A Scene from Portugal

A day can encompass a lot

Lying prostrate on a very chic sunbed, I attune myself to the birds chirping a melody. Nature is their composer, and the chosen piece is divine. It’s perfectly orchestrated to lull me into a trance, slow the thump of my heart, and silence the insidious thoughts that lay siege to my mind as they attempt to coopt my solitude. It’s nice to submit to the bliss of nothingness, expanding what I know will likely be a mini-break from relentless parenting into imagined eons of conquered peace. Waking up early before anyone else, sitting in my kitchen, and listening to the birds’ song is my favorite part of my day back at home and I’m reminded of that. My eyes focus on the flicker of light and shadow on the ground, a little disco party created by the sun shining through the louvers of the sunbed. A sensual shiver runs down my spine as the rays warm my skin. I love it when the sun gives me goosebumps. The tension of being on the brink of being too cold and basking in sunlight is delightful. I relish it the way you only can when you know something will end. I turn over to my back in anticipation, and on cue, the sun disappears behind some clouds, and I put on my cover-up. It’s a bit chillier than I had expected here.

Here. What am I even doing here? Like, really doing here? Why Portugal? At what point did the opportunity for a golden visa program lead me down this rabbit hole of exploring the country and propel me here, in Comporta, where there are literal Storks’ nests on every power pole, rice patty fields that morph into beaches, and me in this shabby chic villa in a neighborhood exploding with construction because all the other bougie people of a certain set went down the same rabbit hole. I think about the Storks…industrious while ethereal, and how it didn’t dawn on me that Storks were actual real-life birds, not just make-believe, until marveling out the window our first day here I said to the kids, “You know where babies come from right?!” with a smirk. Just billiard balls rolling- transferred momentum from one thing to the next- and here I am, an aggregate of my ostensibly free choices. I stare into the pool and look up to the sky with an unconscious scowl as I consider the distant construction noises wafting in as an unwelcome reminder that everything, even our basic human activities, is embedded in good ole’ classical economics. It’s the postmodern game theory for life. The market is God in this game.

The surrealness of where I find myself in the moment, and the existential angst that has ensued from my wanting to understand swells in my throat. The data point I occupy has me laughing at myself a bit, though I don’t necessarily dislike this place, I do feel silly. I feel predictable. I feel a little alone despite my introspection leading me to realize how unoriginal and banal my being in Portugal is. I want to crumble up my findings and toss them in the trashcan. The sun’s disco party has soured because I am the WORST kind of party foul...I sigh and close my eyes, annoyed with myself. The image of my sister dancing in an NYC club flashes in my mind, gyrating with all the beautiful people to the thump thump thump while rolling her eyes at the sanctimonious college me sitting stiffly in a booth staring at people like an anthropological study, unable to shake the raw primitiveness of it all and just fucking gyrate. “Don’t be a buzz kill!”

Why am I thinking about this so damn much and does it even matter? I want to stop being insufferable and have fun. I am in Portugal, and it’s beautiful, I want to enjoy some lounge time by the pool while I have it. But I feel indignant, recognizing that there is a point in which freedom- the luxury of time, and of options, this coveted thing everyone believes they are working towards becomes nothing more than a standing reserve to be leveraged in a society that values the illusory gain of monetizing everything. Is there anything sacred anymore…categorically immune to being turned to profit? How does one escape it? Become truly free?

Who am I kidding…I certainly enjoy the benefits of money! I like beautiful things and places, I click on the perfectly targeted ads and enjoy the time afforded to me with my kids. It’s because I have the freedom of time I can pontificate about this in the first place. Plus, I feel like I already know the answer. I’m masochistically putting myself through this mental gymnastics when perhaps I know the way to transcend the irony is to see that real freedom isn’t found in form, it can’t be accumulated because it resides in the formless. It’s internal and relational, and don’t I have that no matter where I am? It’s the embodiment of my internal state. And, my internal state is rooted in my relationship with myself, my family, and my friends. It’s eternal, and it can’t be commodified. Freedom conceived as atomized beings unmoored by anything formless is just a burden of too many options subject to the whims of the market.

