A Little Rain Must Fall

4a conversations with mom; Mr. Fox has been found out; Signs of the times

We’ve had some light showers the last few days. Next week it is slated to be high 80s (F)) which means everything is going to grow gangbusters, which means I need to get out there and weed imediatamente. It’s our second week back from our little trip to the US and Norway, and a lot has happened:

I. We found out what is killing the hens and chicks

II. The cottage roof will be on by the end of the week

III. Jake went on walkabout again

IV. My 84-year-old mom in Illinois is having back pain

V. The horta continues to be the star of the show

VI. I’m seeing signs

So here’s the news, as fast as I can type it…

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I. Mr. Fox Is Found Out

One of my few remaining hens has been acting peculiarly. She stands on the koi pond coral, staring from the shelter of the bamboo, refusing to come out and eat. Or she sits on the porch steps, facing the front doors. She comes running when she sees me but unlike the rest of the flock rarely follows me, just turns her head to follow my progress as I go hither and yon doing my chores. Everything about her suggests she is sighing heavily. I think she misses her sisters, so many taken by some creature in the nights of these past few months. Is she thinking, Am I next? Who will save me from this fate?

Well, I told this hen, whose name is Pinky Tuscadero because of her pretty pink face belying a tough little survivor gal. Guess what, tthe h has solved the mystery! It started with the trees. Because the h is attentive to his newly planted trees he noticed right away in the P orchard (where pears, pomegranates, persimmons are planted) that the grave of Goldie Hawn had been desecrated. To dig up a dead hen - that is not cat like behavior and while it is dog-like behavior, no dog would dig up a well-rotted corpse when a nice juicy compost pile with fresh scraps was just a few feet away and with easy access.

The h mounted the motion activated game camera nearby and reburied poor Goldie. We felt bad knowing her grave would be disturbed again but if we can capture the bandit on film, it is for the greater good of the flock.

Many theories have been advanced by friends and neighbors: a stray dog, an owl, a hawk, a genet, a fox, a rat. Neighbor Alberto has seen the neighbor’s cat carrying a chick in its mouth. It’s possible the chick was lost/abandoned - I’ve found a few that way myself, as has a neighbor. But taking a chick is one thing; attacking. a hen’s nest and wiping out five babies and mama and leaving no trace of itself or the missing is a whole other thing. Whatever it was, it was clearly eating everyone on the spot, could climb, and/or was strong enough to carry away a young hen to its nest, which in all likelihood contains babies.

We have a winner, the h said this morning, his voice grim. He was watching the replay of last night’s film. And there was the culprit, in infrared - a fox made of light digging up Goldie a second time. I studied it. In all likelihood it is the selfsame this fox that ate Stella and at least six other hens, and platoons of pintainhos, in the past four months.

For the past year 90% of all peeps have disappeared, one by one. Often weather is to blame - out there in the cold rains and winds of winter and spring, the drenched hen is the last line of protection between hatchlings and freezing to death. Summer heat kills too, the hens know it - when you want to see a new peep just station yourself by the waterer - the hen will lead her babies there for their very first walkabout. It’s so funny watching a handful of babies tilting back their little heads, so self-serious in this business of surviving.

We’ve been blaming the occasional cat and rat for the death of chicks, when all along it might have been Br’er Fox. On reflection, it likely was, as we’ve trapped and killed every rat we’ve ever seen on the property, usually within a couple of days of spotting it. And the cats rarely come very close now that the place is clearly occupied, with one of the occupants a largish dog.

The Cottage
The cottage is starting to look less like an abandoned ruin and more like a place that will one day be inhabited again. It now has beams, cross beams and rafters, o’ertopped with new red roof tiles. The cottage is a 3D tromper l'œil, or like one of those tents in the Harry Potter series, small and innocuous outside, as big as the Taj Mahal inside.

