Love Me You My Heart Breaks

This week, as I wandered around Belém, I passed a woman wearing a T-shirt that said, “Love Me You My Heart Breaks.” I read it and smiled because one, it was in English and I am in Brazil, and two, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

A tree grows in Belém

In addition to reading T-shirts during my wandering, I’ve also noticed the extraordinary ability of plants here to thrive, especially plants that I have killed at my home in the U.S. I call them “house plants” because that’s where they were (well, before they headed out to the backyard to be dumped). These Brazilian plants are by no means house plants. They grow EVERYWHERE – between cracks in the sidewalk, on concrete walls, at the base of looming, 100-year-old trees at a protected botanical garden in the city (Bosque Rodrigues Alves). The bosque in places actually looked to me like Home Depot because of the familiar flora. The “feature” photo for this post, as you may have realized, is a flowering tree growing in a plastic waste can. Growing very well, as a matter of fact – it’s gorgeous. And yes, I have inadvertently killed one of these, too.

This morning, at a Belém health clinic, I had my first practice talking to moms about their weaning and feeding decisions. The women I talked to – well, tried to talk to, luckily some students from the Universidade Federal do Pará graciously swooped in to help me – were wonderful – patient, open and interesting. I so appreciated their and the UFPA students’ time. But eliciting information from people in a language other than one’s own is more difficult than I can convey. And I have much work to do on my pronúncia (which to you may look easy to say, but it is not, I guarantee).

So, maybe I’ll start shopping for a T-shirt that says, Forgive Me You I Learn Portuguese. Or maybe I’ll ask a Brazilian how she would say – and pronounce – it.