“OMG STOP!” I tell myself. At this point, I sit up…my thoughts’ strategy has now evolved to a full frontal attack on my peace and privilege, I can’t even hear the birds anymore, or maybe they’ve just been silenced by the world’s tiniest violin. I begin to fidget and look for something to do. I bring my book to my nose to read, grab my notebook, and feign productivity. The anxiety is palpable now- it’s dripping off the sunbeds next to me, the too-perfect pool, the landscaping, and I take a big breath in. There’s distant French chatter and the construction noises are now too hard to ignore- a welcome justification to pack up and head inside, so I do. Distraction is my countermove. I throw my things into my pool bag, trip over a pool noodle, and head towards the house. I crave anything familiar that will remind me of who I am if there is an “am”- grasping for my memories and anything fixed to substantiate me in the intangibility of the present moment. Something to root me. My home territory.

“Skibidi toilet…skibidi skibidi toilet. Skibidi toilet…skibidi skibidi toilet. Um, Mom, Um, Mom… Mom, what are you doing? Can I have a pop?” my son queries as he half walks/half skips along the sand walkway towards me with his hands vising the sun from his eyes. He’s a mirage of a wayward small person who’s been lost at sea and joyfully, drunkenly found land. I squint my eyes to see who and what is on my path to the house. I place my hands on his warm golden shoulders and brush some long locks from his eyes. He is so beautiful I think.

“Well…ah..I…” I’m deciding if having more than one dessert should be allowed since we are on vacation after all and, I’ve been imbibing so if the rules are different for me shouldn’t it be for him? But at the same time, I know how sensitive he is to sugar- and just like that my ruminating thoughts have been cut at the knees.

“Wait, Mom! Blake, you have Tourettes, I swear. OMG. Mom, can I have your iPad to make up a dance with Daphne on FaceTime? It’s only fair Mom, because Blake and Tristan have already done their thirty minutes and you promised…” says another mini interlocutor who’s appeared and is diverting my attention from the first, this one a bit more delicate, a bit more composed.

Before I can remember what promise she is referring to, “Skibiddi Toilet. Skibbiddi Skibbidi toilet…that’s not true Tinsley! Tristan did it, but not me, we AREN’T the same person you know. Skibidi toilet…skibidi skibidi toilet. Mom- she JUST wants to look at brain rot. The worst kind of brain rot. Like Tik-tok or something, you can’t let her do it,” my wayward sailor says.

God, maybe he does have Tourettes. Or like a tick or something...I furrow my brow. I absently pick up a rosemary twig off the bush along the path to rub the sprigs between my fingers and smell it and they can tell I’m not fully engaged, they want my full attention. “No, I don’t! That’s not true. You are so annoying Blake. I’m not doing anything bad or mindless, you’re the one watching stupid YouTube videos about grinding in Minecraft, I just want to make up a dance and I need the music that’s all, it’s creative Mom,” my girl says earnestly. At this point, she knows the talking points adults use to justify screen time pretty well.

My third child has appeared now, disheveled and with a deck of cards. He proudly shuffles his cards, a gold and shiny deck with tile patterns and PORTUGAL written on them. All three are circling me like a school of fish as he says, “Shh, stop Blake, what are you doing?! You don’t want to turn her on or you won’t be able to turn her off,” a strategic statement meant to turn her on, and he knows it. He impishly grins at me before looking at his sister to see if he elicited his desired response. It’s no surprise this one is into card tricks. I divert my eyes as I don’t want to condone his tactics, and because what he says is not untrue, so to quickly mitigate the potential of Tinsley erupting I respond, “Blake you get one more pop, that’s it, you’ve met your quota of sweets for the day. And, yes, of course, Tin you can do the iPad for 30 -minutes and that’s it, ok sweety. Remember this was supposed to be a mostly screen-free trip, you guys. Like what happened to that? No games ok, just music and camera so you can make up that dance, ” I reply as I swim through them towards the house, the boys muttering about “preferential treatment” as they scatter, talking over each other and me, continuing the dialogue at different pitches like in a chaotic scene of a Broadway musical.

