some scenes and thoughts from parenting abroad

“Is it safe there?” he asks.

The question startles.  It’s not quite a dad question. Not a MY dad question. My dad was a teen in the 60’s. My dad volunteered for Vietnam.  My dad taught GED classes in a prison for 20 years. His life wasn’t defined by safe choices. 

But here’s my dad asking over FaceTime, 10,000 miles away.

“Is it safe there?”

***

I don’t know.  I think so.  It feels safe.

We moved to Brazil from California, Luana and Calvin and Lawrence and me.  I don’t know if moved is the right word – maybe we’re in the middle of an extended trip.  We spent 6 months here last year, went back to California, decided to return for another 6 months this year.  We’re living in the town where Luana grew up, a few hours inland from Rio de Janeiro – up and over the mountains surrounding Guanabara Bay, out of the metropolis, into the countryside.  

We moved here to connect with Luana’s family.  To teach the kids there are multiple cultures.  To show them Mommy’s language isn’t just Mommy’s language – there’s a whole other country that speaks it too.  We moved here for us: it’s less expensive here, the pace of life is good, there’s lots of help from Luana’s family.

And here’s my dad, back in California, asking if it’s safe. 

***

I don’t know.  I think so.  It feels safe.

Our apartment sits atop a cobblestone hill.  I remember the first time we came here.  The hill is so steep. I thought it was crazy people lived up here, let alone parked their cars up here.  

But time goes by.  Now we live up here.  Now it seems as normal as living anywhere else.

***

Is it safe here? It feels safe.

It feels safe when I walk down the hill in the morning with Lawrence.  We go to the bakery and get bread.  We walk past the abandoned buildings and the chickens, across the uneven sidewalks, around the skinny street dogs that sprawl on the sidewalk or in the street depending on the position of the sun.  

It’s not a wealthy area, but everyone’s friendly.

Everyone says bom dia – good morning – the boy at the bakery, the old men playing cards at their plastic table, the old ladies sweeping their stoops.  The old ladies reach down and touch my son’s hair.  It’s so light, so soft, so unBrazilian.  It’s a kind gesture though.  They smile and coo when they do it.

***

It feels safe here.

Like castles, Brazilian homes are fortified by outer walls, and gates, and bars.  Some have barbed wire on top, or even that circular barbed wire that tops prison fences and border crossings.

Our apartment doesn’t have any barbed wire, but it has gates.  Out our front door is our porch. Our porch has a gate.  Beyond our porchgate is the building’s residential carpark, surrounded by its own walls and gate.

I often forget each of these needs unlocking, so leaving the house can take several trips: from our door to our gate (where I realize I forgot the key), back inside for the key, back out to the gate. Arrive in the carpark, where I remember I also need to open the carpark gate, back inside our apartment to press the little button by the phone that unlatches the carpark gate.

There are bars on our windows as well.  I assume these protect us from potential thieves who would climb our hill, sneak into our carpark, breach our apartment gate and then, foiled by our locked door, attempt to gain entry via broken window.

I’m more worried about fire risk. With the bars on the windows, and the gates, and the locks, and my forgetfulness…how long would it take us to get out in an emergency?

It’s more than hypothetical – our neighbor burns his trash in the backyard.  The local landowners are always lighting the surrounding brush ablaze.  But nobody else around here seems concerned about fire risk.  I don’t understand it.

***

Is it safe here? I think so.

The murder rate in Brazil is 22 per 100,000 people.  That’s three times the US rate.  The US rate varies by region though.  The murder rate in Mississippi is 23 per 100,000.  Is Brazil safer than Mississippi?  Maybe.  I think Brazil is safer now than in years past – five years ago, Brazil’s murder rate was 30+ per 100,000.

I ask a cousin if our neighborhood is safe.  

“It’s safe here,” he answers. “They already killed all the people that needed to be killed.” 

He doesn’t elaborate.  I don’t know who ‘they’ are.  Maybe police.  Maybe a gang.  The expression is something of a proverb. I’ve heard other people in the neighborhood say it too.  

There used to be a couple gangs in the neighborhood.  There’s only one gang here now – probably the safest non-zero number of gangs you can have in an area.  Multiple gangs create instability.  A few years ago, it wasn’t safe to go out at night.  It wasn’t uncommon to hear a gunshot during the evening novela (Brazilian TV soap opera).

With just one gang, there’s less violence now. You just see their letters spray painted on a corner here and there.  Store owners cross them out or paint over them every few weeks.  Every few weeks, the letters are back again.

***

I think so.

We were here for 6 months last year and never heard a gunshot.  Then a few weeks ago, on a Wednesday night, we heard a cluster of pops.

We were giving Calvin and Lawrence their baths.  We didn’t think anything of it. We thought the pops were fireworks – the neighbors launch fireworks every time Flamengo, their favorite soccer team, scores a goal.  Calvin and Lawrence didn’t even notice.

Flamengo didn’t play that Wednesday.  Instead, a boy was shot at the bottom of our hill.

