I believe that thinking over my childhood and the values and beliefs envolved in my up bringing helps me became a better mother. I’m trying to raise my son repeating and avoiding my own history. We all should reflect about our up bringing with critical eyes in an attempt to apply the good part of our parents’ parental modal. My mother always came up with increadible activities for our weekends together like the time she t my brothers and I how to make waffles. She also had the ability to transform a really simple meal in the most tastefull joyfull experience we ever had by picking up ethnic restaurants to take us. We would experience these diferent flavours while she would tell us about the culture. I try to bring that joy to my sons life but I don’t know if I would ever be able to live up to her.

I’ve had a different childhood. Not because my parents divorced when I was 5 years old and my father remarried. I had a different childhood because I had an unique father. A well built man, my father went trougth life enchanting women. Tall, considering his generation average height, he exercised a lot, which gave him really strong legs and a slim body. He had expressive, attentive brown eyes, a beautiful small nose and a gentle smile, all well distributed in his long face. Because of his charms and good looks he married three times and countless girlfriends. He ended up having five children from three diferent women. Somehow he managed to build an odd but very united family that would always gather together to celebrate important dates such as birthdays and weddings. His ex-wives and friends always respected his opinios and turned to him at dificult times.

As a business man, he built a very sucessful career as an insurance specialist, even thought at College he majored in History. Three years before his retirement, he became the president of ABN Real Seguros Brazil even thought he never belivied he was fit for the business world or had the ambition to go so far. His co-workers described him as a very inteligent man, with innovative ideas that most of the times would install controversial discussions at the table. They considered him a man ahead of his time.

Once my therapist told me that if there were such a job as being a dad, my father would be considered the best one at it. Not that it was easy being his daugther. He expeted too much, he expected his children to be the very best in whatever they decided to do in life, to have well succeed love lifes and to be honest well adusted people. But he was also always there, showing his love trought actions like taking care of my apartment’s rennovation, worring about my weight problem, discussing my work perspectives, giving really good advices on my son’s upbringing, and being there to talk about whatever problem I had. Everytime I wanted to make a change in my life such as buying an apartment or accepting a job offer I would prepare myself to argue with him. He would keep questioning my decisions, helping me rethink my options and see the situation on multiple angles until he felt I was sure of what I was doing. He was the only person not making moral considerations about my decision of breaking instead of marrying my boyfriend when I became pregnant.

On january 20th 2009 he was very excited about Barack Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States. He spent the day, along with my stepmother, watching Obama’s inaguration on the TV. At 6 p.m. I called him and we made plans for the following weekend. I noticed he was panting and he said he was climbing a hill, coming from the well-water. An hour later he told my stepmother he wasn’t feeling well. She became concerned because it wasn’ like him to complain. She tried to convince him to go to the nearest hospital to which he responded angryly that she was the hypochondriac of the family not him. He went to the porch, his favorite place in the world from where he was able to admire the farm’s landscape, and a few seconds later, collapsed. She heard a noise, and only had time to soften his fall. He had a sudden heart attack.

At the age of 61 he seemed really healthy. Last december, everyone of the family members at one point noticed that he appeared to be getting tired more easyly, but no one secondguessed he would not live for at least 20 more years. He was in a really good moment in his life, enjoying his retirement, spending time with his grandchildren, travelling to places he’ve always wanted to go, going to the movies in the middle of the week and writing a book, which was his dream since he was a child.

When my phone wrang at 9:30 pm I became very angry because it let my son, who was supposed to be asleep, very excited. It was my younger brother Gabriel calling to tell that dad had died. I immediatly felt my whole body go numb but I stopped myself from breaking down in front of my two year old son.

Then it struck that the last thing I said to my father was goodbye. It is funny in a bittersweet way because I had no idea his was going to die an hour later. I kept saying goodbye to him trought the funeral and cremation ceremony but it was never enough. The only thing that gave me some confort during the funeral rites was choosing the songs for the cremation ceremony along with my brothers. Music was a very important thing in my dad’s life and we wanted to get it right. He would be proud of the choices we made. To start we opened the coffin while Keith Jerrod’s version of Someone to watch over was playing in the backgroung so everybody could say their proper goodbyes. Then we cried over Ella Fitzgerald’s Dream a little dream of me and at the end, they took the coffin down during Chet Baker’s Look for the silver lining. And that was it, three songs and I am never going to see my father ever again.

I’m trying to cope with the hard feelings my father’s death has brought to my life by building a happier life for myself. As heritage, he left so many good examples such as living an intense life in its fulliest, accepting people as they are and making room for them in my life and, most of all, living life in accordance with my values and beliefs regardless what the world says.

At nineteen I was beyond exited to travel abroad on my own for the first time. I´ve spent two months preparing myself for the trip. On the day of my departure, my mother gathered a few family members and closest friends to go to the airport. On the way to the airport I wasn’t able to join their conversation because my heart was beating too lowed with the feeling of antecipation. I remember holding the fax with the english family’s address and information that would receive me for a month and realizing my biggest fear was not being able to communicate. Since childhood I’ve been a shy person that always smiles making people assume that I was outgoing. The first two times I’ve been abroad, my brother Pedro was with me and did all the talking. I understood almost everything people said, but never answered.