I have arrived at the door to the kitchen of our beautiful beach house for the next two weeks. I brush the sand from my feet and walk in the screen door into the kitchen. I take notice of the mosquito screen already ripped off the bottom of the door and silently remind myself to figure that out later as I side-eye the two stray cats that lounge by the door. Dune and his wife Hazel I am told. “Wife” according to my daughter, “girlfriend” according to my sons. These stray cats are reveling in the glory of having been adopted. Each morning for the last few days I know a kid is awake when standing bleary-eyed at the Nespresso machine I hear the screen door slam, someone has procured the fancy tuna and salmon pate I bought to try, deemed it cat food, and is outside feeding them in the sun. “Mom we can just take them to get some shots at a local vet, buy a Kitty carrier, and then they could come home with us you know,” Blake pleads looking up at me as he squats and pets these kitties. He is the most tender of them, with a penchant for cats and babies that one wouldn’t immediately discern from his sporty bro exterior. A part of me will mourn when I no longer hear his tiptoes down the hall to my room, the creak of the door that precedes “Mom can I sleep with you?” as he assumes he can, crawls into bed, and snuggles with me.

Serene neutrals, seaside antiques, and artifacts including a giant sperm whale jaw permeate my peripheral vision as I focus on the large kitchen table where I place my poolside things upon walking in. The owners are never here, though their knick-knacks and love for the sea are abundant. This house has carefully placed screens for all the doors and windows to allow the cool June breeze to flow in while keeping the incessant mosquitos and flies that flourish from the rice paddies out. If you listen closely you can hear the ocean. The thatched roof, stucco, concrete, and native plants make for quiet luxury that finds modern amenities like a TV or central air conditioning crass in a place like this. I appreciate the lack of humming appliances.

This house is a new build designed to honor and mimic the authentic style of houses typical to Comporta- a formerly sleepy fishing village on the Atlantic coast, about an hour south of Lisbon. Now remnants of the sleepiness remain, but it’s punctuated by tasteful billboards for Jacques Grange developments, and boutiques with vintage Land Cruisers in the sandy makeshift parking lots. Minimalism as a curated, intentional look rather than a necessity is the act of eschewing features meant to make things more comfortable even when impractical or expensive. There seems to be a lot of that here. The average person probably finds it a little ridiculous- an almost insulting form of cosplay. I sheepishly enjoy it, though I think our house inside a gated community detracts from the attempt at authenticity.

I start scanning the kitchen island littered with bowls of fruits and bread and think about what to make everyone for dinner when I remember a babysitter is coming. A babysitter! After oscillating back and forth about it the day before, I decided to stop with the comparative suffering and give myself a break. Yes, mothering is something most women do without a break, and I’m lucky to be in this beautiful place with my kids and so on, and so on, but I’m desperate for some alone time! I do not want to think about what’s next, nor have to be responsible for anyone but myself for a brief time.

A voice emanates from the back of the couch, and I look up to find just the top of a moppy head floating above it, “Mom will you come watch my magic trick?” Tristan is shuffling cards with subtle hand gestures that allude to some sorcery that’s transpired in front of him. How did he get to the couch so fast, sitting there like he had been there this whole time? “It’s okay, I know you don’t want to Mom,” he says, the master of reverse psychology, his real sorcery. I’m unsure when he internalized this as an appropriate method of persuasion, and I sigh exasperated by the Catch22 he puts me in with it. I remember when he was an infant, and I would swaddle him like a burrito and he would cry and desperately try to free his little arms, he looked like an old cloaked wizard conjuring his freedom with a hidden crystal ball. He can be intensely focused, almost obsessed, for extended moments but then moves on. He embodies things that capture his attention in the same ways I do.

