My Vóvó

Sixty-nine years ago, on a speck of land floating 850 miles off the coast of Portugal, a girl was born who looked a lot like me. She had long dark brown hair, brown eyes, and fair skin. But she was shorter, only five feet tall, with a frail build due to malnutrition. Her family was so poor that she slept on a rough bed of corn husks gathered on a dirt floor. At eleven years old, she had to abandon her schooling to help at home. She quickly learned the importance of work as she milked her family’s cow with her tiny hands and gathered potatoes, kale, blackberries, and more in their small garden. She also helped her mother prepare dinner for her and her six younger siblings. The family ate while huddled around a small petroleum-lit candle because they had no electricity, and the dark soot streaked across their noses like warpaint and lingered until morning,

This little girl from São Jorge island would grow up to be my grandmother.

As a teenager, she married my future grandfather, and in their twenties, together with their infant daughter, they fled the dire economic conditions in the Azores for America. She arrived with very little money—but also with her work ethic intact. After moving in with a cousin she knew in the Central Valley of California, she decided to begin milking cows on dairy farms to earn money. She worked with the energy of a small typhoon and did so well that she and her husband eventually earned enough money to start a small dairy farm of their own. It still stands today, and they still live there.

She is still thin, and because of her age, her skin now wrinkles like the swells of the Atlantic ocean around the Azores, but she is still beautiful because smooth surfaces are not the only beautiful ones—as the Atlantic ocean proves. Her eyes are a light hazel brown like the color of the sand on the Azores beaches, and her hair is soft like the clouds above them. 

She still has the same work ethic as when she lived there. She now has arthritis in her hands and her back hurts often, but she continues to push through and work to provide for her family. At 4 am every morning, she and my grandfather wake up to milk and care for the cows. She can never sit still like a rushing river that doesn’t stop, she is always cooking something new, washing the dishes, or cleaning the house; even when she sits down to watch TV she is still knitting. She will clean when she’s bored, and she can’t even go to bed without cleaning all the dishes first. I think no one else’s work ethic compares to hers. 

Just as when she was eleven years old, caring for her family remains very important to her. She is the person who watches over me and my two younger siblings because my parents didn’t go to college and have to work long hours to make ends meet. She makes meals for us and checks that we have done our homework. Every night she also cooks for her and my grandpa, and then she gets two Hershey kisses from the cabinet in her kitchen and goes to the living room to give one to him. They sit together watching Portuguese television until they decide to go to bed. She has eight grandchildren now, including me. Whenever we come over, she opens the door for us with a big smile before we get out of the car and greets us with a homemade meal she has just prepared.

She is also an anxious person and can overthink things, usually because she never wants us to experience what she went through when she was younger. If anyone is sick, she might think it is worse than it actually is because she cares for the person excessively; she constantly asks if we have eaten yet, but this is only through the goodness of her heart. Sometimes she cares too much about what others think about clothing, maybe because she grew up with one pair of shoes and wore dresses her mother made; as a result, she always wants us to look nice when we go out and often picks out what everyone will wear. However, she has no flaws in my eyes—she only wants the best for her family.

Memories of her past are important to her. She is often in the kitchen wearing her apron from the Azores islands to remind her of home. Blue with red stitching along the sides, it is her favorite apron. She also raised me to speak Portuguese, another link to the past.

Although she was not able to learn many things because she did not go to school, and she doesn’t know how to speak English, she is still the most intelligent, sharp, and hardworking person I know. She came to America to create a better life for her children, which then made a better life for us, her grandchildren. Every time I visit her, I can observe her ways in the kitchen, learn from her, and help her out as much as possible. She did so much for me and my family, now it is my turn to give back to my vóvó (grandmother) as much as I can.
 

nicolebettencourt

CA

19 years old