From Final Orbit (The Other Pages Press):
Chapter 1: All Stories Begin at Home
I am writing this story because my daughter Izidora asked me to write it. It is not mine alone, for reasons I will explain. I will tell what I think is important, as best I can. I will not tell you everything, for reasons I will not explain. I will say only that some parts of the story are not mine to tell. Trust is important to me. Faith is important to me. Love is important to me. And most specifically, the people I consider family are important to me. More than anything. Material things, by and large, are not. Let me begin with my family.
My parents, despite being first-generation Vietnamese immigrants to Brazil, had a fondness for all things Italian, and named me Mario, after Mario Andretti, the most famous race car driver of the 20th Century CE. My older sister was named Sofia, after Sophia Loren, the most beautiful actress. They liked that Sofia also means wisdom, because in our culture, education has always been highly valued. Mario technically means hammer, so I think maybe their expectations for me may have been a little less ambitious.
In all other things (or almost all) they immersed themselves in their adopted country. They became devout Catholics, they spoke only Portuguese in the home, they became naturalized citizens, and they studied futbol with a seriousness that verged on comedy. When they were naturalized, my father changed his first name to Milton, and my mother changed hers to Beatrice. Sofia and I came later. Our family name is spelled Ng, which we have always pronounced the same way it is spelled, “en-gee,” and though it is a very common Vietnamese name, my parents kept it as the one unbreakable tie to their past lives and to their ancestors.
They never talked much about their own parents, or their younger lives in Vietnam, or why they migrated to Brazil. In honesty, I never thought to ask. Our family always seemed whole and complete as it was, with the four of us.
Our home was a medium-sized flat in Favela Paraisópolis in São Paulo. I say medium-sized, but that is in favela terms. Anywhere else it would have been quite small. It was stacked vertically - the kitchen was at street level, my parents' bedroom and storage closet above that, Sofia and I shared a tiny room above that, the tiny WC was at our level, and then there was a small open space on the rooftop where my mother raised spices and peppers, and we hung our laundry. There was a raised rack supporting the solar panels that heated the water beside a storage tank, and my father had planted a climbing vine in a pot next to it. The shady space created beneath the vine’s green leaves and flowers was our refuge, Sofia and I, from the grime and the noise of the narrow streets below.
I liked the rooftop because I could look up and watch the clouds, and look out at the city skyline at night. I remember once when there was a massive power outage across all of São Paulo, and Sofia and I were dazzled by all of the stars in the night sky that were normally hidden by the glow of city lights. “Where did they come from?” I asked in fascination.
“They are always there, Mario,” my mother answered. “Like the sun and the moon, but they are so far away that their light is tiny to us. They have been there forever.” Maybe it was then I first started thinking about being an astronaut. I cannot say for certain, but it might have been then.
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