Meet Fernanda :)

Let me tell you about this lady I know, today. Her name is Fernanda and this is her balcony. If I ever met someone with a green thumb for flowers, it's her!  

The American connection :)

This lady is the Mother anyone would love to have. She's cared and nurtured her 2 children (and they're not children anymore, they're in their 40's) through good and bad times. As she cared for her own mother when she was old (she died almost 95!) with all her love. And as she cares for her grandchildren, just like they were her own children. She has three, two boys and one girl. She misses her son and 2 grandchildren terribly, because she can't see them as often as she wishes--they all live in the USA, you see. 

Fernanda is now retired, but always busy trying to find ways to help out, both her family and other people. Everytime she gets a chance she goes to the hospital with her husband or her daughter. Sometimes she doesn't have to go, because her son-in-law makes a point of being present at each and every treatment his wife goes to... but she's the lead "cheerleader", and wants to be present too. In good days, when there are no appointments or treatments, she offers to go shopping or to tidy up or do anything to help. Or even just pick up a little crochet. She picks up her grandson at the  train station when he comes home from school (poor thing, she says, he must be so tired from school and travelling all over Lisbon and it's so late!) But she doesn't remember she's tired too from running errands and helping out until she goes to bed--and then often times she cannot sleep because she's worried about her children, all of them.

Fernanda at the hospital parking lot

And when she's not caring for her children she's nurturing her husband, who's a wonderfull person too with a bad heart condition and has to go to dialysis 3 times a week, if not more. She's like a private firemen corporation because here firemen (off the fire season or not) have ambulances and carry ill people to their treatments at hospitals and clinics. 


Whenever she goes somewhere, Fernanda takes something tasty or some trinket to make us smile. And she's always got a smile, too, throughout good and bad times.


But her family knows how special she is. When she calls her almost 18 year old grandson on the phone he smiles and says "It's my Mom #2". And she smiles and melts inside, when she hears that...

Fernanda's balcony

So, when she saw my blog and ohhhhhhh and ahhhhhhh'd she shyly said "you could show off some of my flowers in your blog", of course I took some pictures (they are indeed beautuifull!) and here they are. 

She wanted me to post some pictures of a beautifull afghan she made for her mother many years ago (I wish I still had the one she made for me, when I was in college... but somehow it got lost when I returned to Portugal :( ). It was her made by her very own sweet hands, in the evenings when both of her children were off to college or in the US Navy and Gigi, her cat, was sitting on her lap keeping her company.

And now she's picked up and is continuing the boys's afghan I started some time ago--I think she missed crochet and needed me to give her a little push!

Mom and I, at her birthday last year (almost a year ago)

So here's to Fernanda, my Mom, the best Mother I could wish for. I love you, Mom!