“Honey, read your audience, a good magician has to be receptive you know? I do want to watch your trick but not right now, not after watching it SO many times today, and I need to figure out what’s for dinner, it will feel more special if you wait until I want to watch it. OK?” I reply. I feel guilty already. “I’ll watch your magic trick,” says Trever as he calmly walks into the room. A shirtless saint intuiting what I need and when with such ease that it almost startles me. It’s been over a year, and while I feel completely safe and uninhibited in my heart with him, my body can sometimes be caught in the muscle memory of expecting the man in the room to be their father. There’s a dream-like quality to seeing him, this person who is not Tanner, intimately involved in my life and my children. It’s as if I’ve stepped into a portal of another dimension, a parallel universe within the multiverse where this is the way it’s always been, oddly familiar and completely foreign at the same time.“You’re going to live lives within lives. One day you will look back and it will feel that way,” I remember my mother-in-law once saying to me on a balmy summer night at her lake house as I sat and listened, my naive self-assuredness of forever still intact. She was right. My body follows suit, trusting the matters of the heart, accepting this new parallel world I’m in and I look at Trever lovingly and reply, “Thanks, I am going to go find Blake and Tinsley and get them to shower. Remember we have a babysitter coming.”

Just then, a knock at the door and a faint Ola! We all look surprisingly at the door as the babysitter arrives. Trever lets her in. She is a sweet middle-aged Portuguese Mary Poppins but with the look of a strict school teacher. Trever and I smile at each other. We can communicate so much within a glance. We both know she’s perfect. The antidote to the unruly boundary-testing behavior the kids have been absorbed in since arriving in Portugal a week ago. Homesickness, a lack of perspective, and transitioning from their school routine into Summer is why I guess. They say transitions are hard on kids. For every positive novel experience on this trip together there’s been an equal amount of bickering and disrespectful pull-your-hair-out moments. Including finding any way to say the number 69, turning what was once good reggae into skibidi toilet tunes, learning that being “free” is being naked as much as possible, and discussing “Bed War” game tactics with the clarity, sincerity, and gusto politicians ought to have.

Trever is now fully indoctrinated into life with tweens; he is on the inside of the “if you know you know.” He has the emotional bandwidth for it. The internal peace and confidence to know when to let be and when to intervene. As I watch him bring the babysitter in, and chat with her and the kids, I smile and think about how driving here in the car on the way from Lisbon, the boys announced confidently that the best part of the trip thus far has been stopping at McDonald’s for a McDouble and “why god why” do we have to take these scenic backroads when the highway is so much faster. I looked at Trever and said, “I bet when we were high, dancing to that playlist I made you, spending hours in our bubble talking in Sylva and I told you I had three kids you could have never imagined all this,” somewhat apologetically, somewhat comically, as he takes my hand and squeezes it in response. He said what he always says when he knows I wonder if it’s all too much, “I’m here for it, I’m here for all of it.”

I get the babysitter acclimated as the kids stare at me wide-eyed, a bit shell-shocked that I’m really doing it- leaving them with a babysitter after many empty threats of hiring said babysitter. They are on the cusp of being able to stay home alone, so it almost feels like work for them to spend time with a babysitter. It means they have to be on good behavior, edit themselves, and show some restraint- it’s exactly what I think they need right now. But I sympathize with them, I hate forced socialization. I show her some food options and introduce her formally to the kids. The manners come out in full swing, “Nice to meet you, I’m Tristan.” He shakes her hand. I grin. I know they are a little mad at me. But after the thankless meals and the bickering today, I’m ready to break the seal on our symbiosis for a bit. I tell them I’ll be back before Trever and I leave for dinner to check on them as I grab my laptop and sneakers, and walk out of the room with a “Toodle-oo!” before they can ask me any unnecessary questions to stall me. I feel exhilarated with a tinge of guilt as I hear Blake’s voice from behind, “Mom, Mom, Mommmmm,” like he’s been sucked into a spiraling black hole.

