My Daughter’s Soul and Mine in the Same Afternoon

Yesterday I watched two films recommended by my daughter.

She had discovered them on TAP while returning from a swimming adventure in the Azores and thought I would like them. I found them on Amazon Prime and bought them, as I generally do when I suspect a film might warrant a second viewing.

I had no idea they belonged together.

The first was a documentary about a young woman, an old boat, and two friends who set out across the North Atlantic for the Azores. Before the journey could even begin, they spent a year bringing the boat back to life. Then came thirty days at sea—beautiful, strenuous, sometimes frightening, and filled with the particular happiness that seems to come from choosing an adventure whose outcome you cannot entirely control.

The second film could hardly have seemed more different.

It was Brazilian, and at first I wondered whether it might be too dark for me. In the world of the film, the government has decided that citizens over seventy-five should be removed from ordinary life and sent to a compound where they will be cared for. The justification is chillingly practical: younger people should be freed from responsibility for the elderly so they can work and produce.

One woman isn’t having it.

What follows is another kind of adventure—a journey toward freedom through a world of water, extraordinary foliage, unexpected people, and lives being lived somewhere beyond the boundaries society has drawn for them.

Only after watching the two films back to back did I realize what my daughter had given me.

One story was about a young woman setting out into the unknown because she could.

The other was about an older woman setting out into the unknown because someone had told her she couldn’t.

And both found freedom on the water.

My daughter had just returned from swimming in the Azores. I was sitting at home watching the films she had discovered somewhere over the Atlantic.

Two women. Two boats. Two very different moments in life.

And somehow, for one afternoon, it felt like my daughter’s soul and mine were traveling together.