Remembering the Woman Who Walked
Late last month, we buried my aunt, Iva Rocha. She would have been ninety this December. My Tia Iva immigrated to the United States from the Old Country—Azores Islands, Portugal—in the 1970s with her husband, Manuel, and their two small children, Emily and Joe.
When they got here, my Tio Manuel did what most Azorean men who ended up on the West Coast did; he went to work in the dairies. Escalon, Petaluma, Benicia.
If you landed on the East Coast, you probably worked as a fisherman, but out west, it was the cows. On summer breaks in grade school, I’d occasionally stay in the double-wide their family shared together at a dairy in Petaluma.
My uncle would get up at 4 a.m. for the first milking of the day. Since he was the man of the house, we all got up at that time. Ants would often invade the tiny kitchen, and, on more than one morning, we’d eat cereal peppered with their drowning bodies, flailing wildly in fresh milk. Eating them wouldn’t hurt us, Tia told us, and nothing was to be wasted.
After dairy life became too grueling, Tia and her family moved to Napa, where they bought a modest home. She and my uncle went to work at Sawyer’s Tannery. My aunt worked hard, carrying cow hides, and sewing with big, industrial machines. She was proud when the United States Olympic team wore leather coats from Sawyer’s Tannery during an opening ceremony. She had worked on those jackets, sewing on their buttonholes.
When the tannery closed, she began cleaning houses. Because she never learned to drive, she walked to every house she cleaned. When I was attending Napa High School, I’d see her walking down Jefferson Street, the main drag, where my school was located. Or, out near River Park Shopping Center (roundtrip from her house – six miles) where there used to be a movie theater and a roller rink, a family buffet restaurant where all of us relatives would go after church on Sundays, to buy cheap plates of exotic American and Chinese foods.
When her son Joe was 19 years old, he took his own life in their family home.
My Tio Manuel had passed away a few years before Joe, from heart disease. From that time forward, Tia Iva and her daughter, Emily, persisted through this life with grace and a hard-won good humor. They did everything together. They visited relatives together. Shopped together. Ate breakfast and dinner together. Attended parties together.
They had a winning way, socially. My aunt was talkative and had a great sense of humor. At times she could be bawdy. Cousin Emily would feign embarrassment at some of her humor. The Gracie to my auntie’s George, she might roll her eyes or appear to panic, but it was all light-hearted and we relatives grew fond and accustomed to their warm, familiar routine of holding court.
They cultivated lovely gardens at their home, in both the front and back yards. The gardens were contiguous. Of a theme. All the flowers that thrived in Terceira—roses, geraniums, hydrangea. And succulents, which my aunt loved.
I saw her for the last time just a couple of weeks before she passed. I arrived at her house before her daughter had gotten home from work. She was hesitant to answer the door. She told me later that she went to another room to spy through the curtains and was relieved and happy to see me. She kept a landline, but I still didn’t think to let her know I was arriving a little early. She had no use for computers or smartphones and viewed them as useless appliances, so there was no texting her, either.
She made me my favorite dessert since childhood—Coscorões—basically what so many cultures around the world do so well, fried dough sprinkled with sugar. Because she had been undergoing kidney and heart failure for a few weeks, her diet had become impossibly strict. She lamented this while I ate. She couldn’t have sugar or cinnamon. And, how she missed the savories—the very foundation of our cuisine: garlic, onion, cumin, parsley, sea salt.
After Emily arrived, we walked through the garden. Tia pointed to a few new plantings, and some that were struggling. She was paying extra attention to those. Her greatest gift to her plants was the same gift she gave to all of us—her daughter, her nieces and nephews, her great nieces and nephews, her brother, her friends and cousins: her time and attention.
Just that day, she’d discovered a new walking path from her house to the Kaiser Permanente Clinic (round trip, just over two and a half miles). She’d happened upon a shortcut through some landscaping between stores. She told me that walking was good for us, that it cleared the mind and made us feel better, happier. Calmer. Mais Calmo.
During funeral preparations, the funeral home made a mistake and dressed my aunt in someone else’s outfit, a mistake they later fixed by locating her clothes in someone else’s locker. A few of us relatives joked with Emily that my aunt was probably playing one final joke from the great beyond.
Every detail at her memorial and funeral was just as she’d wanted. No fuss, and an open casket. A rosary offered to her beloved Nossa Senhora before the internment. White flowers on a coffin that wasn’t too cheap or too expensive, made of nice wood with a good, shiny finish. Other flowers could decorate the altar, but no Zinnias, thank you very much. And, at the funeral, she wanted to make sure Emily saw them sliding the door to the crypt shut. And, that we’d all be able to leave a white flower beside her casket before the door closed forever.
Coscorões/Portuguese fried dough
Ingredients
60 grams of sugar
60 grams of butter, melted
4 eggs
Rind of one orange(grated)
Juice of one orange
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup of Portuguese brandy, “aguardente”
600 grams of flour
Sugar and cinnamon for dusting
Oil for frying (I use Canola oil)
Extra flour for kneading
Instructions
In an electric mixer using the paddle attachment beat sugar, butter, eggs, orange rind, pinch of salt, orange juice, and brandy, mixing in one thing at a time.
Then mix in the flour. Continue mixing until well blended and you have a sticky dough.
Cover bowl with cloth and let stand for one hour.
Place dough on a lightly floured surface and dust with more flour.
Knead dough, lightly adding flour until dough is no longer sticking to your hands.
Stretch dough with rolling pin until thin and cut into squares or rectangles. Cut slits inside squares. Fry in hot oil flipping once.
When golden brown remove and place on paper towel.
Add cinnamon to sugar and dip fried dough in mixture.