Egidio and Sofia both has introduced to me a wonderful and sensitive word: saudade.
Wikipedia defines saudade as
an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent someone or something. It is a recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events, often elusive, that cause a sense of separation from the exciting, pleasant, or joyous sensations they once caused.
The word Saudade might translate ”longing”, but it holds so much more… and that is what I feel for the place where I grew up. Everything was sold and lost to us when my grandmother died in 1988. The piece of land where my grandparents worked so hard, the fruit trees, the raspberry field, the strawberry fields and all the vegetables. The gravel road leading up to the house – how many times have I walked it? I used to go there every day, before school and after school. Helping them with the picking, and packing the harvest to be sold.
Looking through some old photo albums for this challenge, I found these precious photos that I want to share with you. They are marked with time and were sitting in pressed plastic folders, so the quality is not that good. But they hold so much of my life, my gratefulness and saudade…
This is the house, and grandmother and grandfather picking black currants. They had hundreds of those bushes. I remember every piece of that path around the orchards, and the joy ( and sometimes tough work) of helping my grandparents. My mother and her brothers all helped out during harvest times. After we had finished for the day, we were rewarded with coffee and cake in the garden – and strawberries with creme of course.
Those where times when the sun seemed to shine every day and life was easy being surrounded by loving people. I only wish I had some more photos from when I was a child.
There is also another kind of longing – where we can return to the place we long for, even if we cannot go back to what it was the first time. Because everything changes, and so do we. Sometimes maybe the change is bigger within than in the particular place we are longing for.
The Azores is a place for much saudade. Faial, Flores and Corvo occupy many rooms in my heart.
When we hiked the island of Flores, in 2007, we were looking for the valley with eleven water falls. We could see it from afar, immersed in the lush greenery.
And when we finally reached it, we were all alone and could totally immerse ourselves too. Body and soul.
It was really an otherworldly place. Still today, I think of it as a Paradise.
The island of Faial is renowned, among other things, for its Hydrangea hedges. Instead of fences for the cattle, they have 3-5 meter high hedges.
Finally, the island floating in the sky and sea – Corvo. My heart aches for it.
Now, we are curious about what You are longing for! When you join the challenge and share your saudade, don’t forget to use the “lens-artists” hashtag so we can find your post in the Reader.
Your responses to Ritva’s challenge were wonderful last week. It was what we all needed – Next week, Tina returns with a new challenge. It will go live at noon EST in the USA. Tune in to find out more about the challenge then. Until then, take care and be kind.
Leya 
Such a lovely post … thanks for sharing those childhood memories, so very special
♥ They are – thank you for reading! Those days life was hard, but today it’s hard in another sense.
What a beautiful valley full of falls, Ann-Christine. Wow!
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Precious family photos and lovely landscape images, Ann-Christine.
Thank you – I am very grateful.
Oh, Ann-Christine… The Açores again, I really have to go, maybe even sooner than I thought! However, your post for me is those wonderful memories full of saudades from your grandparents, the house, the experiences and the longing. The photos are charming and nostalgic and therefore, perfect.
I am happy you liked them! I didn’t try to change anything with the old photos, I too found they spoke to me best as they were.
And The Açores – please find time to go someday. I know you will love it. There are djungles and hot springs too, and they have the biggest cows I have ever seen.
So heartfelt, AC. And yet to hear how your memories remain alive is what saudade speaks to. Such a beautiful blink into your young life. And the Azores… wow. And to think of hydrangea hedges, sends my to the moon. How beautiful that would …feel!
Thank you! I don’t have very good photos of the hedges, but from faraway they look good too. It’s just the size –
I can see why you long for your childhood past. How sad it must have been to have lost that place of so many memories. Another time, another place.
Yes, Jude – another time another place…another life. I am forever grateful I got the chance to experience it. I remember sitting on the steps to the house many times when it was sold too. We had just bought our dream house, my husband and I, and there was no chance he would let go of it. And I, I was grieving for years after.
Beautiful and poignant post
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Beautiful images! I can see why these places are important to you!
Thank you, Nora!
A beautiful post as always Ann-Christine. I loved the opening set of images and seeing your grandparents – such fond memories! As always your images of nature are exquisite, especially your closing image. Wonderful post from start to finish.
