Remember to Roll

This story contains references to a prior story, "Bridging the Distance" , which may not be clear unless you have read Bridging the Distance.

The following exerpt, from Bridging the Distance, will help you understand whatRomeiros are: ..."a group of penitent men traverse the island in search of forgiveness for their sins, the sins of their family and the sins of those who could not be bothered to join them. With only a monk’s robe on their back and a rosary to keep count of their prayers and the passage of time, as each bead is rolled under the left thumb-nail and passed into an accommodating palm with the regularity of a proper wall-clock, weary Romeiros will drop in unannounced and randomly upon unsuspecting homes and they are always greeted with a warm meal, a cup of tea and a dry bed on which to spend the night. The following morning they depart in the comfort of a full stomach and piece of mind, leaving reparation in the form of a Hail Mary and an Our Father to fortify the home of their keepers".

Remember to Roll

Its hard to remember to roll when you fall from such a great distance.

I first landed at Toronto International Airport in June of 1973. I should probably say, I first landed anywhere in June of 1973, for I had never flown before that day, not even in the secret depths of my demented dreams. Dreams, obscure and illusory as they are, always have as their foundation some form of reality, some form of experience, shaped, however loosely, by what you have known. But, my nine year old feet, light as they were, had always been planted on this familiar ground.

In June of 1973 I was plucked from God’s green garden, lifted from my snug nest, where everything was cozy and real, where birds have wings and horses gallop and millipedes float on uncountable legs across the smooth green leaves of banana trees. I was plucked and flung, on a great silver catapult, across the salt flavored vastness of the Atlantic air, to a place I could not have dreamed up. You are by now familiar with the green nest I left behind and, no doubt, you are familiar with the place in which I landed, but not through my eyes, not through the wonder-filled, unblinking, fear-full teary eyes of a 9 year old sterling who has just been dropped from his perch and told that the appendages he has thus far used to race toy cars along the jagged edges of volcanic rock fences, to hold snacks of cocoa sprinkled banana and butter sandwiches, to swim the ocean-side pools of Avenida Antero Quental, to wipe the salty tears extracted by the vacuum of loved ones, to tag a dying cousin as she hopscothches home from school, must now be used to keep him afloat – No, the wide opened eyes and the mouth agape will not do it for you son, you must keep on moving, and remember to roll when you fall, remember to roll.

On a warm late evening in June, of 1973, I fell from the sky. Its hard to remember to roll when you fall from such a great distance.

I fell from thirty seven thousand feet, multiplied by six hundred years of history, times nine years of forever – that’s a long way to fall. Remember to roll son – that’s what my father taught me. His frequent trips to the bathroom were a telling sign of his anxiety, further corroborated by the failure of his memory, for he could remember but one English phrase, “orange juice, please,” and so we drank orange juice each time the stewardess offered us coffee, tea, a blanket, even, I’m sure, when she offered to turn off our overhead lights allowing my baby brother the comfort of darkness, which covers the unknown and fools us all into complacency. “Orange juice, please,” – my father was already rolling. “Orange juice, please,” no wonder he spent so much time in the loo. I must have been concerned, then, as my eyes traced his path to the back of the plane, and out the back door, into that starry night, fearing he had changed his mind and decided to climb the Milky Way back home. But, undoubtedly, he would return, looking somewhat relieved and generally unscathed, but for a few drops caught on the leg of his pants as he tinkled on the stars, for their pearly offering was insufficient ransom for those under his care. My father was tough and loyal. He taught me resilience when he pissed on the stars, he taught me how to roll when I fell from the sky.

