"As Mãos da Avó": An Encounter between Generations, Memories and Time

On the evening of May 15th, Livraria Lello was filled with emotion and contemplation with the launch of Inês Cardoso's new children's book, As Mãos da Avó ("Grandma's Hands"), a work that celebrates the charm of childhood, ancestral knowledge and the importance of slowing down to see the world with more attentive eyes.

Moderated by artist Capicua and attended by publisher Ana Margarida Noronha, from Kalandraka Portugal, and illustrator Susana Matos, the session was a celebration of the bond between generations, emotional memory and the beauty that inhabits everyday life. The book is now available in three languages - Portuguese, Spanish and Galician - and has won over readers with its delicate narrative and aesthetic.

"This story has a lot to do with my childhood and my close family experiences," said Inês Cardoso in an interview with TSF. "But then it was also born out of a need to reflect on time."

Narrated in the first person and in the present tense, the book reveals the voice of a little girl who watches her grandmother with admiration, learning from her ancient skills such as the art of making cheese, sewing as a way of reusing things, growing a vegetable garden or caring for the woods.

"It's a book that I think is counter-current, precisely because of its pace. The time it takes for a peach tree to grow, the time it takes for cheese to be on point, the time that, in childhood, always seems so long, but that, as we grow up, we realise is too short," Capicua shared at the event.

These gestures, as simple as they are fundamental, are presented with the respect of someone who recognises in her grandmother the silent wisdom of a slower, more resilient time. In presenting the book, Inês Cardoso reflected on how this respect for time translates into respect for nature, for its divergent rhythms and inconsistencies, which in turn teaches us to be more patient with ourselves. In her reflection, rapper Capicua echoed the same sentiment: "It also tells us about the importance of waiting, not as a hiatus, but as a construction."

The main characters - the granddaughter and the grandmother - don't have names. The choice is intentional, as the book wants to be universal. They are voices, gestures and experiences that belong to many childhoods and many grandmothers, allowing each reader to recognise the tenderness of this relationship.

The book also stands out for its aesthetic care. Susana Matos' illustrations, done in graphite with subtle strokes of colour, capture domestic and rural scenes with a realistic and poetic touch. Images that evoke the fusion between the human and the natural, time and memory. At the launch event, Susana Matos confessed that, perhaps unintentionally, the inspiration was her own grandmother.

"My grandmother is here too. My daughter is here too. In a slightly unconscious way. There's always someone who comes along and makes this observation. (...) And I began to realise that she wasn't just like my grandmother. She has a sewing blanket. My grandmother really did sew blankets. The filhoses..."

The creation process took more than two years, respecting the time needed for text and image to reach the right maturity, mirroring the theme of the work itself. At the heart of Grandma's Hands is this appeal: that we can recover the time taken to tell stories by the fire, the value of the first filhoses on Christmas Eve, the patience of the wrinkled hands that teach and care. And it was this spirit that filled Livraria Lello at this launch - a moment of encounter between the past and the present, between what we are and what we have inherited.