Similarly the cottage looks tidy from the outside, the classic design of a door bracketed by two windows suggesting a few cozy, low-ceilinged square rooms inside. But in fact the rooms will all have 13’ ceilings, even the bedroom the ceiling of which we will drape with fabric in a style I once spotted in the canal houses of Amsterdam and have wanted to copy ever since. The bathroom is tucked away, as a bathroom should be, at the end of a hallway off the kitchen - to the right, shower and sink and toilet, in the center room for clothes to hang or books to shelve, and/or a small table with a single candle lit, reflected in the mirror above it, a little white index card with the word festa and an arrow pointing to the left, where there is now an exit out to the indoor patio. Here there will be a clawfoot tub, stove, and dining table and daybed overtopped with a plexiglass roof for under the stars dining or sleeping. There will be a whole wall of potted plants breathing their greeny breath into the space which could seat a luncheon of 12 - 20 with no problem.

To me the cottage has always looked like a hobbit house, sitting at the top of a hill with steps leading up, the bottom half of which are nice and wide and modern and laid with calcadas, and the top half of which are super old stone and earth, the uneven risers requiring giant steps, so you have the discombobulating feeling as you go up that you are simultaneously going back in time, or entering a different dimension, perhaps the one where a giant answers your knock at the door.

From the first moment I entered the cottage - even full as it was with stacks of ancient pink insulation, soggy mattresses and piles of rotten beams with rusty nails sticking out of them - I knew the cottage was destined to be my favorite place on the property. I’ve always loved tiny houses, even before tiny houses became an identifiable category/trend in housing. When I was small, back in the days before iphone cameras, and even before pharmacies were a place to drop off your camera film for developing, my dad would drive to Fox Foto to leave his film.

Fox Foto was not a store, just a tiny building big enough for a man to sit in. You’d drive up, the man would slide open a window, take your film, and give you a little slip of paper with an order number and a date. On the appointed date you’d drive up to the slide window and give him your slip, he’d rummage and then hand back an envelope thick with pictures.

Fox Foto, look for the fox! the jingle would play on the TV, where a car pulled up to a tiny house even as a cartoon fox tail disappeared inside the booth. Look-for-the-fox!

I was so charmed by this cottagey little building, a tiny brightly lit island in a sea of a black asphalt parking lot. I thought the man inside lived there, and once we drove away he’d take a staircase that led down below the sightline of the window where his wife and children sat at a little dinner table. After dinner his kids would go to sleep in bunk beds and he and his wife would sit in recliners watching television with a fire going in a fireplace. I always imagined I’d live in just such a house when I grew up. I would be safe in a house like that, I thought. There was no where for anyone to hide and jump out at you. The cottage is the same, in a way - so open plan there is nowhere to hide, everything is visible standing in the middle of it.

roof tiles are back on - a new roof in about 5 days

Jake Being Jake

I was out walking Jake, and heard A Senhora, a senhora! This is the term of respect for an older lady. Old always being ten years older than you are, I was surprised to turn and find the owner of the voice, a boy of about eleven, was talking to me. While I was digesting my surprise at being called hey old lady! (in a good way, though) the boy said something and being distracted I did not quite understand so I told him Desculpe, estou a aprender Portugues.

He pointed at Jake. I told him O nome dele e Jake.

Jake, he repeated, smiling. Jake stepped closer to the boy who flinched backwards just a bit.

Ele e amigavel, I assured him.

Amigavel? he asked, confirming. Jake licked the back of his hand and wagged. The boy broke out in a broad grin and patted Jake very formally on his sweet round head exactly four times.

The boy then asked, Seu?

Meu nome e Sandra, I told him. E tu?

Junior! he said, patting Jake again. I held out my hand and we both laughed and shook.

Prazer, I said.

He grinned, turned and skipped two steps and then turned and waved.

Tchau Jake! Off he ran.

Good boy, I told Jake, who resumed smelling everything in sight - park benches, the corners of buildings, the hedges bordering the sidewalk, the dumpsters - with an intensity (and unbelievable slowness) reserved for having been gone a few days, and now catching up on the news. Despite thinking he is staying with each smell an unjustifiable length of time, even doubling back to be double dog sure he’d smelled it enough, I was patient and allowed him to sniff as he pleased.

Back home I was still filled with the warmth of this further evidence at the awesome jakeness of Jake as I delightedly closed the gates - gates constructed by the hands of Jake’s good and true friends Alberto, Tiago and Paulo, who want him to roam free without leashes on his own property while protected from his predisposition to occasionally take himself for a walkabout.

