Feel It
dated 2010-06-29 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
Feel It!
Last fall, on a Guincho beach cleanup a man I barely knew said, “ Hey Pat I heard you are looking for a bridge partner. I know someone who wants to play too.” After a little more probing I learned that this person, we’ll call him Rocky, was a good player and wanted someone to accompany him to the Bridge Federation in Lisbon. I answered that I was just a beginner then contacted three good bridge players I knew. All women. (I al ...
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
dated 2010-05-25 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
I spent the past week randomly looking, listening and observing in this part of Portugal. It occurred to me recently that I’ve never seen a black person working in a bank, insurance company, or in any firm of importance except to clean them up. It’s true that I live in Cascais, often referred to as the “Beverly Hills of Portugal”, but when I asked my banker if she knew of any black managers or tellers in Lisbon, she looked at me with a “ not ...
Open House
dated 2010-04-20 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
My parents were educated, generous and inhospitable. They welcomed our nuclear family of four in our home, but no one else. As a young girl I played jacks at my neighbor’s house, spent the weekends at the country home of a friend and studied in the basement of my high school beau. It wasn’t that my parents disliked people: they just didn’t want them in our home. We had a large living room with a white, designer rug that spoke “Stay out.” Ev ...
Motherhood
dated 2010-04-06 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
I don’t know what Portugal does for unwed, indigent mothers, but I can tell you that my God daughter is lucky to be living in France. Susanna, 18, left this country in September, two months pregnant and poor. She took the advice of the SOS Village in Bicesse where she was raised from age 3, to go live near her father in France. Initially she was afraid: “What if he rejects me?” she said between her tears and fears. But after several phone calls ...
Ageing
dated 2010-02-23 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
Remembering my Parents
Some spiritual teachers say we pick our parents. If that’s true, then I chose well. Both my mother and father were generous, intelligent and supportive. They loved my sister and me almost unconditionally and raised us with an emphasis on excellence in education above material or social status. I think of my parents especially hard at this time: my birthday week. Every February 20, I have a ritual that goes like this: ...
My First Set of Pearls
dated 2009-12-25 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
Jessica( all names changed) asked Santa for pearls. Her request threw my memory back too many years to count. When I was five, my parents added a pearl onto a necklace for each birthday until I was in my 30’s. But Jessica has no parents. She found the item, “ My first set of pearls” in this year’s Toys R Us catalogue. And on December 18, when Santa visited the SOS Children’s Village in Bicesse , Jessica got what she wanted.
Two year ...
Thanksgiving in Baltimore
dated 2009-11-30 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
“It’s always the unexpected,” my mother used to say. And so it was the morning of
Wednesday, November 25. I’d finished packing late in the night for a 3-day bridge tournament in Sesimbra. That’s where I had planned to spend Thanksgiving eating grilled fish instead of roasted turkey, potatoes instead of pumpkin, Portuguese bread instead of American stuffing. It was 7.50 am and I decided to check my emails before walking the dogs. That ...
Where Have all the Sidewalks Gone?
dated 2009-11-18 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
As if the sidewalks in Portugal aren’t hazardous enough with missing stones, dog poop and trash thrown carelessly, now we have another impediment: the smokers. Ever since the non-smoking in public places law went into effect, the smokers have hijacked outdoor cafes, sidewalks and doorways in front of businesses, restaurants and even schools. There they blatantly blow their poisonous fumes into the faces of anyone who walks into their path.
I ...
Sweet Eighteen
dated 2009-06-16 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
When I turned “sweet sixteen”, I traded my high school boyfriend, temporarily, for Mr. Mims, my driving school teacher. He was short, soft-spoken and honest. Plus, he showed me an infallible technique for parallel parking. Within four months I learned the rules of the road as well as how to navigate them. Once he was certain I would succeed, Mr. Mims escorted me to the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles and waited for me outside. I took th ...
All Beginnings are Hard
dated 2009-04-07 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
Sally cringed when I suggested that we read The Road Home by Rose Tremain for our April book club choice. The author won the prestigious Orange Broadband Prize for women's fiction last year for her novel about an Eastern European immigrant’s struggle to adapt to his new life in London. “Let’s read something that relates to us, “she moaned. In the end we decided to read the book.
On the surface, The Road Home has little to do with “us.” ...
Who Says The Portuguese Aren’t Creative?
dated 2009-03-08 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
Who Says The Portuguese Aren’t Creative?
My friend Sally says the Louvre contains no Portuguese painters ; only one Portuguese author has won the Nobel prize ( he lives in Spain); and few Portuguese ever make their way into symphony halls, designer runways, Amazon’s top ten or music’s greatest artists. But Sally, I’ve turned up an area where the locals do shine: in creating their own illegal parking places. Let’s look, and you, readers, c ...
Will His Garden Grow
dated 2008-08-12 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
Don left for the USA two hours ago. He’ll stay there for 27 days. I’m not sure whether to sulk or to celebrate, but I can tell you that my mood is closer to the latter than the former.
“Pat, you’re so lucky,” my golf partner, Susana, said yesterday. “My husband never travels.”
Of course I love my husband, but I also adore having time alone at home. I eat cereal for dinner, avocado for breakfast, sleep at one , wake at ten, and watch th ...
Writing on the Ribbons
dated 2008-05-27 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
If educators had looked at Joana’s school transcript ten years ago, they would never have predicted that she would have graduated last week from Universidade Católica, esteemed by many as Portugal’s finest school of higher learning.
When I met Joana at the SOS Children’s Village in 1998 she was floundering in a Portuguese public school. One day I asked how her English classes were progressing.
“Our teacher has been gone for two weeks, ...
Holocaust Remembrance Sunday
dated 2008-01-28 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
Holocaust Remembrance Sunday,2008
Eddie Fernandes, Pastor of the Riverside International Church, gets my vote for hero of the week, if not the month and year. Two weeks ago I received an invitation from him to attend the church's Sunday service." Eddie wrote:
This letter comes to invite you to attend our “Holocaust Remembrance Sunday” on Sunday January 27, 2008. We are one of the few Christian Churches in Portugal that have joined this Eu ...
Givers Get
dated 2008-01-01 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link
For a couple that has no children and no family living in Portugal, the holidays can be problematic, even depressing if one lets them be. But this year I was determined to fall neither into the blues nor into self-pity. Instead, I remembered the words of an Australian I met over 20 years ago on the beach. “Givers get,” she said. With that one sentence she walked on, and I never saw her again. Her words, though, have always stuck with me.
As mi ...