If there’s one thing I learned from my father, its how to roll. He rolled when he fell into a foreign world, armed with his health and the love of his family, weighed down by only four suit cases and two small carry-all chests, in which all of our belongings could fit, with still enough room to stuff already fading memories. He rolled when he fell from a sales manager job a Galaria de Modelos onto a lumber yard on the edge of lake Ontario. He rolled when he emerged from our burning flat wherein at least one of our “hope” chests was fully consumed. He rolled when the home he had worked so hard to acquire was swooped from under him by the fast rising tide of inflation. My father has never fallen on all fours, for he has been sustained by the wings of a hard working wife who gladly softens the fall. And so, he rolls, they roll, we roll – we must roll, for man is not meant to be on all fours – my father has taught me that.
My father has taught me how to spot men on all fours and he has shown me, by example, how to stay on my feet. My father has never taught me but by example. He has never had to tell me I should not beg, borrow or steal, he has never once sat me down and told me not to lower myself to that unnatural quadrupedic position, but he has come through loud and clear, like a bullhorn in the nervous silence of purgatory, where each man is directed to his evermore. Although the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming, your Honor, I shall submit but one telling event for the court’s consideration: He kept me on my feet that one day when, at a distant cousins wedding, two drunk men fell on all fours and fist fought over some menial slight, I’m sure, and everyone ran to consume the outrage, that is to say, everyone but my father. His integrity and distaste for the disrespect of it all was magnetic, and I sat with him, alone in an otherwise empty room. He, never once lifting his stare from his tasty meal, and I, thought tested by the burning seat of my pants, never once lifting my disbelieving eyes from his disinterested posture. That scene has always personified a lyric I have come to appreciate, “take care of those you call your own, and keep good company.” Ah, Freddie Mercury, in the decadence of your Rock and Roll, how did you ever contribute such a brilliant edict? So, that is how I best describe my father, silent, but strong, strong, but unassuming, unassuming but wise, wise, but comical, comical but stern, stern but inviting, inviting, but silent. He could lift fifty pound bags of flour for hours-on-end, on the tracks of Maple Leaf Mills, less physical work, if you can believe it, from the lumber yard down-shore, but he could never lift the weight of his own hands to dispel the transgressions of his sons or daughters.

And so, on June 23rd, 1973, I was lifted from Sao Miguel, Azores, the fertile green earth of my planting, by the great wings of Transport Aero Portugal, helped, if only mildly, by the emptiness in my stomach, and came to fall, on that same day, in an alien world, a lifetime apart. You have noticed, I see, that I have now given you an exact day, for I had ample opportunity to confirm the details while you were distracted by the commotion at my cousins wedding, the bride’s tears unanswered by the otherwise occupied guests, the tracks of her mascara hastened by the down-turned corners of her mouth, a lone dinner guest who is surprisingly disinterested by it all, and a fidgety kid who is still unsure of which way to roll. The details are right here in front of me, in the handwriting of Immigration Officer, Joseph Bub, signed 06/23/73, Immigration Certificate Number: G1510471, Medical Certificate Number: 3857, Money in Possession: NIL, emphasis on the Lby officer Bub, as if punctuating his disbelief, Passage Paid By: nominator, the cash I am sure, sent in the same tight-fitting envelopes that delivered pictures of our future, which I have previously described, and repaid, I am doubly sure, by those first few dollars shaved from the many logs handled as much by my father’s strong arms, as by his will and pride, supplemented by the salary my mother drew while cleaning the mess of the sick and dying, at Mount Sinai Hospital, while darkness alone comforted his tired back.

And so it came to be that I had a great fall on that day, leaving an equally great impression on my minds eye. Most people are introduced to the New gradually, seldom blinded by a flash of discovery, seldom awestruck by the unexpected. The new is seldom but a combination of the old, a winged horse is not as awesome a sight when you have known both a bird and a horse, but, imagine the impact when you have known a bird, but never a horse. The imagination conjoins, in most unusual ways, that which God did not fathom, but not that which it has never known - this is why a man can grow wings in the shelter of his mind, but if he has never known a bird he is sentenced to walk great distances, even in the sanctioned canvas of his dreams. Sure I had dreamt of great distances and vast plains, but I saw them in my mind the way I might see a millipede, knowing full well it has one thousand legs, though I am unable to count but a few.

They say you will die if you fall in your dreams and hit the ground before you awaken.

I am rustled to life from the comfort of sleep, perhaps dreaming of returning home with a wife and daughter, perhaps dreaming a dream that justifies the unreal, perhaps growing wings and taking to flight, perhaps looking death in the eye as I fall from the sky. My freshly rubbed disbelieving eyes are pressed to the window; let me rub them once more for they are still burdened by the remainder of sleep, and they make me believe I see an ocean of lights, lights lining roads, which I soon will learn are called highways, lights lining tall buildings, which I soon will learn are called towers, and lights connecting great distances, which I soon will learn are called, ‘Here’. Here, never seemed so vast. I shall never forget the unease of it all as I tried to count the legs on this electrical millipede as it filled its belly on our silver bird, sleeping baby and all. What a grotesque perversion of nature, when the insect devours the bird, when a city consumes a world, when dreams dispose of reality – “orange juice, please”, I think I hear my fathers trembling voice. I remember this calm sea of lights, as far as the eye could see, as far as my mind could see, and still there was more. I had never known a land with no borders. The last thing I saw as our silver bird took to flight in the shyness of daylight, when she is made bashful by the stalwart of night and bats her bright eyes to the earth, was the entirety of my world, all 760 sq. kilometers of it. It had always seemed so large, so infinite, a world where Here could be out-stepped by a hopscotching girl, and There was in the dark beyond. And now I see more. Here is forever and beyond forever, there is more. This place is not shy, it glitters with faux pearls and defies the wisdom of night.