On a typical day Jake moves around and lounges outside, going from the sun-warmed calcadas of the front courtyard to the fragrant wood chips in the Secret Garden to the cool firm earth of the shade-drenched Picnic Flats. When I headed over to the quinta I paused at the portao (which has gone from a rust-stained medium green to a deep shiny black in the past few days) I whistled and Jake rose and ambled after me, pausing to take a long drink out of his bright yellow water bowl in the carport. He doesn’t always come with me on trips to the quinta, preferring sometimes to doze among the roosters on the porch or the red and white tile patio, which is seemingly always cool to the touch.

I watched him round the corner of the garage and head up the quinta road, walking slow and wagging low. Normally I wait at the door of the quinta, watching for Jake’s head to appear at the top of the quinta steps. And I do this *because he can’t be trusted* not to keep moseying up the quinta road, up the steps behind the cottage, through the Back 40 and over the tumbled down wall to FREEDOM. He always looks right away to see if I’m in the doorway - to see if anyone is paying attention. He’s very laid back in the way he constantly tests for his freedom. The moment me and the h aren’t looking, he slips away. You can tell what’s coming, can’t you? You can just feel what’s going to happen next.

I spent about ten minutes in the quinta then popped into the courtyard t to verify Jake’s arrival. But Jake was not laying in the sun slashed courtyard of the quinta, nor was he in a favorite shady spot of crunchy brown leaves under the eaves of the roof of the workshop that borders the quinta garden. Nor was he sitting in the road between the stairs down to the quinta and the stairs up to the horta - a favorite place to find him, exactly between us when the h is in the garden working whilst I load dishwasher and clothes washer and feed chickens and empty the dehumidifiers etc etc. etc.

I went back to the palaceta - no Jake waiting to be let inside. I did a quick lap around the Secret Garden - no Jake. I went inside - no Jake, newly arrived with the h from the horta. I went back to the quinta and there was the h, sitting at table eating bean salad and listening to the news on his phone.

Oh hi, he said.

Is Jake with. you?I I asked.

Nope, haven’t seen him, the h said.

He’s on walkabout, I said. I cussed a whole lot but no need to go into that just now.

I’m going to the Back 40, I said, already running. It hadn’t been that long, maybe I’d catch him before he walked off the property.

I called his name, loudly, as I ran around the wild acreage. It was a much easier task than just 30 days ago - Tiago and Paulo have completed mowing all four acres, the Alaskans trimmed all the trees, and all the organic matter resulting from these huge jobs had been hauled away just that morning by the municipality, which came to pick it up in big trucks.

For once as I walked around the Back 40 I did not pick up random bits of broken tile that can be found everywhere on this property. I have a big collection of broken glass and tile bits; I plan to re-purpose these pieces into mosaic surfaces for tables and counters and backsplashes and walls.

Jake was nowhere to be found in the Back 40. I ran back to the quinta, to find the h just returning from checking the campo and the pool area.

Did you find him? he asks.

Sometimes the feeling of your heart sinking is an actual, physical thing. I’m afraid this is where I simply panicked. Just one week ago, I found Jake staggering around in the literal middle of the night with his back legs not working properly, panting and lurching, his bowels emptied of their own accord. He recovered quickly, and is back to his normal self…but the low-grade terror of that scene - Jake staggering all the way down to the dank, dark cellar in his confusion, me with my iPhone light strobing as I helped him back up the steps giving everything a Hitchcockian feeling - has not even begun to dissipate, and now here he was gone. What if his legs stopped working again and he fell and there was no one around to help? Didn’t he know how worried I would be, not knowing where he was?

Well I guess he’s feeling BETTER NOW I shouted at the h. I guess he’s just FINE and we don’t need to LOOK for him because he apparently HAS IT ALL FIGURED OUT.

Now now, the h said. We’ll find him.

We checked the Find My app, which tracks Jake via the AirTag on his collar.

See, the h said. He’s still on the property. Somewhere around this area around the quinta in fact.

I just came from there AND HE IS NOT, I said but really I was yelling.

