The Sign

I wasn’t, yet, ten years old when Me Father and My Mam sat the kids down for a talk.  We weren’t a family meeting kind of a family, so (ever an astute young boy) I knew something was up.  The latest development was told us in a matter of minutes: we were moving.  Again.  This was not news, it was not new, it was not unique to our family.  Since I was born we had moved six times (I didn’t know how many times my older sister, Stephanie, had been moved).  It was a well-known fact that our family was transient, my father’s job demanded it.  He was a Wunderkind at his office, often being moved into a new position and at a new branch.  With his kinfolks in Texas and Mama’s relatives in California, we sort of had those two states as home bases, but in between jockeying back and forth between those two states, we had already lived in Louisianna, New Jersey, and Ohio, never longer than four years.  Another move would not be a big deal.

It was a big deal.

The company was moving Daddy to Portugal.  There was a branch there that was in some trouble, and Me Father was just the man to get it in gear.  So, we were informed, we would be living in a place called Lisbon, in a place called Portugal.  I didn’t know anything about Portugal except that it was in Europe.   Since my life, up to this point, had been about little more than books and movies, what little I knew about Europe is what I learned there.  From the movies I had seen (in theaters or on television), what I had learned was that the English were proper (Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady), that Austria was beautiful (The Sound of Music), and that magic was possible (Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Doctor Dolittle, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang).  Until this point, my life had been an unbalanced mixture of wonderment and boredom.  The wonder came from the books, the movies, Mommy (Juana), and her mother (Marjorie).  The boredom came from the local school kids that seemed determined to bully and beat me.  How boring can the life of a pre-teen be?  I mean, really, bullying a precocious gay kid at school?  How rote.  I could not wait to move to Portugal.  I was ready, willing, and able.

Portugal did not look anything like I thought it would.  I had visions of Von Trapps and Doolittles in my head, snow-capped mountains and unpaved roads, everything elegant, lush, and lovely.  In the town of Cascais, everything was stucco, tile, and Spanish.  There was no snow, there were hills but no mountains, and it was warm, green, and flat (mostly) all year long.  This would take some getting used to.  Once settled in, though, there was much to learn about the Portuguese landscape and the people that filled the towns, the one in which we lived, and the neighboring ones like Estoril, Sintra, and Carnaxide.  Over the next four years, I would come to explore those boroughs, to see them for all that they were, to love them and the Portuguese people.  I was ten years old, and it was, here, that I would begin my journey into adulthood.

The house in which we lived was unusual.  Built on a hill, the top story of the white stucco building was where one would find the living room, dining room, kitchen, and Master Bedroom.  When entering on ground level, one of the first things a person encountered was a slightly winding staircase that led downstairs to the kids’ rooms, a playroom, an office, and a bar (a real, honest-to-goodness bar with a pool table and dart board), and entry into the garden, where was to be found a patio and grill, at the bottom of the hill, and a swimming pool and sauna, off to one side, with a hothouse on the other.  It was sexy and glamorous and wonderous, and all the colors of the house were white and blue with a red tile roof.  It was as Latin as anything I had ever seen, and it was heavenly.  It was, by far, the most interesting and exotic home we would live in, for the entirety of the Mosher family existence.

One day, Mommy and Daddy brought home a sign to hang up outside of the house, right next to the front door.  It was so pretty, so unique, so different - I had never seen anything like it.  It was ceramic tile with a floral pattern on the border, set deep into a scrolly iron frame.  In the center of the floral border were words.  The Sign said:

VIVENDA JUANA

Juana was My Mam’s first name, that much I had known since I was about five.  But I didn’t know the other word.

“What does it mean?” I asked Me Father.

“It means this is where Juana lives.”

“Oh, you mean, like, this is Mommy’s House.”

“Yes, that’s part of it but it means more than just that.  Vivenda Juana means this is Juana’s Place, this is where she lives, this is where she loves, this is where she is loved.  Vivenda Juana means everything here lives because this is where Juana lives.”

I was only a boy but I understood the meaning of what my Father was saying.  I understood the poetry of his words and the philosophy behind them.  I don’t know if the translation is, technically, accurate, but I do know that from the moment he said the words, I knew that of which he spoke.  No matter where we have lived, for my entire life, Daddy’s explanation of the words Vivenda Juana has, fully, completely, and totally embodied the atmosphere of the Mosher household.  Everything came from Juana.  Everything originated with her, everything grew from her, everything grew around her.  Juana has been the beating heart of this family, from the moment that she said, “I do.”

The Vivenda Juana sign hung at the front door of the house in Portugal until the day the Moshers moved to Switzerland.  For the four years that we lived there, the Vivenda Juana sign hung beside the front door.  When the Moshers moved back to America, the sign came with them, and, in 1983, they bought a house in Texas, hung up the sign, and, there, it stayed.

Until August of 2021.

My Mother has dementia.  It came on slowly but once Daddy recognized the signs, he did all that he could to help her, within the confines of their home.  Her condition worsened, especially after the entire family contracted COVID - Mamma and Daddy live with my sister, her daughter, and my brother, and the entire family had it.  It was tough on everyone.  My parents both being in their Eighties, my Father had to make a tough decision: he cannot provide the full-time care that Mama requires.  He and my brother (who does not live with them but with his own wife and children) took great pains and great care to find the right memory care facility for Mama, and that is where she lives, now.  She has lived there since the spring of 2021, and it is clear that she will not be, again, inside of her own home.  In August of ‘21, I went to Texas for a week to help Me Father put out some fires, organize some things, and begin to dispose of some of their life’s possessions.  

One day in August, we were standing outside of the Mosher family homestead of thirty-seven years, Daddy and me, and he stopped in the middle of our conversation, walked over to the wall, and took down the sign.  He handed it to me.

“You should take this back to New York with you.”

The Vivenda Juana sign now hangs inside of Two-A, the apartment my husband and I have called home for the last twenty-nine years.  We have a Wall of Juana.  There hangs Mama’s baby picture, a portrait of her made when she was eighteen, a photo of she and I that was made in 2017, a painting that Mama bought in Portugal that she gave to me when I went away to college, and The Sign.  

The Sign is home.  The Sign is home because where my heart beats, Juana lives.  Where I draw breath, Juana lives.  Where I live, wherever I live, Juana lives.  

This is where Juana lives.