A 79-year-old Bundle of Joy - A Real Gem

Funny how people come into your live from nowhere, yesterday I went to the hairdresser for a waxing and when it was over I asked the hairdresser whether he was busy. He said that there was only one person having her hair dyed, Dona Gema.

Dona is a Portuguese word for madam and it is used to call older women. In Portuguese Gema can be the yolk of the egg or a precious stone, like gem, the latter coming from Latin. In Brazil we call people on a first name basis; therefore Gema was this little old ladies first name. 

Dona Gema told me to take advantage of the fact that there was no one else at the hairdresser and have my hair done instead of coming back in a couple of weeks. However, according to the hairdresser, I should wait a few more weeks for the hair to grow a bit before retouching the color. Nonetheless I stuck around.

For an hour and a half I was entertained with the most fascinating stories that this 79-year-old cheerful singer had to tell. She was born in the northeastern part of Brazil and was one of 18 siblings. Her parents had nine and adopted the other nine. Their life was pretty hard due to lack of food and water, however, their home was filled with love and union.

Among many stories, the one that stuck in my mind as I was driving home was that her father used to buy a gift for each and every child at Christmas time. Although they did not have enough money to splurge, he would buy shoes for the kids but had to give one pair to each two kids. Each child would put a shoe on a walk around as happy as they could be. They did not nag or complain about it. As she was telling me this story, she laughed loudly. You could feel the joy coming from her. She even compared this to kids nowadays who have get so many different toys at Christmas and complain when they do not get the color they wanted it in or even what they had asked for. She added that here in Sao Paulo people had everything they needed to lead a happy life and what she mostly heard nowadays were complaints.

Another story was about one of her brothers who passed away when he was ten. She told me that her brother was five years younger than her, so this story had not been told to her and that she remembered it quite well. Ever since her brother could speak he used to tell everyone that he was going to die on his tenth birthday when he caught the big fish. He would always say that he wasn’t going to be around for long, just ten years. No one in her family gave that any thought except for her mother who worried about it. She remembers that her brother loved fishing and he did this whenever he could and only caught fish the size of his fist. On his 10^th birthday though, he brought home a bigger fish. Done Gema said that her mother froze and instead of cooking it, she put it in the fridge. However, Dona Gema’s little brother insisted that their mother cook it because he had to eat it. Her father told his wife to stop being silly and to cook it. So she did. The boy ate it and around midnight he started to feel sick and passed away. She mentioned that from this day on, she became a very spiritual person.

My hairdresser quickly summarized how Dona Gema became a singer. Apparently she sang all her life but when she moved to Sao Paulo she became a radio singer and was quite famous. Still in her teen years, she met her husband and left her career behind to become a wife, mother and housewife. Ten years ago her husband passed away and she took up her singing career once again thanks to her children. In all she had seven children, but four had passed away. She added that she sings weekly at a club downtown and has recorded two CDs and that the third was to be released soon.

It was a memorable rainy Saturday afternoon. Hopefully I will run into Dona Gema more often at the hairdresser and be filled with her inspiring stories.

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(Written April 13, 2013)
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