I was also already running back up the quinta road and this time at the hairpin I found a fresh pile of Jakey doo doo. There is a lot of dog crap in the Back 40 - people in the neighborhood used to walk their dogs there, though not so much since they saw Tiago and Paulo hard at work for a couple of weeks. Tiago has reported a couple of conversations with neighbors, including the one who had parked an old trailer on our land. So now word is out, Americans have taken on the project of this long abandoned place. Neighbors around the Back 40 are probably mostly unaware of the houses on the southern tip of the property - from their point of view the property is just a vast campo, four acres of weeds and maybe two dozen trees, one especially creepy fire-scarred dead one.

Despite the field being crowded, there is no mistaking Jakey’s doo which like all Labs is large and plentiful. I snapped a photo and send a Signal message to the h.

He’s been here, I captioned the poo picture.

I knew the h would recognize the background. How far we’ve come - just a year ago the conversation would have been Where are you? Oh, I’m up past the guest house, by that stone building with no roof, where that tree used to be. But on the lower level. In those days it was hard to answer questions that involved describing where you were because we were always finding somewhere new to be.

Underneath my rising panic was a cool headed detective voice commenting So the doo wasn’t there the first time you ran up the quinta road, behind the cottage to the Back 40. But it was the second time. Where has that rascally roo been?

I raced around the Back 40, then went to the spot between the park benches in the neighborhood behind our property, where Junior had introduced himself. It would be very Jake-like for him to spot Junior and wander over to say hello to his new friend. He’s done such before. It’s so…jake.

I jogged back down to the quinta, where the h was coming up the steps, which made me start crying as I could see Jake was not with him.

The h hugged me then said almost conversationally, Look there he is.

And there he was, walking down the quinta road fifty fee behind me, though I’d passed back and forth over that area three or four times. Later I went to the Jacaranda Garden - the quinta road passes right by it before hairpinning up to the cottage - and found a trail at the back of the area, where the wall has crumbled away. There is a vacant lot behind that wall, with shoulder-high weeds, and a path where something - Jake? the fox? the neighbor’s cats? - has passed over the weeds a few times, beating them down into a clear, unmistakable path. Hmmm.

I am embarrassed to admit this next bit but here goes - you’d think I’d run to Jake and hug him tight and be nothing but overjoyed that he was all right, but instead I turned my back and waked to the palaceta. I had to walk fast because Jake was attempting to trot cheerfully next to me, and I was not having it.

Love, the h called after me. (That’s what he calls me, he calls me his love).

It’s so bad around here, then just go, I told Jake - without looking at him of course because if I looked at him I’d just dissolve into hugs which he would immediately try to parlay into treats. I was sobbing too hard to really be understood in terms of words.

Love, the h said.

Three meals and two walks and taking care of all your needs but oh no, there’s definitely something better out there, be my guest go find it!

I wasn’t shouting but sarcasm is still emotional right?

Love, the h said.

I HOLD HIS BOWL FOR HIM, I howled. I cried and cried. I’m not going to love him anymore that’s all. I’ll take care of him but from now on he’s YOUR dog.

Love, the h said.

Jake nosed me. I took off his collar. He licked my hand.

There, now no one will know who we are, and you can go live with someone else, I said, covering my face and whapping myself in the eye with Jake’s GPS tag which by the way was working exactly as it should, something I need to remind myself of before getting all emotional.

Go play in the street, Jake, the h said in a kind of hilarious solidarity with my emotionalism that made me laugh even while I was crying.

I’m not going to handle it very well, I said. My voice was low and muffled in the h’s chest but I know he heard me and knew he knew what I meant because he hugged me harder and we stood like that for a long second.

I put his collar back on, the h said, kissing the top of my head. Jake barked and danced to get between us as he always does when the h hugs me. I patted his head and stroked his ears. Jake immediately saw an opportunity to turn my improved mood to his advantage and attempted to lead me to the kitchen.

Are you saying you’d run away less if you got more treats? I asked. Jake wagged.

4a Conversations with Mom

Sorry I didn’t answer the first time, mom said. It took me a minute to figure it out. It being Signal, which is what I use to text and call my family.