Thank you, Tina! That’s a good thing with blogging too – reviving memories. And love, and gratefulness.
Greetings,
Proverb 13 12 ,
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life
regards,yogimk
♥
Wonderful post, I love the old photos.
If it hadn’t been for the challenge, I wouldn’t have started searching. They had me crying, of course, and all that love coming back. Thank you!
Wonderful photos and response to the challenge. I especially liked the connection to your grandparents and land, plus the Azores.
Thank you, Brad! That’s a good thing with blogging – finding old memories again – and photos.
Agreed.
There’s a real sense of nostalgia in your description of your childhood home and in the photos you shared – another time, another world.
Thank you – yes, another time, another world. A lost world of caring and compassion.
Such a moving post, A-C.
Thank you, Tish. I had a wonderful childhood and often think of how lucky I was. What if we could meet again?
Ann-Christine, what wonderful memories you have of your childhood with your grandparents. I love the images of the beautiful places you long for.
Thank you, Beth. A good theme – we are all longing for something or someone!
This poignant post, I’m sure, brought back many pleasant memories along with a sense of saudade. I can see from your photos of the Azores that São Miguel is not the only beautiful island in the archipelago.
Thank you, John! And we have found that all of the islands are beautiful. We have three islands left to visit there. Santa Maria, Graciosa and Sao Jorge.
Dear Ann-Christine
Longing was the keyword of Romanticism, especially the early Romanticism. Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, the leading romantic poet of his time) gave this longing the colour blue. We can understand how you associated longing with your grandparents. The romantic longing mostly went back in time and praised the idyll. Then you write about longing for a place. Well, that’s not romantic, it’s rather modern times, the idea of tourism. Anyway, we really like the pictures of your grandparents and their world.
Thanks
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Thank you – I always appreciate your comments. And I know I long for old idylls, that is me.
Dear Ann-Christine
We suppose most people like the old idylls. We see it here in these chocolate-box villages. They draw many tourists.
We like both. We really liked living in New York and Montreal, in modern cities, but also now in a little chocolate-box village as well.
Thanks
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
What a fun and fitting word – chocolate-box villages. Idylls are much loved by many of us. Maybe they will be even more loved when they are no longer there.
Unfortunately, it will be like this.
Here, the joke goes that soon we are fenced in, and people have to pay an entrance fee to see us. Well, it’s a bit like this in Port Meirion/Wales (but we like it).
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
A beautiful post Ann-Christine and what a treasure to have these old photographs of your grandparents and their farm, and all those lovely memories ❤️ xxx
Thank you – and i didn’t remember I had them! That is one of the advantages with blogging. Finding forgotten treasures.
💖 xxx
I just saw some of videos of the Azores of Gabriel Traveler (my favorite YouTuber). It definitely looked like a magical paradise. So I can understand a longing for that place.
Thank you, Chava! I will have to have alook at that youtuber!
Ah, such heartfelt longing, AC! Yours is a real post filled with Saudade….Love the childhood memories, and then your fantastic images of the azores
Thank you, Sue! Yes, heartfelt it is.
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I loved hearing about your childhood Ann-Christine, what beautiful memories you have.
Great post all round.
Love the nostalgic photos, and relate to the fact sun was always shining in the summer when a child and wish for more photos from childhood. And the nature shots, so beautiful I can see why you would like to revisit. Lovely heartfelt post
Your love for these memories shines out in this evocative post.
I’m just back from a trip to Poland and so I know exactly how that saudade feels, Ann-Christine. If we had not already begun our life in the Algarve I think that I could happily have settled in Poland. The welcome back is amazing, and the homes I visited are not unlike these. I hope to share a little in the days ahead but I’m currently without WiFi and the house is a mess because we had painters here in our absence. So your photos are a welcome escape xx
What amazing memories. So pleased you shared them with us. How you must treasure those old photos and then pass them on to show the next generation of a time when life was slower. They also would probably long to be able to visit those places.
Wow, Ann-Christine! This post and photos really touched my heart and soul deeply. Such beautiful stories of saudades of your family, the orchard, the paths, and the places your ”heart aches for.” You showed saudades in your beautiful photos. Thanks!
So many wonderful places and memories Ann-Christine 😀 Hydrangea hedges would be such a sight