Flashlight # 8: Portugal Fancy

Greetings from Lisbon, good people!
 
It’s 8pm. I’m sitting on the couch in my apartment, listening to the city alive outside. A rattling yellow tram trundles by out the window every five minutes, brakes squeeking on our hill and just as familiar now as the sounds of the cars and taxis and motorbikes and voices always echoing in through the windows. People walk to and from a big park just down the street, Jardim da Estrela, though now most voices are probably heading toward dinner. A group of men, laughing. A kid crying loudly, then very quietly. 
 
We’ve been here six weeks, though it feels longer. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I just mean that time moves differently when you’re somewhere foreign. I had forgotten the exhilaration of being in a place where you don’t speak much of the language; each day becomes a puzzle. My senses are heightened. I pay more attention to body language, I am always, even unconsciously, scanning for Portuguese words I know, or recontextualizing exchanges and situations as I learn more. It is so enlivening, this process. I feel very awake here. Alight.
 
More on Portugal below. But first, book news. Y'all. The Red Grove has a cover.
 
Nobody freak out but IT IS GORGEOUS. And it is available for preorder! I’m not going to make too big a deal about that right now because I will DEFINITELY make a big deal about preorders closer to publication date, but let’s just all agree that we’ll do it anyway. I’m in the process of coming up with really great prizes for people who preorder. Do you have any suggestions? Want my car? A sonnet written to celebrate your great intellect? I'll basically give you anything, preorders are that important.

You can read more about the book here. 

One tragedy about the book I'll share with you is that I just got through with legal edits, which is where some lawyers look at your book and try to figure out if you (or really, the publisher) could get sued for anything. In the first chapter of my book, I had the lyrics to Stayin' Alive in dialogue, because (spoiler alert!) it's the song you're taught to sing when you give cpr - it's the right rhythm. But the lawyers made me take it out, which really ruins some good jokes. So this is an appeal: do you know the Bee Gees? Can you help me get permission to use the lyrics in my novel? I'll write you a sonnet in thanks. 

Another exciting development: the Accountability Workshops got a website. We're so fancy now! So legit! And we added another group that meets Monday afternoons at 1pm ET, in addition to our Wednesday afternoon and evening groups. I just can't say enough about how much I love supporting other writers as they create sustainable writing practices, as they finish the projects they've been dreaming about finishing for years. You've probably already heard me yammer on about these workshops plenty, but just in case this comes as news, you can read all about it here.

Wait, what the heck is living in Portugal like??

Thanks for asking. We recently returned from a weekend in Porto, Portugal’s northern big city. It’s gorgeous, slopes down to a wide river, and is the home of Port wine. We trekked around, saw lovely churches, took a short boat ride on the river which Leela deemed sub-par since we didn’t let her get in the water alongside the boat.

We even went to a famous port cellar to do a tasting, because – what is port, exactly? I was pleasantly surprised! Turns out port is wine with brandy mixed in, and there are a variety of flavor profiles, not all of them as sweet as I’d thought. So we were tasting a few Ports down by the river in this classy joint established in the 1500s, I kid you not, and Leela, who at this age can play by herself for a maximum of four seconds at a time, is suddenly occupied for a whole minute. She’s just digging around in her diaper bag, pulling things out, harmless really, and so we toast to our excellent parenting, for raising a child with such self-sufficiency. The port we’re tasting has notes of cherry and tobacco, we say, feeling quite pleased with ourselves, Leela laying her changing pad out on the cobblestone patio that was laid in 1721.

Ooh, we say, holding the next taste of port up to the light, what legs, we say, what body, then cheers, and taste--this one has some notes of grape we say, a dumb joke we make whenever we go wine tasting.

And then Leela, who has now been playing by herself for a record-breaking three minutes, has pulled all the wipes out of the packet, all the diapers out of the bag. Throngs of tourists wait on all sides of the patio, hoping for a seat, for a chance to taste this special stuff, they are wearing nice necklaces and are on vacation and there are even some beautiful Portuguese people—because they are always beautiful, all of them, all the time—talking and sipping and the sun is bright and the water is clear and we are part of a long tradition of people just taking a moment in this old, old place to enjoy ourselves.Leela has laid down on her back on the changing pad. She throws her feet into the air, takes a wipe, and starts wiping her own ass.

