My Story

26 June 96-Sanjoaninas Festival - The week long festival in Angra, Azores-The Ocean is calmer now, the days longer and warmer.The wind has subsided and I feel my time on Terceira Island ending. That old feeling of “time to move on” is beginning to creep into my thoughts, with mixed feelings of sadness and excitement.

Driving home tonight on my route from Lajes through Praia, Cabo do Praia and then down that hill into Porto Martins, I continue to gasp when I reach the crest of the hill and see the ocean and Porto Martins. It is so beautiful. I have called this spot of heaven home for a whole year now and consider myself fortunate to have lived on this tiny island.

It occurs to me repeatedly, what an honor it has been to spend a year of my life experiencing this way of life. I have not been able to connect the feelings with a description until last night while driving to Angra to join the festivities for the fourth night this week. As I was driving there, the old folks were in their usual spots in open windows, standing at the gate, sitting on a bench or just watching from their front steps. Women were strolling down the street, arm in arm, or just standing talking to their neighbors. Suddenly, I felt memories of my youth flowing into the scene before me. The evenings I spent on the porch with Daddy, just watching traffic or counting cars, the walks to the village with Beanie for the Roy Rogers movies, or just to walk around the block Up ahead several young folks were thumbing a ride to Angra and I stopped to pick them up. In that moment, I realized I was not experiencing life as an almost 55-year-old woman in 1996, but as a teenager in 1955. I am reliving my childhood here on Terceira, transported back in time 40 years, to an age of innocence and gentleness when time moved slower. Sanjoaninas is a big 1940 Easter Parade every night, a social time, when people talked to each other. It is a “see and be seen, dress up promenade” and everyone from Gramma and Grampa to the babies, talk, laugh and just sit and watch. What an incredible and rare experience to be able to relive my youth in this manner.

9 August 96-I have just returned from a Conference in Orlando FL, and took a side trip back to Cocoa Beach.