Author’s Note: For the next few weeks, I will be unraveling a serial story in this space.)
Chapter One: “Coconuts”
Tatu DeSouza’s marvelous story begins in India, in Goa, to be precise, a place where (or so it is said) when a coconut falls, it is sure to hit a DeSouza on the head. (You see, DeSouzas are everywhere in Goa; they are the Smiths or the Jones of Goa.) However, in this case, the DeSouza that got hit on the head was Solomon DeSouza, Tatu’s father-to-be. And it was not a coconut that hit him that day. Rather, it was the sight of another DeSouza, Hyacinth DeSouza (no relation), a diminutive girl ten years younger than Solomon who was walking along the beach collecting sea shells.
How is it possible, you might ask, that someone from India, a Goan at that, would be named Solomon, or, for that matter, Hyacinth? Shouldn’t he or she be named Dinesh or Aisha, Rohan or Veda, Muhammad or Maryam even. True enough, but Goa is a breed apart. The Portuguese arrived in Goa in the 16th Century, and it was Portuguese missionaries who implanted Catholicism on its white sandy shores, and so, to this day, the coconuts that fall from the palm trees not only are likely to hit a DeSouza, but also a practicing Catholic. Such is life.
But back to Solomon and Hyacinth. Within just a few weeks of Solomon’s first glimpse of Hyacinth, a marital contract had been negotiated, a dowery had been proposed and accepted, and the local priest had been engaged to perform his priestly duty. He did so with such aplomb that, despite the not-insignificant difference in their ages, the new husband and wife did what new husband and wives do, and within a year, Tatu was born.
His name at birth, of course, was not Tatu. That came later when Tatu, né Caleb, was a two-year old living in Urbana, Illinois and just beginning to speak his first words of English. On one of his first attempts to say “thank you,” the words sounded more like “tatu” which made both Hyacinth and Solomon laugh out loud. Seeing his parents laugh, Caleb repeated “Tatu,” and from that moment on, his parents called him Tatu. It was a spontaneous and happy christening.
But wait: how did Solomon, Hyacinth, and baby Tatu come to be in Urbana, Illinois? Whatever happened to Goa? Simple. Both Solomon and Hyacinth had aspirations that went well beyond palm trees and coconuts. Solomon was a gifted mathematician and Hyacinth had dreams of becoming a teacher, in fact, a special education teacher. And so, Solomon and Hyacinth applied to several universities in the United States, and when the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana accepted Solomon into its doctoral program with funding, husband and wife obtained student visas and, with little Tatu, set sail for America.
Upon arrival, Solomon threw himself into his studies of logarithms and algorithms while Hyacinth tended to the baby. That arrangement worked for a few months until Hyacinth became restive, at which point, she found a nearby Montessori school for Tatu. Once Tatu was enrolled, Hyacinth applied to the University as an undergraduate. (You might think Solomon would have objected to this new arrangement, but to his credit, he did not. In fact, he supported his wife’s ambitions if only because in his mind, another university degree would only serve to shinny his little family higher and quicker up the flagpole of the American dream.)
For the next three years, all three DeSouzas applied themselves to their education. Solomon wrote his dissertation on the intersection of mathematics and national security. Hyacinth submitted an honors thesis entitled “Brave in the Attempt; The Impact of the Special Olympics Movement on Special Education” which earned her a Magna Cum Laude degree. And Tatu? He went about becoming a typical American boy.
Goa was quickly receding in the DeSouza’s collective rearview mirror.
I’ll be right back…
Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.
His new novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon.
I’ve bumped into a word and a concept I previously knew nothing about: rumspringa. It’s an Amish word and concept that refers to a time in the life of Amish teenagers in which they face fewer restrictions on their behavior and are less subject to the Ordnung—the community norms that traditionally govern Amish life. In essence, rumspringa permits Amish adolescents to taste English ways and gives them the opportunity to choose the lifestyle they wish to adopt as adults.