On my way to the airport I remember thinking that something would happen and prevent me from going. But everything went somoothly, the plane travel to brussels, the three hour waiting at the brussels airport and the plane travel from brussels to London. At heatrow airport in London I took the undergroung to Victoria Station, and there a train to Brighton, and there a taxi to the address writen in the fax I was holding for the last twenty hours and finally arrived to my destination. It was a tipical british flat which for brazilians is a house divided in three. I knocked at the door and nobody answered. After five minute waiting I began becoming concern something was wrong. I’ve tried asking for help from the neighbours with no sucess. The family on the house to the left made a sign with their hands that I translated as “go away” when they saw me approaching their window. And a girl that later I’ve found out was a Brigthon University student told me to keep knocking. It was 9 o clock at night and very dark and I had no ideia if I should go right or left. So I sat down on my large suitcase holding my shoulder bag and cried for fifteen minutes in an attempt to have the guts to go look for help.

While crying I noticed an Indian Take Away Restaurant three houses to left. I’ve got in and stood up at the restaurant reception holding my fax and feeling the heating warm my frozen body. A woman approached and very gently asked if I was ok and the only thing I could say was: “There’s nobody at home.” She took a look at the fax and started asking questions: “Are you from Brazil?”, “Are you here alone?”, “I see you’re nineteen years old, right?”… I kept answering her by moving my head up and down and then she said: ” I see you can understand me so why don’t tell me what is wrong?” And I started telling her I came to England to study English and I was supposed to be received by the family whose information was written in the fax and how after almost twenty four houers traveling nobody was waiting for me. The more I noticed she understood me, the more I spoke. She took me to her house and explained to me that the city has stopped to wath a box match in wich one of the contestans was from Brigthon. After the match was over, she called Mrs. Maureen Carl Forbers (the one that was supposed to be waiting for me) and told wath happened. She took me home and Mrs. Forbers told me she tought I was arriving the next day, a Sunday.

This experience changed who I am because before that I wasn’t able to speak to people I didn’t know. And most of all it was imperative that it had happened at the beginging of the trip because it allowed me to enjoy my staying even more. After what happened I felt so sure I was able to take of myself and talk to people (in any language) that I extend the trip and travelled by myself around France and Italy for a month.

A well-builted man, my father went through life enchanting women. Tall considering his generation average hight he exercised a lot, wich gave him really strong legs and slim body. He had expressive atentive brown eyes, a beautiful small nose and a gentle smile, all well proportioned in his long face.

Do genetics answer everything about a person’s behaviour? No, experiences say much more. People are not born good or bad, but with a few predispositions that could or coudn’t happen. What determines our personality is our life history and the way we react to situations. For example, english sisters Judi Smith, 51 years and Ann Beaven, 45 who had been adopted by different families 35 years ago were recently reunited. They were able to identify phisical similiarities in each other suchs their eye color, the way they smiled or make a grimace, but swoed to have completly different personas. While Ann enjoys having a glass of wine now and then, Judi has radical opinions on alcohol and gave Ann a hard time about her life choices like regarding a career as mores important than having children and building a family. This example shows us that the values passed by their adoptive parents during their up bringing have overcomed the genes they share.

Birth order definitely influences our life adjustment. The eldest child is often more self absorb and bossy then his siblings. They receive all the attention from parents that are learning how to educate a child and not rarely tend to let the first or only child do whatever they want. In this sense, since a very early age, the first child develops a feeling of being the boss of his younger siblings. Pedro Cardillo Moura Neves, my eldest brother, used to prohibited his younger siblings to invade his airspace. That meant no one could try to touch him or anything near him without being severely reprehended. He would always play the ” Because I’m the oldest” card when he wanted something like the better room in the summer house or to be the first to shower after a day at the beach.

My name is Laura Cardillo Moura Neves. I was born in São Paulo, Brazil in the seventies. My father’s side of the family is from Rio de Janeiro. During my teenage years my father was transfered to Rio. My stepmother, her daugther and I(or is it me?) joined him. I lived in Rio for almost two years. It was a great experience to live in a different city. I made good friends with whom I’m still in contact. I came back to São Paulo because I wanted to go to college here. And also because I missed my mom and my brothers. I studied psychology at Pontificia Universidade Catolica with the intention of helping people, making them feel better about themselves. Little did I now that ten years later I would be working in a big Company, helping only very rich business men. I come from a very loving family.  Even thought my father had been married three times and had five children from three different women. We are very very close. My brothers, sister and stepsisters do a lot of things together. And now together we are coping with my fathers death. It’s not been easy but I feel I have to be strong for my  son, who is only two years old. At this point in my life I’m just rethinking and changing everything: work, home, life style… I’m a work in progress.