Even in heavenly beaches it might rain (3/3)

There, in that beach in Ilha Grande, sitting down under the rain, the man I just met tells me his story:

‘I am from New York. A long time ago, I believed I had everything, that I was completely happy.

I had a good job with a good salary, a wife who loved me and a clever son. I enjoyed my job and worked a lot, even during the weekend.

One day, my wife told me she was preparing a surprise party for our son’s birthday. She insisted that I do not forget, that he would be happy that his dad was there for his 10^th birthday. 10 years old, already? I thought. And suddenly I realized that, absorbed with my work, I did not spend much time with him, that we had not spent any weekend together, that I never took him to the cinema or restaurant, I did not know what he liked playing with. 

A lot of people talk about the crisis when you get 30, 40. I had a crisis when my son became 10. Which present would we buy for him? I thought about offering him a trip. For the first time, we would go on holidays together.

I let him chose the destination. I thought he would say World Disney or something like that. ‘I want to see James Bond’s cable car’, he said. He meant Rio de Janeiro, which appeared in one of the James Bond films, Moonraker.

That was how I came to Brazil for the first time. We spent a few days in Rio, we took the cable car 4 or 5 times, and after that we followed the coast and found this island. And here, in this beach where we are now, I realized that that last week, those days spent with my wife and son, were the happiest I could remember.

One year later we left our jobs in New York, we bought a pousada and we moved here. It was my wife’s idea. My son adapted very fast to his new life. He learnt Portuguese and went playing with the other kids. And here we are. We haven’t become rich, we haven’t got as much money as we had before, nor we have had a successful career, but we found something else. Here we live peacefully, enjoying every day what most people enjoy only once a year. 

When he finishes, stops talking and I get into my thoughts. I do not know why he told me his story, how he sensed that he could help me. But slowly, I start seeing things in a different way, with a new perspective.

Now I understand that my mother, back in Barcelona, was feeling lonely. My father asked her divorce. My sister went to study abroad and stayed there. And me... I lived there, like her, but I was so busy that we did not meet often.

I realize that my mother looks younger, healthier, more energetic and dynamic than before. I realize that, while we walked, I was tired and she had to wait for me.

I understand that, here, she has found a new way of life that she likes, that she is happy here, and I have to respect her decision.

I watch the sea: I have the feeling that it is smiling at me. 

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