When it appears that we are already on the trail that will eventually get to the farm, I open the car window, disregarding the flies that will enter the vehicle. I want to smell the green of the plants that only exist there, the smell of cow curd, the aroma of the rocks that appear to celebrate the rain that has just fallen, exuding a scent of warmth from their surface.

My mother and I cross the first gate, the one that marks the beginning of the family property. It remains the same, the same colors, the same ancient wood. A little bit further, I spot a sandy area where I got stuck with a motorcycle in my teens. I was learning how to drive it back then. I was about 14. We stop the car to have a little moment when I look around and notice something is missing. “It’s a particular species of tree that used to be around there,” I say to my mother. “They died, dear. The vegetation couldn’t survive for so many years of drought.” And noticing my desolation, she tries to reason with me: “It’s how things are, my love. We’re not supposed to expect life to remain the same forever.”

It’s true, I think. It has been what, decades? I ask myself. If I am a different person, why expect differently of the land?

We turn the car again and keep going toward the main area where the family’s house is built. When we stop, I decide to stay inside, still, silently looking at the horizon, contemplating the lake in the front of the house. The day is getting to its end, and the light is the same as I remember. The familiarity makes me smile. Not everything has changed, after all.

Far from here, my life runs at another pace. My routine, the pressure of the big city, career, marriage, getting older. My health struggles. I am tired. But coming back here, it’s like I have no age, as if time has stopped, as if all the rest—the pains, the conquests, everything—was a recreational pause in what matters.

My mother says something, but I can’t pay attention. I feel something in my chest, and I can’t tell if it’s happiness or fear; something in between, maybe. Most of all, I feel relieved.

She calls me again, more impatient, claiming the simple hierarchy of being the mother, forgetting that I am now an adult woman. She wants to show me the inside of the house. She did a renovation, and she is proud of it. Inside the car, I take a quick look at the rearview mirror and almost can’t recognize my reflection. My mother is roughly screaming my name at that point. She is talking from a distance, as if I would be able to hear her. “Come on, darling. Let me show you what we did. Come look at the new furniture, the tiles on the bathroom; aren’t they beautiful?” Her voice is fading away. I think, Where is she going? Suddenly, she puts her head through the car window and gently says: “I have to deliver bad news.” I freeze. And she says: “The drought also took away the birds you love. We have never seen the Cachalotes again; they are all gone. I am sorry. I know how much you love their chirp.”

I take a long breath, I look at my dear mother, and she looks back at me with so much tenderness that my heart almost explodes. She knows I am sad for various reasons. She also knows how I can get sensitive even over a bird matter. She gives me her hand. I get out of the car, I place my feet on the land, and say, “The birds went away for now. Everyone has to return home one day.”

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Marília Valengo, who came to Brooklyn in 2016, was born in João Pessoa, Brazil. She studies in the advanced writing class at University Settlement’s Adult Literacy Program, where Lucian Leung is the director. Marília Valengo’s main interest in writing now is “to unfold the frontiers between memory, language, and being.” She loves words and people and has written her first poetry book. She is forever grateful for all she has been learning.