a corner of mom’s garden…
the portuguese gathered on hagewa dr on a late summer’s eve. well, ok, not so romantic a day… a 90 humid-degree day of september. we came in from dallas altogether ready for the sweet breeze of autumn in ohio. a long knit skirt and blouse bought to wear, vintage table-clothes packed, new grandson in tote ready to meet more family, all the photographs i wanted sketched out and a vision that had been in my head over this past year for a real kinfolk table setting! not much of that materialized… i could hear wesley saying to buttercup, “get used to disappointment”! for the most part we were in shorts, jeans and t-shirts with the last drop of summer’s sunscreen smeared on our faces and dripping with sweat. not all of the family could be present… so to two of my own daughters, jordan and isabel, and nieces and nephews, katie, emily, daniel, bess and to my cousins, jamie and jody, — {all spouses and children thereof} you were missed so very much. our table would have been wonderfully endless if all were there. in the end, it was just a picnic. a really really nice picnic like the summer ‘family’ picnics we had growing up… maybe what we knew as kids at sharon woods, pushing picnics tables together and throwing the tablecloths out, watching the great uncles play chess and the young ones play kickball, softball, badminton and checking out the creek bed for fossils and salamanders… a day when most of the extended family could gather bringing their best part of the smorgasboard, was really a ‘kinfolk’? i think so, which would make us ~ hipsters!!.
while tables were being set outside… soup and a sundry of other delicious portuguese morsels were being prepared inside… with a busy one-year-old at our knees 🙂
the portuguese did not invent croquet. that has fallen into an argument between the irish and british. but the portuguese do have some little known facts that may surprise you: portugal is the oldest country in europe ~ they produce 70% of the worlds cork ~ they invented the ukulele {the name given to the instrument while sailing into a hawaiian port. and fyi… my mom has a talent with this instrument!} ~ the portuguese were the first colonized power to abolish slavery ~ they are the most fish-eating people in the world ~ and they were the first to circumnavigate the world, though only one of the fleet made it home and magellan, who captained the voyage and was commissioned by spain, died late in the journey ~ and one more tidbit, the portuguese diamond is the most valued in the world {of course that has a history all it’s own}
the menu ~ designed and researched ~ thanks mom 😉
yep ~ we celebrated the lucky ones of the family who have birthdays in september!words of my mom ~ the first generation of american portuguese from the ‘do Adro’ family… “My grandmother, Beatriz Oliveria Do Adro, came to America from Lisbon, Portugal, on the SS CANADA. A then single mother due to divorce, she brought two of her four children with her: my father, Henrique {Henry} and his sister, Luiza {Louise}. My father was nine years old. the year of transport was either 1922 or 23 with a discrepancy of age listed on the manifesto. Their port of entrance is unknown… though I am sure someone in the family will someday research that fact! Grandma moved her little family directly to Cincinnati, first living in Corryville and then settling in Madisonville. She followed the lead of her brother who was already living in America. She took a job as cook at the Cincinnati Hebrew Union College where she met Ted Haynes. They later married, making her the grandmother fondly remembered as ‘Grandma Haynes’.” {grandma haynes is pictured in the small oval frame above}
the adro sisters ~ norma and deloris ~ breaks my heart that i didn’t get a good photograph of them together (photo credit of aunt dee: kim carlin)
THE END! as you can plainly see 😉