I can still smell my panic, though it is masked by the familiar muskiness of the people on this plane, who, equally surprised, are too comforted by the familiar smell of home on their coats and their hair and their carry-on bags filled with remnants of volcano rock art and Jesus himself on Chinese Cedar wood. The newness blinds me and I lose continuity of recollection until I am corralled onto a moving stairway. Dear God, even this I had not dreamed up. Though I have fallen down many steps, I have never once dreamt of falling up them. And we all resist, testing the escaping first step with our toes, before we plunge into the cold depths of this pool, and up we all go, each in an unnatural angle, as we cling unrelentingly to a handrail that moves slower than its steps, and, thus, we are delivered to our benefactors, like the dead to the afterlife, feet first.

And so I fell a great distance that day, I fell into the arms of our “nominator”, our benefactors, our family, my Godparents, my father’s sister and his best friend, unable to have their own children, they adopted Romeiros. We were a new breed of Romeiros, a cosmic group, falling from the sky like peed-on stars, seeking not a bed for the night, but a dream we could live, an opportunity to climb to modest heights and glimmer, if not shine, but live nonetheless. And once we balanced ourselves to the gravity of this world we were sucked into a whirlpool of sound-deafening hugs and a wave of teary faces as each angled arrival drained the remainder of the ocean from his eyes and filled his lungs with the plentiful hot air of June 23, 1973.

Look there, that’s me, in my tight-fitting brown Levi corduroy suit, bought special for this occasion, neck-length straight brown hair, though it will inexplicably curl over the next few years, as if recoiling from what it cannot understand, rosy cheeked and wide eyed and slightly asthmatic – wait, I’m not asthmatic at all, I just now realize that I have been oblivious to my Godmother’s smothering hugs, lost in the absurdity of my surroundings. Bright lights show me forever and moving stairs take me there.

Memory, being less concerned with linearity, arranges its inventory by the price you pay and, thus, it fails me in congruity at this point, likely overloading and taking comfort in self imposed darkness, abashing its eyes to the earth, letting night come into my head. But the lights are too bright and, for fear he might lose me, I must walk the plank, ahead of my Godfather, as he directs me with a caring hand on the back of my neck, to his dark green Chevy Impala station-wagon. I am comforted by the familiarity of its color, but that is where it ends. I had never been in a car that can consume seven people and luggage for five and still have room for their fears, and I had never traveled at this speed on roads that don’t bend or drop unannounced, and are made of black carpet, their white-stitch seems showing through, with overhead signs the size of the screen at Cinema Maritimo. There are no subtitles on this overhead screen and I am not sure what drama will unfold. I don’t remember anyone in that car but me, perhaps this is because I sat behind the back seat, my back to the future, my past fading before my eyes.

And so I fell into a world of brick homes with painted verandas and black tar roofs and front lawns people cut, with two car garages, and trees whose leaves will fall in their yards, and windows that slide open and never swing out, and streets wide enough to make you look both ways, and great big stores that sell frozen fish, and schools where children have colorful bodies and matching heads and speak effortlessly, never having to curl their tongues, where summer is hot and winter is cold and tiny white stars fall from the sky and are shoveled into great big heaps, left to melt into the obscurity of a warm winter’s day.

All the days must come to an end, and so did June 23rd, 1973 come to a prolonged, unyielding end, as my weakened knees took me up the porch steps of 641 St. Clarens Ave., through a windowless door into our first new bed, in a new world, but not before one more surprise. No my son, you will not sleep yet, for there, in the kitchen, no less, is an honest-to-God tiger, in majestic black and white, flanked by an old man with brilliant white hair. Of course you should ask: did I know of Merle Perkins and Mutual of Omaha’s Animal Kingdom? – of course not, I had never seen a television before that day, had no idea it existed. Sure I had dreamed of tigers, and old men in white hair, but never the two together, in a box, in my Godmother’s kitchen, on a linoleum floor, in a brick house with a black tar roof, with a tree on its front yard, whose leaves will fall and make way for cold white stars that we will shovel into the street and hasten to their death with a flavoring of salt.

