Rooted in the Soil, Anchored in the Sea
The village of Lomba da Maia, Sao Miguel
One of the most significant characters in my life and in my writing has been the small village in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where my parents were born. To think that they left this tiny, isolated place to settle in a country so vast that the place they came from would appear as a pinprick on a map. The bigger question is how this small place shaped them and prepared them for the challenges of a much a bigger world.
Lomba da Maia, a small, almost hidden village nestled in the volcanic hills of São Miguel, Azores, is a place that has always lingered in the periphery of my thoughts, both elusive and deeply tethered. I first travelled there at the age of four to bear witness to my grandmother’s death. I returned at the age of twenty-one with my mother, shortly after my father’s death, to settle his estate and land there. It is a village whose rhythm flows with the pulse of the land and the sea, a place so quiet in its isolation yet so profoundly alive in its stories. The village exists as both a real and mythical entity, wrapped in layers of time, woven with the threads of my family’s past. It is in these narrow, winding lanes and quiet stone homes, tucked against steep cliffs and facing the sea, that my roots are tangled and my stories, both bitter and sweet, are realized.