Living and Learning

In this book, a rescue of memories. From his father, José Arruda, he inherited the adventurous spirit "he was a traveler hungry for roads, always leaving and arriving..." With a prodigious memory, he even remembers his father "wearing striped pajamas, with showy buttons and braids on the collar and sleeves..."To his mother, Dona Anália, a moment of filial affection and a beautiful declaration of love: "Being a mother is curing tiredness, is easing one's own existence..." His second mother, Silvina Melana, also deserves a special memoryand gratitude: "She carried and washed the chamber pots, bathed, dressed the clothes, combed the hair, gave the medicine, taught how to pray..."His grandfather João Morais "lived eighty-odd years of full-time joy..." "I often saw him returning in the evening, hoe on his shoulder, bag around his neck, smiling from head to toe, humming some of our favorite songs..."wandering around São João do Paraíso, where he was born, the main shops, the center of the square where the country blacksmiths tied up their horses and where the kids jumped rope and played with marbles...
"From my childhood" by Ataulto Alves: "I, like all the other kids, did so much mischief, playing button games on the sidewalk, I was happy and didn't know it."