In Portuguese, you don’t say the boy was shot.  Portuguese has the word baleada – bulleted.  The boy was bulleted at the bottom of our hill.  

Gossip that old ladies once passed from stoop to stoop now moves at the speed of light through WhatsApp.  First, videos circulated of people cautiously peering out into the street.  Then videos of the ambulance arriving to take away the body, somebody screaming in the background.  Then pictures of the pockmarked walls outside the house on the corner.  Finally, pictures of the boy at home in a clean t-shirt – maybe from a selfie he posted to Instagram the weekend before,  maybe from a long time ago.  He looks 13 to me in the photo, but it’s been a long time since I was 13.  Somebody told me he was 19.   

I didn’t know the boy.  He wasn’t from the neighborhood.  Somebody said he’d been trying to click with the gang in this neighborhood and also another one in another place.  

Multiple gangs create instability.

I was surprised the incident didn’t change anything here. People talked about it, but the next day things were back to normal. Adults still went to the stores.  Kids still played outside.  

Gangs are bad.  Don’t join gangs.  Be home by dinner.

The incident didn’t change anything because the people living here already knew about their neighborhood.  The violence was always here.  I just hadn’t seen it.

It’s safe here. They already killed all the people that needed to be killed.

***

Is it safe here?  I don’t know.

The same week the boy was shot in our neighborhood, a bunch of billionaires died aboard a submarine in the North Atlantic.

They were on a deep sea dive to visit the Titanic wreck.  Something went wrong with their submarine.  The ocean crushed them.  It was a big deal on the internet for 4 ½ days.

It was a big deal on the internet because (aside from everything billionaires do being a big deal on the internet) we assume billionaires are safer than the rest of us.  As net worth increases, people become more risk averse. They hire private security. They build walls around their mansions.

As we learned more about what happened, it became clear the operating company cut lots of corners: their vessel was poorly constructed, its navigation system was a videogame controller, the passengers were sealed inside with bolts that could only be unsealed by a support team on the outside.

How could the passengers, with all their money, not see the dive was unsafe?

On the other hand, the tour company had made other successful dives without incident. The company’s owner piloted the submarine himself, which seems safer than a company owner who says “you seal yourself in the metal tube, I’ll wait for you up here at the surface.”

Our perception of safe isn’t the same thing as actual safety.

The trip was safe, until it wasn’t.

The passengers thought the trip was safe. Then something went wrong. And all their money couldn’t keep the ocean outside the submarine’s walls. 

***

I don’t know. 

A lot of safety’s about perspective. 

I realize my dad wasn’t asking, “Is it safe there? (subtext: are you safe?)”. He was asking, “Is it safe there? (subtext: are my grandchildren safe?)”. 

Safety is some acceptable limit of risk.  We can have different limits for ourselves than for others. We can have different limits over time. 

When I was 18, I was an exchange student in Brazil. The exchange program had 3 rules: no sex, no drugs, no mototáxis. 

Brazilian mototáxis are like regular taxis, but instead of hopping in the back of a cab, you hop on the back of a motorcycle, hold onto a stranger, and whip through traffic to get to your destination. Mototáxis cost a fraction of regular taxi fares. 

As students on a budget, we always took mototáxis. 

No comment on how the other rules held up.

I rode a mototáxi here a few months ago. Not to save money, it was just the only mode of transportation available. Halfway to our destination it started to drizzle. I dropped my visor and hunched behind the driver, an 18-year-old kid, to avoid the rain.  He swerved to avoid a puddle. A thought occurred to me: I’m too old to do this. 

My family depends on me. What happens if I fall?

Morgan Housel wrote there are three sides of risk: the odds you will get hit, the average consequences of getting hit, and the tail-end (worst case) consequences of getting hit. 

It turns out safety isn’t just a binary between “safe” and “not safe”. 

Our neighbor carries his son down our hill on his motorcycle. The son’s only 5, not yet big enough to hold onto the back. Instead, son rides in front of father, perched on the gas tank, gripping the machine’s rear view mirrors for support. No helmet, just flip flops and shorts. The father pulls in the clutch, weaving the bike left and right to control his descent down the hill. Watching, a thought occurs to me: this is insane.

I guess me and neighbor-dad have different models of average and tail-end risk. 

***

Is it safe here?

Another night, at bedtime, Calvin is scared of something outside the bedroom door. There’s a noise, or a wind, or a something, I don’t know.

I don’t want him to be scared, but I also want him to know it’s ok to be scared. 
I say, “It’s ok to be scared, but you don’t need to be.” 

Calvin builds a wall of pillows to defend himself.  He asks me to lay with him behind the pillow wall. Any bad outside thing will have to get through the door, over the pillows, and past me before it gets to him. 

“Is it safe here?” he asks.

A thought occurs to me: I don’t know.  I think so.  It feels safe.

I wrap Calvin in a big bear hug.
“Yes,” I say aloud. “It’s safe here.”

***

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Thanks to Luana, my parents, Peter, Rob, and Ellen for reading early drafts and support.