Meetings and farewells

This was our first Christmas with our grandson, and there were so many gifts that Santa even sent one of his helpers:


Uncle Felipe surprised us arriving on Christmas eve, he and the great-uncles and aunts finally met Guilherme, and Christmas day was as every Christmas should be, with a gathering of the family and much happiness.





On the following day my sister-in-law called early in the morning to tell us her grandfather had left us on Christmas evening, he was 96 and had been married for 73 (!) years. I didn't know him well, but I'll remember him as a happy person who enjoyed dancing on family events...

Inn the afternoon, I was working at my office and listening, without paying much attention, to some noises and talk on the street. When I decided to look through my window, I saw a fire truck parked in front of the house on the other side of the street, where the big mulberry tree on the front yard was leaning in a 45 degree angle.


Well, to make a long story short, the firemen brought a huge crane and lifted the tree almost to a vertical position. I thought they would climb and saw the tree crown branch by branch. But they chose the easy way, lowering the tree to the street. However, diligent and well-meaning, but without an engineer to advise them, the firemen cut other two trees on the sidewalk that were blocking the way. I can understand that firemen don't appreciate trees very much, due to so many incidents during rain season; but when you think of all the effort of so many people to keep the little green that's left on the city, it is sad to see two trees destroyed for nothing...
While the firemen were working, almost at sunset time, it started raining and the sun showed up among the clouds. I thought: there must be a rainbow! I went to my backyard and there it was, maybe the most beautiful rainbow I've seen in São Paulo. Too bad it is so difficult to photograph them...


I know that rainbows are the result of refraction and decomposition of solar light by rain drops:
but leaving science aside, they have something magical and a never cease to admire them.
And specially on this day, I prefer to think that it came to tell us everything is fine, that in paradise there is a happy man who likes to dance enjoying the shade of a beautiful mulberry tree and two smaller trees, and that this is life: babies that are born and grandparents that leave; trees that sprout and trees that fall.

Or, as the Brazilian lyricist Fernando Brandt says so well,

"To arrive and to leave
Are just two sides of the same trip
The train that arrives
Is the same train that leaves
The time of meeting
Is also a farewell
The platform of this station
Is the life of this place of mine"...