Brazil alive. I'll have something to take care of and somewhere to go. I'll come and spend three months at a time. I'll pierce a nail and keep these two worlds connected as Francisco did to the hoses.

This post is my homage to the rich story of this house that was the home and joy for so many members of my family. Amen

Update: I've decided to buy the house. My younger sister and I will buy my older sister out. I'm delightfully planning to renovate the house and not only bring it to where it once was but beyond. We'll be spending about part of the year there. I can't wait.