Brasilia — What is it, what is it about big families

Hey folks! I’m traveling for about 3 months, and I’m sharing stories from the road here. These are mementos, sketches, impressions from the journey. I hope you enjoy them.

I’m halfway through my trip around the world. Well, not AROUND the world, but at least making it to two hemispheres. I’m going to visit all the traces of me I’ve left in far off places. The Big Island in Hawaii, the Sunshine State, and, most recently, Brazil.

My mid-western sweetie and I started off the Brazilian leg of our journey in the capital city, Brasilia, for a family get together. Brasilia, as we were told more than thrice, was a planned city. None of those lazy, meandering streets that followed the curve of large trees or boulders long since replaced with high rises. The then president of Brazil, old what’s his name*, proposed moving the capital from Rio to the geographical middle of the country, so that all of its attendant states felt they had an equal voice in the running of the country. I detect this sense of fairness often in this country, despite its reputation for corruption. I know why too. My mother was one of 16 children, her father a brigadier in the air force, her mother the first woman in Brazil to fly a plane but stayed grounded to raise her legion of children.

I don’t know from first hand experience, having just one measly sister, but I know that when you grow up in a family of 16 and you line up for lunch, you can’t take as much as you want, you take a little less so that there’s food for everyone. I learned that the hard way, getting side-eyed over my generous lunch plate at previous get-togethers. I know that you set an immutable lunch time and whoever is late will suffer the consequences. I know that if you want to guarantee yourself a dry towel after you shower, you better bring your own. I know if you bring a suitcases full sweaters, skirts, pens, and other random gifts from the United States, the fair thing to do is to go by hierarchy. Aunts get to go first, pick out one item each, and then the cousins can have a crack at the pile. 

It has taken all my life to learn most of the names of my relatives. I’m still at a loss, staring at a rambunction of children, taking wrong guesses at their lineage. 

“Is that Gisele? Antônia’s daughter?”

“We don’t even have a Gisele!”

It’s true, there are no Giseles, but there are extra Claudia’s and Jose’s should one need any spare parts. So many that when I ask my aunt, “Where is Cousin Monica?” she has to clarify,

“Your cousin or mine.” The mathematics of a family tree doesn’t help. As time goes on, the tree will only get exponentially bigger.

Among this barrage of Brazilians gathered from all corners of the country, I feel a trace of me. Genetics is a gas, looking at a crowd of quite literally a hundred people and seeing my nose, my brow, my eyes looking back at me. I’ve seen branches of the family over the years, a few weddings, international visits, Zoom birthdays during COVID, but gathered altogether for a mega birthday (four birthday boys and girls over the course of as many days) it feels like a solar eclipse, wondrous, enthralling, and all too brief. 

Because I’ve lived outside of Brazil for the vast majority of my life, I don’t know whether to ascribe behaviors I see at these get togethers as “things that Brazilians do” or “things my family does.” Do all Brazilians follow up a DJ’ed dance party with a giant barbecue the next day? Do all Brazilians have sleeping pads locked away in storage to be rolled out to fit 6 cousins to a room, or is that just us? Do Brazilians play Frank Sinatra at some point at a party? Or is that just our way?

One thing I know for sure is that we have a family song that must be played at every event, at least once, and everyone must sing along. It’s called “O Que É, O Que É?” which translates to “What is it, what is it?” A phrase, as a Brazilian-gringa hybrid, I’m very familiar with.

It’s a song that captures the joyous optimism characteristic of Brazilians and embodied by my family: arm in arm, eyes closed, heads tilted back, sing-shouting this song. To live and not be ashamed to be happy. To sing and to sing and to sing and the beauty of being an eternal apprentice. I know that life should be better, and it will, but that doesn’t stop me from repeating, it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful.”

In that mob of love dressed up as relatives, I don’t know all the words, but I sing anyway.

* His name was President Juscelino Kubitschek.