Let me now find a corner to lay my tired body and let me shut my eyes and awaken to a dream I can understand. I am directed, underground, to a large room my Godfather describes, without any effort of the tongue, as a basement. As if I am not scared enough as it is, I now must sleep amongst the dead – my God, when will it all stop? What conjectures will confront me in the revelation of daylight? - will she too rub her eyes to a new shade of life and refuse to consume the blue that has been her lunch for all of time? I pull my knees to my chest, and I roll.

I don’t remember what I dreamt of that night, perhaps I wrestled a tiger on someone’s front lawn, perhaps I counted one thousand legs on an electrical millipede, perhaps the longtime friends I already missed so much would ride a moving staircase into a linoleum kitchen and then perhaps, perhaps, I can coax them into this cave in which I now find comfort, as the familiar blanket of darkness covers me, and the hushed conversations that my parents will have well into the night offer a sense of much needed continuity, narrowing my Here once again, as my dying cousin hopscotches into the darkness, and I let go, following her into nothing, into everything.

Sunday, June 24th did not come so soon, for those underground are always the last to see daylight, and I pull myself up the rigid steps by a string of comforting voices, this time entering head first into a new day and breakfast from a box. Once again, while you were lost in the maze of my serendipity I was able to research this day and now know it was a Sunday, how apt, the first day of the week, the first day of the rest of my life, as it were, and Disney characters that I recognize, though they are no longer imprisoned on colorful pages of newsprint, dance across this bubbled screen, and entice me into a new life.

We will come to live in this basement for two months, my godparents on the main floor, and, lest I forget, another aunt, also my father’s sister, lives on the top floor, with husband and three children. Three families, one house, one family, Romeirosall.

We will all go to bed early tonight, for tomorrow we learn to roll. My father has a job waiting for him at the lumber yard - my uncle Joe has put in a good word. I wonder what he said to convince his boss that my father was fit for the job – most likely, “he is an immigrant,” any further discussion would be fortuitous and he must not converse for long, for there is much work to be done at the mill. Seldom will you find a combination of four words to carry such weight, “he is an immigrant,” – he will work hard, he will not ask for much, he will not look you in the eye, he will show up early, he will work late, he does not drive, he does not speak English, he sleeps in a basement. My father who just Friday was tugging at the sleeves of men’s blazers to ensure a proper fit is now preparing to stack lumber and other hard labor reserved for those in need. My mom, too, has a job waiting for her at Mount Sainai hospital, from which she returns each morning as my father heads to work. Me, I will go to summer school to learn how to say “orange juice” without curling my tongue.

I am determined to learn and am only mildly affronted by the large alphabet letters staring disinterestedly at me from the upper edge of these foreign walls, except for the W and Y, who stare at me distressingly with only a familiar X to break them up, lest they conspire to throw sharp-edged words that I cannot possibly defend against, and I look to the Q, for its balloon like shape gives me a sense of serenity and I dream of grabbing its tail and escaping on its helium belly. It is thus that I am distracted and held back after school to wipe the black-boards clean of tension filled words who beg for their lives. Then I sit with my hands folded, at least I think that’s what she wants me to do, for she refuses my outstretched palm, as my last teacher would have gladly accepted, by the tips of my fingers, and struck it once or twice, which is always sufficient punishment for such trivial transgressions. But instead I am forced to sit quietly – orranshh-chews, I want to say, to let her know its my dinner time, but she’ll have none of it, and I fear that I will not find my way home without the neighborhood kids to follow. As the fear sets in I wish I could distract her with the conjoined V-twins and float home on the tail of a Q. She says something to me which I assume is a scolding, but her voice is soft and she pats me on the back. I walk slowly out the door, keeping a cautious eye on the Y, for he seems much to cheerful for this somber occasion. And I walk home on this hot afternoon, counting stop signs and brick homes and Virgin Mary cement statues. St. Clarens Ave. 595, 597, 599 (this is the house we will buy in less than five years, this flaking porch will be painted green – imagine that!), 639, and here I am, 641. And thus will pass my summer, except for trips to the lake and the rushing waters of Niagara Falls, and the few other great landmarks not built by immigrants, all in the belly of the great green Impala.