I walk into the bedroom and find Trever. He’s fiddling with his camera and the film. It’s cloudy and chilly, but I want to take a quick walk for fresh air and then abscond to the guest room near the pool to write a bit. It looks like it’s going to rain any minute. I’m a little grumpy and snappy, protective of my time off, and a little agitated from being stuck in my head too much today so I sort of dismiss him as I rush into the room to get my workout clothes. He can tell I’m spent as I tell him eagerly, “If you don’t want to go out to dinner, it’s fine, I don’t care, but if you do perhaps we leave early and do something before. I’m not sure what… but I don’t want to take the initiative… like you need to just plan something for me please, or I guess we could just stay here.” He gets the memo loud and clear- he knows I do, in fact, want to go out, but that I’m just a little tired…tired of being in charge and ALL of it, and hedging against the chance he doesn’t want to go out because I reflexively am motivated by guilt, and worrying too much about what other people want. He can surmise all that without prodding, he nods his head gracefully, gives me a gentle smile, and says, “Ok, I’m on it, I want to go, let’s do it,” diffusing the situation rather than amplifying it, reminding me it’s ok to take up space, to be needy, to have a preference. He communicates with equanimity. It’s contagious and encourages it in me. I realize I’m not agitated with him, not in the slightest, so rather than sabotage myself I smile back and say, “Ok cool, I’ll be back in a bit.

I do my thing. I walk off the self-induced mental agitation. I head to the guest room near the pool where I know I can’t be found, contemplating the sunbed along the way with a little trepidation, but after my walk, I have firmer boundaries for myself and newfound clarity and do not want to trigger the earlier angst so I maintain my plan to go to the guest room. I sprawl out on the bed, open up my laptop, and start to write a story about the day on SubStack. When I finally get back to the house I find all three kids, picture perfect, sitting on the couch. Mary Poppins is sweetly giggling at Tristan’s magic tricks and Tinsley and Blake are nicely reading. Ha! If only. Trever walks out ready and with a plan. He knows I’m a planner, sometimes to a fault, and he can perfectly plan the unknown. Create the mystery of seeing what we might not otherwise discover without the anxiety. I quickly shower and change, returning to say goodbye to the kids, and head out, as the babysitter begins making them dinner.

“Mom that’s a nice dress. Is it from India?” Tristan asks as I walk into the kitchen in a rush, grabbing my purse and things. “Well, sort of. Yes, it is made in India, but I bought it here in Portugal. At the shop in town, remember… you were there with me silly,” I reply. “Oh yeah. Oh, Mom, do you know the guy “Ishowspeed”? Tristan continues, “He’s like the ultimate brain rot YouTuber. He went to India and rode a holy donkey and it bit him!” and Blake follows up with, “Yeah, he’s like Forest Gump, he’s been everywhere, Mom.” Tinsley looks at me innocently from her book. We might as well be speaking in tongues to the babysitter. I laugh out loud at their stream-of-consciousness connections, and the memory of my friend Rebecca and I trying to explain to them why Jenny was such a bitch to Forest just a few weeks before. I should have made us leave earlier, but here we are, successfully stalling. There is a quick, “Love you guys! Be good,” and Trever and I hurry out the door.

We are driving down the main road between the residential area and the main town, availing ourselves of the precious silence. I admire the storks, the cloudy sky, and the scenery when I realize we are arriving at a small crossroads, beyond the main part of town where the restaurant is. Portuguese fisherman on their fifth or sixth Sagres beer, haggard and smoking sit at the town’s main cafe, staring at us. There are shanty sea shacks decorated like a carnival funhouse. I’ve never seen anything like it. The most dilapidated dock and with boats half sinking, but signs of use and life. Trever parks the car and we get out, “Well I wasn’t sure what this would be, but it seems interesting,” he says. It is. It’s real, it’s unpredictable. We walk around and explore as a misty rain comes down. The dock is littered with little shacks painted bright colors, and decorated with random artifacts, buoyes, clowns, and mirrors. Trever snaps a picture of himself in the mirror- a self-portrait. I try to imagine the life of a fisherman who uses these docks, maybe he’s sitting at the bar and will be here in the morning. He spent time decorating one of these shacks and made choices. Trever and I head to the car, to dinner…to a parallel universe.