Reality is Magic

There is a church in my city in Brazil that blesses cars. There is such a demand for these blessings that the priests limit it to new cars. To assist the congregants who forgot to have their new car blessed or can't afford to buy a new car, all cars are welcome for blessing on the first Friday after New Year’s.

Before I moved in Brazil, I was familiar with the magical realism of South American literature. I’d read One Hundred Years of Solitude when it was first published in English in the 1970s, along with writers like Jorge Luis Borges from Buenos Aires and Brazil's Jorge Amado. When Americans read the translated works of these authors, we read them as fiction. However, in Spanish or Portuguese, these literary meals are digested by Latin Americans as family memoirs – believable and delightfully descriptive of the guiding spirits of the deceased.

My wife doesn’t consider the blessing of our car to be magical. She takes it seriously, having the car blessed to ensure we would both be safe when she came to pick me up at the airport.

The 21st century rudely arrived in the US on September 11, 2001 with the destruction of the World Trade Center. Americans were faced for the first time since the Civil War with combat on their own soil. The US officially left behind what Edith Wharton once called The Age of Innocence. For Americans, the world changed overnight.

I arrived in Brazil wearing post 9/11 emotional armor, a cynical view of a defeated world with terrorists who fall from the sky. In such a cold world, there would be no room for enchantment. What I discovered was a different perspective below the equator. To begin with, the seasons are backwards. I needed to adjust my mythological compass. It's a land where magic still reigns, like priests blessing cars.

Indeed, even the laws are miraculous. There is 30 days paid vacation for all full-time employees, four months’ paid maternity leave, and universal healthcare. These laws are written into the Constitution. Enchantment, legal or spiritual, is an everyday reality in Brazil.

When my possessions arrived in Brazil after a 3-week voyage from New York on the high seas of the shipping container world, they inexplicably passed through customs in the middle of a strike. A woman who worked for a logistics company explained that while the Federal Police were on strike, no cargo other than food or medicine arriving by container ship could leave the port. Instead, everything was being held in storage warehouses, and the owners were forced to pay the storage fees. However, after two weeks of praying by my wife, my belongings arrived at my apartment one Saturday morning. Not only had they arrived during the strike, but nothing was broken or missing. The original shipping crate had not even been opened by the inspectors.

As my wife and I unpacked the 68 boxes, I sifted through my living past. After waiting 18 months with the boxes in storage in the US, my excitement and relief were immeasurable. Something otherworldly had guided my life’s possessions safely over 5,000 miles of ocean into my hands.

When we had finally unpacked all my childhood memories, my wife announced our house smelled of New York. She said it as a compliment. Years later, my wife insists she can still smell New York in our home. For her, the magical scent is not a mystery. I can’t smell it, but I’m learning.

This essay originally appeared under another title in slightly different form on Brazzil.com.