As the outgoing summer tripped over autumn, so did we follow it to a place of our own. But summer never fails to return, even for a short while, and so will we track its fat blue days to get back on our feet, when fortune decrees it to be. We tread through fallen leaves in search of a flat to rent, their availability evaporating before our very eyes, for a woman with three children on her hands and one in her belly and a husband to boot makes a tiresome load for the unaccustomed landlord. And so we traverse an orange carpet of leaves and equally colorful verandas slowing slightly to cross ourselves at the miniature Virgins, ensuring their care when we call on them to show us the way back home. And so passes the day, a tired smiling woman with three children to guard and, it seemed, one hand for each, and one in her belly for greater keeping. My mom always had more to give than God had divined for her. She worked all night and raised a family during the day and always found time to skip rope with her daughters – sugar and spice and all things nice, that’s what little girls are made of – what are mom’s made of? My mom was made of determination, with a touch of fun, that’s what my mom was made of; carefree but loyal, loyal but forgiving, forgiving but firm, firm but playful, always playful. She would carry countless bags of groceries on foot from Casa Europa, for we could not afford a car, and when she arrived, her hands frozen and permanently creased from the weight of our meals, she would joke with my friends and dress-up my sisters and frolic with my dad, turning his face as red as her hands, the skin dried and permanently scored from the harshness of the chemicals necessary to rid hospital beds of the remainder of life. Love and pain and a faint smell of Clorox, that’s what my mom is made of. And, so, with her guidance we came upon 36 Pauline Ave. I have more memories of Pauline Ave. than any other place or time, and that, my friends, makes it a topic for a whole other story, which I shall but briefly burden you with, lest you too turn us away.

36 Pauline Ave., 3rd floor, an attic really, two rooms, four windows and a shared bath on floor number two. You have already come to know the dimensions of these rooms – six divided by two, that’s three persons per room, precisely how we divided the space, for proper distribution is always important, if not to memory, then certainly to life, that is why, with each passing of the sun we subtract from the future what we give to the past and, thus balanced, we shall keep our good footing. Pauline Ave. will define our world, our elementary school will border the north, and B.C.I., our nourishing high-school, borders the south and the palm-joined hands of the giant Virgin, at Saint Sebastion’s, balance the two. It is a trick of fortune, indeed, that we find ourselves in the arms of St. Sebastion, for Igreja de Sao Sebastiao, its name sake back home, is the church that has guided our family through generations of love and death, and those in-between steps that we all take to ensure the final care of our God. St. Sebastion, with his hands tied behind his back and the additional burden of arrow in his chest, still sets his caring eyes upon us. In years to come I will traverse one country and two decades to ensure my children are baptized under this old Saint’s gaze, offering sacrifice and symmetry to our days to come. We will live on Pauline until our memories run dry. Those were some of the best days of my life, when fortunes were measured by the weight on our feet, and with the remainder we bought exclusive use of the loo.

I shall not bore you with the triviality of the fire that took most of our things, for it did not scar our spirit and therefore it is inconsequential. But it did burn the seat of our pants urging us to pack our suitcases with second hand clothes and donated toys and other slightly charred necessities of life and, once again, we counted stop signs and miniature Virgins on our way to 641 St. Clarens Ave., distorting the balance on Pauline Ave., though we had leave from the oversized Virgin herself. No-one cried or asked: Why?, for we knew why – because life is unpredictable and sometimes people do fall from the sky.

On June 23, 1973 I fell from the sky, but I was caught by a horse with a great span of wings, and he put me down gently on his way to the mill.

Before long we would restore the balance, relieving the pressure on that Mother of mothers, and make our way back to Pauline Ave. We were glad to be back on the ground we tilled, where strangers became friends and friends became brothers and sadness was shared like a fresh loaf of bread. Pauline Ave. is the immigrant’s neighborhood – defined. Greeks and Croatians, Russians and Slovacs, Muslims and Serbs, Portuguese and Polish, Italians and Chinese, Africans and Indians, so many colors it was blinding, so many religions, there was always a God on call. And when we had enough savings to afford our own home we made our way out, but never too far, for an island of friends is an island no less and Here is a place that always fits your heart. So, we would carpet and paint 599 St. Clarens, where we each had our own room and a toilet to spare, on which we would float as the rising tide of inflation swept things away. But we would not drown, for we knew the routine and our backs were now callused from much greater falls. So, we packed all our stuff, leaving resentment behind, for it is much too heavy to break a good fall.

This story is a sequel to "Bridging the Distance"