From Porto, with love

We stay at the Selina
( https://www.selina.com/portugal/porto/) in a family room. Bunk beds for the kids, twin beds for the soon-to-be ex Mr and Mrs.  By turns, I feel nostalgic, almost weepy with genius and like Dr Frankenstein (What in the H E double Hockey Sticks was I thinking?!).

The first day, we wander over to the Museum of Discovery for a kid-sized course in Portuguese history. I am ashamed of how little I know about Portuguese expansion, Portuguese history.  I had meant to read up but I kept getting sidetracked, by grief (pesky dead mums, dead grandmas, dead marriages) and post-natal depression. There are days still when getting out of bed feels as though I am lifting a car off my own broken body. Somewhere in all of this, I am writing a memoir. Somewhere in all of this, I am remembering to breathe.

A dear friend messages me: 'Mom is back in the hospital.' She writes more. My heart squeezes painfully around her.  My dad calls, downtrodden with the weight of raising a 35 year old man-child. This time? Guns and drugs. Again. Still.  I'm too tired of the same song on repeat to care this time beyond the fact that I am supposed to stay there for 2 months; my 7 year old has a dream of riding on a yellow school bus. And now? This drama is unfolding in the duplex next door.  He is also heartsick; his navy buddy Mr Joe is dead (heart; cancer) and he feels this keenly.  I think back to Mr Joe with his beard and baseball cap, his overalls. He was one of those rare people who was just himself. I remember his wife telling me about a trip they took to Costa Rica when he realised he could check a case of beer in a cooler and his favourite folding chair. When the baggage arrived, he popped open a beer and settled back into his chair. 'Y'all just go on and get the cars sorted. I'm gonna wait right here.' I smile to myself as my dad talks on. 'I just can't believe it,' he says. 'you know?' But I don't know. I believe everything and nothing all at once.  I see people living impossibly everyday. Every. Day. All I know is that we all arrive with a ticket already punched. And we all die. I am sad but resigned. And he died loved.

The hotel offers free walking tours of both the historic city and the newer Art Nouveau town.  I learn a thin pub-quiz veneer of history: about the heart of Pedro the II, the revolution of 1974 that began in night schools across the country as the language of diplomacy changed from French to English.  'Have you read or seen 'Night Train to Lisbon?' The seemingly sleepy guide Jaõa asks as we walk amoeba-like through the city. I am constantly running to catch up, desperate to capture quick snaps, quick bites of the city as they unfurl. 'The Portuguese have invented many things. My favourites? Torture and slavery. Also? We have a very dark sense of comedy and a complete inability to understand metaphor. Which is ironic, because of our dark humour.' I feel instantly understood. I too am darkly humoured. I too am often too literal for my own sanity. Could these be my people?

The next day we take boat tour (Douro Amica, €15/adults, €7.50/children 4-7), counting the bridges, looking at the wharfs and port distributors. We have lunch in a small taverna where the local workers eat. €6  for soup, fried fresh mackerel with, and a drink. I can't remember what it is called but if you walk up the least likely road, past the more officious looking eating establishments, it is about 3/4 of the way up the hillside. There is space for 8 tables and 2 people to duck-walk with heaping plates.

Porto is a walking city. It feels a bit like Athens, a bit like Prague, a bit Sofia. Under all of the comparisons, she is herself: Proud. Indomitable.

The kids have internal alarms stuck on 0530. We struggle to stay in our rooms until at least 7am. The city most of the time we are here appears sleepy.  We breakfast in shifts around their laughter, trying to buffer them from exhausted bickering. We are trying, I repeat to myself. But I am not wrong to call it a draw.