If you have followed me for some time you know by now that I love summer in all its manifestations – even the heat doesn’t bother me. Unlike many Portuguese, who show up with black shadows under their eyes due to lack of sleep on hot summer nights, the heat suits me – in fact it is the cold that makes me want to hibernate and only wake up after the long dark months are over. However, as much …
Category: Family
She came down the castle hill and looked at the magnificent square facing the river Tagus. The blue sky reflected on the river and the sun was warm. It looked like summer had finally arrived. Below the arches of the old late 18th century buildings there was a handicraft market. She was walking by distractedly when she saw a table full of ceramic plates featuring the many professions andshe remembered that her elder son was doing his last exams at university, …
As I drive back home I am disheartened. Again I have been visiting you, and again you have been complaining incessantly during the whole time I was there. For several times I tried to change subjects, talk to you about things that used to interest you, about life out here, about funny happenings, some stories about my friends, others about our past, my work, the boys…but nothing seemed interesting enough to distract you from the innumerable list of misfortunes your …
I’m putting the dishes in the dishwasher and I hear some piano notes. My son Afonso is playing. I smile and I think of a time, long ago, when he was five and asked to take piano lessons at nursery school. We bought him that small piano as he had to practice every day at home. Which he did. His teacher had said he was very good at it and he played a song at the school’s Christmas party …
After lunch, the old patriarch sat on his reclining chair as he did every day of his nowadays so predictable life. I may be old, he thought, but I still enjoy a good meal. As he closed his eyes, he thought of the coming Christmas with some trepidation – after all this would be the first Christmas with his two great-grandchildren, and at such a lively age, both one year old! The little girl living in London, he didn’t see …
It’s been almost thirteen years since you left us and many times I wish I could tell you about so many things that have happened, so many things that have changed. And then I think why not, maybe I can. I want to tell you how empty it felt when you left, how I understood at forty what it felt like to be an orphan. When I lost you I lost a father, but also my anchor, the only person …
Padua is a lovely Italian city, known worldwide as “St. Anthony’s city”. In fact, St. Anthony lived and preached there for some years, and died there, although he was born in Lisbon, Portugal. As I once heard the archbishop of Lisbon say during mass on St. Anthony’s day, 13 June: “St. Anthony from Lisbon, of Padua”. I wholeheartedly agree with him – St. Anthony, after all, belongs to us all, even if in Lisbon we are proud that he has …
It is often said that babies do not come with a list of instructions, and the first few days with your new born baby – especially the first – can be very stressful, to say the least. But you survive, and then you learn to cope and start enjoying the wonderful – and challenging – adventure of raising a child. Time goes by and your children grow up. They go to school, they become teenagers (probably the most challenging time …
In the last few months my younger boy, my “baby” as I call him, has become a man. He was a beautiful baby, with large greenish eyes in a round face and yellow-blonde hair. He looked like a cherub…his first months were difficult, as he was often ill with bronchitis but fortunately when he was a year old I began taking him to a homeopath who did wonders for him – and my baby who was constantly coughing did not …
In normal circumstances, today we’d all be together celebrating your birthday. But then, for many years, circumstances haven’t been normal, have they? Rival My first memory of you is from the evening you were born, and it’s not a pleasant one. I can picture myself sitting in the car outside the hospital with my nanny, with the horrible feeling that everyone in the family had deserted me, as they were too busy with the newcomer. From that moment on …