This entry is part of the inaugural My Miami Migration Short Essay Contest. The program, created by Cátedra Vargas Llosa, was designed to engage young people in South Florida in the art of writing while reflecting on their migration experiences.
I was packing my things, in my suit bag I put everything that was important: my clothes, my
documents, my memories and “saudade”. Saudade is a word in Portuguese that means
melancholic due to the removal of a person, thing or place, or the absence of previously lived
pleasant experiences. At that moment I was teleported to my childhood.
Let’s start from the beginning. I was born in Brazil in a city called “Uberlandia”. My parents’ jobs made our family move frequently, so I never had long-term friends or something like this. It was always me, my sister, my mom and my dad. When I got to the sixty city, my parents made me a promise : this would be the last one.
For the first time, I began to create bonds, something I had always feared, because I felt like my relations had an “expiration date”. And that was my life for 5 years, trying to make friends, near to my family ,in my hometown. Everything felt perfect. Too perfect to be true. On a Wednesday night, my whole life changed.
I was studying for a big test that I would have on Friday. My mom entered my room, crying. She opened the door, got into her knees, and started praying. At this moment I already knew. Two weeks earlier, she had mentioned something about moving to Miami, but nothing was certain. I could feel it: we were leaving.
My world paralyzed. My friends. My family. My house. Everything.
The next day, after receiving this news, was even harder. Suddenly, every ordinary thing became the last time, the last day going to my school, the last day with my grandmother, the last day in my house. Those months were hard, packing things, documents and goodbyes. I was searching for schools and I found ISPA. It was a school filled with immigrant students adjusting to their new reality, perfect to me. But there was one small detail: I had only two months to learn Spanish.
Finally I got into the plane, at this point my mom and my sister were already in Miami. It was just me and my dad, entering the airplane that would arrive in our new life. This flight was a goodbye to the old and a hello to the new. Soon it would be just me and my parents, because my sister would go back to Brazil to College. She was always my bestfriend, and saying goodbye to her broke me inside.
The first day was hard, no friends, new country, new language and new life. I knew I had to be strong, for me, for my family. The pain of letting everything behind and starting from zero. The gratitude of a new country with a thousand opportunities. The pain of leaving or the pain of staying?
During my life, with so many changes, I learned that everything is about choosing. Choosing the comfort in the known or possibilities in the unknown. I used to say that I will never be 100% in just one place. There are Ana’s all over the cities that I live in. We are a mosaic of people who have passed by us, always carrying a little piece of others with us. I am a child of the world. I was born to change. And yet, change always brings consequences — saudade.