I take a seat on the cramped cabin. From the last row of the plane, the Avro looks dingy and old. Outside, the early morning wintry shower pours over baggage handlers in high visibility jackets.
Napping as boarding is completed, I think of everything that has happened since returning from Africa. I think of the new apartment rented in the red-bricked house in Harold’s Cross, the long night shifts in front of a computer in Cherrywood along with the French and the Italians, the strokes at the brand new pool in U.C.D, the job interview at Abercrombie & Fitch the day before Christmas, and the flu-ridden interview at my current job the day after.

‘There is a word in Portuguese called ‘saudade’. It has no direct translation to any language but it’s used to portray the feeling of being torn apart by absence, the emptiness and sadness of leaving people behind. It is beautifully used as something you possess, not something you are. ‘I have saudade’ means I am empty inside, I am sad because I left you behind’

A year has elapsed, and sitting on the tarmac on this Air France plane, I try to find the fastest route to my family.  It is not a gruelling multi-stop journey this time and there are no exotic layovers in Costa Rica, or the shiny novelty of Manhattan. The captain announces a delay due to snow in Charles de Gaulle and the seconds becomes long minutes that turn into nervous hours.

The plane eventually queues and takes off from Dublin landing in a Paris covered in a thin blanket of icy snow. I run though the spaceship-like terminal and I am issued an apology, a food voucher and a boarding pass for the next available flight to Brazil.  For the next seventeen hours, I skim through an airport that lacks entertainment and exaggerates on pricing.

On Air France territory, I resort to daydreaming across boarding gates and fantasise about flights bound to Point Noire, Cayenne, Port Moresby or Saint Denis de la Reunion. Finally, at ten at night, the flight to Sao Paulo is called and once the plane is de-iced, the cabin lights dim over Finisterre.

I feel a swollen pain on my left foot when Fortaleza is in sight and at sunrise, after over a day of traveling, the Cantareira mountains guide our path into Guarulhos Airport. Two old friends wait at the arrivals hall and keep me company for the next eight hours of connection waiting.

Outside the brand new terminal, the hot summer day engulfs both the near runways and the afar city skyline in a stale air of humidity and memories. I share a bowl of açai for lunch and depart Brazil in the late afternoon, as per my echoes of living in this city, performing a U-turn over the plains of Morumbi.

‘My pulse quickens as we touchdown in Viru Viru. A feeling so familiar, yet so strange. An arrival in slow motion: robotic yet emotive. I clear immigration and customs as a tourist and I run towards the arrivals hall. I see them and hug them tight with not a single tear in sight.’

I am driven to a brand new apartment in the fourteenth floor. The sign of changing times and a house now just fading as a memory in our family history.

For the next two weeks, I wake up to breakfast laid on the table by the family maid, my brothers and I tease each other on every lunch of juicy meats and fresh vegetables, and I sip on Cointreau with my stepfather in the mid afternoon.  At the house in the mountains, the weekend is an indulgence of Malbec and paella around a bonfire fuelled by stories from the Emerald Isle.
For fifteen days, my friends and I sweeten afternoons with stories of swimming and camaraderie in Guayaquil or Santiago de Chile, and my dad and I quench the heat of the summer days with ice cream dripping over old childhood photos.

Souvenirs of an eventful life. Of romances at the swimming pool deck and underage drinking, of pranks in aquatic parks and sad goodbyes. Souvenirs of life gathered in a fortnight, on this quick South American turnaround.

Families gather around the small departures hall in the morning, and my parents and I wait until the last call. We hug and hold our tears like we are used to, our faces red with the blush of sadness, of saudade.

In Sao Paulo, a heavy thunderstorm turns the afternoon into night and the smell of petrol and humidity hit like a heavy wall of remembrance. I rush towards the car park and my friends drive me right into a familiar Santa Cecilia, passing in front of my old apartment and with that, my old life.

For twenty four hours, I long for a tribute to my years in the metropolis. I indulge on açai in Higienopolis and rush through the Viaduto do Cha with shopping bags. I ride brand new subway lines, and relish on a late afternoon cycling at Ibirapuera Park, the place I many times used as a refugee from commutes, corporate life and university thesis.

Sitting on the tarmac at Guarulhos Airport, rain pours from the summer incensed sky and delays our departure. I look outside the window to see lightening striking the jungle of skyscrapers. Intense and dramatic, the summer rain once again engulfing my departure in the same way it did upon my arrival, heavy with the reminiscences of a life in Sao Paulo.

I fall asleep after watching my second movie and overnight, we cross an ocean of changes. From summer to winter, from old to new, from refreshing memories of a life well-lived in the New World, to exciting plans of a life to be fully lived in the Old World.
At Charles de Gaulle, I transfer between terminals under a bright wintry sunshine and in Dublin two hours later, I walk down O’Connell Street refreshed by a Westerly wind packed with new dreams.