(here she is in a different moment)

One good thing here is that she can’t yet take off her pants, so everything is happening on top of the clothes, sort of like middle school fumblings. On the other hand, she’s found her new favorite thing, and this place, absolutely packed with people on a sunny afternoon, gets quite a show. She gathers an audience fast, not even paying them any mind for once, just going about her own business, pretend wiping her butt and pretend changing her diaper again and again, legs splayed and high up in the air, narrating the whole time, which is really her thing these days. Poo-poo on the butt, change the diaper. Leela’s turn, wipe. No, doggie diaper. This one has camels on it. Etc.

And now we’re at a world record seven minutes of solo play time while we sip port in this stunningly beautiful, fancy place, and we are all just having a really good time and no, of course we do not stop her or talk about appropriate play at appropriate times, she’s only 19 months old and doesn’t really get that yet, and this port tastes like leather in a good way and now she has been playing by herself for 8 minutes so what we do is cheers. 

Portugal has been wonderful. I love it here so much. So much! Lisbon is a stunning city, all the sidewalks and streets are these small white-ish limestone cobblestones, and the streets wind up and down giant hills and every turn feels unpredictable. People love kids here. Like strangers all the time, walking down the street, wave at Leela, or make a funny face, or say cuckoo. Some of them will reach down and pinch her cheek or tickle her, and one yesterday, a server at a restaurant, walked over to our table, reached down, picked her up, kissed her cheek, put her down and walked away. Leela is very popular. She eats it up, of course.

We have a babysitter four mornings a week, hallelujah. Her name is Marcia, and she’s a retired math teacher from Brazil. She’s wonderful, Leela loves her, and she also stays out dancing at the clubs until the early mornings about once a week, which impresses me to no end. On the mornings Marcia is here, she’ll take Leela to one of two parks close by, where there are playgrounds and ducks and benches to climb and beautiful Portuguese children wearing very fancy dresses and rompers. Jeremy and I then get to work in hyper-speed. We still have a good amount on our plate and limited time to get it done, so it has meant less exploring the city without a toddler than we’d like, but that’s ok. We work when we can – when Marcia is here, during naps, and after Leela goes to sleep—and then have lots of adventures in the city.

I’ve loved doing the big stuff—seeing the 15^th century Jeronimos Monastery, which Leela treated like a parkour course, or this amazing palace. And we took a day trip to Sintra, this gorgeously weird fairytale like city with a castle, the Quinta da Regaleira, which contains an initiation well that descends 88 feet into the earth with stairs lining the walls and then leads through a series of caves, though nobody really knows why. What a mystery! All of that has been truly wonderful. But I think the part that has felt most wonderful of all is the ordinary everdayness of being here. Getting good at ordering a coffee and pastry in Portuguese. Walking through the same big park near our house nearly every day, either with Leela or on my own, taking a walk or joining one of the the hardcore mom workout groups that always make me almost barf. The peacocks and chickens wandering around the city.  I’d live here, except for I’d miss all of you so much.

(walking out of the oldest bookstore IN THE WORLD)

But let me tell you one more thing about why it’s great. When you walk around, the parks and cafes and tables out on the street are filled with people, and none of them are on their computers. I mean none. And very, very few are on their phones. People are sitting with other people, talking. Some are reading books sometimes, but mostly, it’s people gathering to chat. It feels so different from anywhere I’ve been in the U.S . To have the public spaces where we spend so much time used for socializing - and not, pointedly, for solitary work - displaces work from the centrally crowned monarch it feels like back home. And I’m guilty of it completely. It’s annoying here sometimes, too—like, where do I go to work outside my house? But mostly, it’s lovely. People sipping espresso on those old streets, chatting, kids and adults and locals and tourists. Plus, it’s a great excuse to eat a lot of pastries.
 
 
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Xo,
Tessa
 
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