I’ve been calling mom every day at 4a Illinois time, which is 10a my time, to make sure she takes her pain medication. About a week ago she began experiencing such intense back pain that by the time she could admit it wasn’t going away and in fact was getting worse her voice was tearful when she called my sister. We were both shocked. If you look up the word stoic in the dictionary there should be a picture of my mom right there, slightly smiling. Mom had two knee surgeries in her late 70s and the surgeon asked her to come in and tell a roomful of old people getting ready to have the surgery how she recovered so well.

I thought it went well, mom said after. But I knew it did not go well for the audience members because mom’s secret is that she has a high pain threshold. My sister is like that too. They can just take amounts of pain that make other people’s eyes water and beg for a conk on the head. Sadly I did not inherit this genetic abnormality.

Going into the details of navigating the American healthcare system for a geriatric in the ER - well that’s a whole ‘nother post for a whole ‘nother day but if you know you know. And if you don’t, bless you, but you will someday if you live in the US. I wonder sometimes why we don’t have a revolution over the US healthcare system, I really do.

So mom was given a couple of meds with scary interaction possibilities that my sister had to go online to find out about. The schedule of meds had to be precisely followed for mom to get relief from the pain while avoiding these scary interaction possibilities. Whenever she got forgetful about the dosage the pain rocketed back and she’d call my sister gasping and talk of peacefully joining dad.

Once her pain was under control we discovered the meds had dulled mom’s senses enough to not notice the first degree burns delivered by the constant pressure of her heating pad. So it was back to the doctor who recommended the ER who kept her waiting for five hours but instead of admitting her sent her home with ointment and instruction to call her doctor who had been the one to see the pics of the burns and send her to the ER in the first place. Sigh.

She can’t miss her 4a pill anymore, my sister said. Well that’s easy, I said. I’ll call her and wake her up to take it. It’s 10a for me.

Hi honey, mom says at 4a her time every morning. Always followed by a comment - my mom’s a real talker, even whens she has just woken up. She migh say I didn’t know you wore glasses, or I was sound asleep! or There’s a bird that starts singing really early right by my window, or You look so pretty! That was yesterday, and it made me smile all day.

I hear music, mom says.

It might be the chickens, I tell her. They live in the house. Behind me and under the table where I sit, the four pintainhos walk back and forth chirping loudly.

Oh goodness, mom says. Who would have thought you’d be raising chickens.

In Portugal! I add.

I know! she says in a tone of amazement. I passed my driver’s test, she tells me. And my cardiologist said everything looks fine.

Mom that’s great, I tell her. You need to take your pill now.

I’ll take it. I’ll go to the bathroom first, she says. It makes me feel more optimistic, she says of passing these recent tests. Maybe this pain will go away all of a sudden just like it started all of a sudden.

But on further chatting I find the pain maybe wasn’t so sudden, coming as it did after mom spent two days weeding dad’s gardens with her ten years younger sister, Annie.

Maybe I overdid it, she says.

Throughout these conversations I keep my video on while she sticks with voice.

I can’t hear you anymore, she says at one point. There’s something wrong with the sound. But I can see you!

I wave and she laughs. She narrates what she is going to do - go to the bathroom, get back into bed. She leaves the phone on the nightstand by the bed on these trips. I listen to the sounds of her walker thumping.

I didn’t have to go, her voice reports. But then adds, Maybe I do now though. I stay on the line as she makes the round trip again, listening for sounds of a fall or pain.

I’m back, she says. I wave and she laughs. Hi, I see you, she says. I hold up a sign: TAKE PILL. I worry that the lettering will appear backwards to her, and she won’t be able to read it. I am re-writing it backward so it will look forward to her when she says Yes, I took my pill. Thank you honey for calling.

I wave and blow kisses.

I love you too, she says.

…details, details

In other news the h has been painting all the gates and metal railings on the property. There are three down by the street - one big sliding one for cars and two for people entering the sidewalks that bracket the driveway. Then there’s the front gate, the carport gate, the gate to the fruit orchard, and the gate to the apple and grape arbor.

Railings and other fancy iron work include the front porch and the second story porch bedroom where the tent is pitched, also the railings that grace the steps that flow down from the living room to the koi pond, as well as the decoratie protective grating over the ground floor windows, and of course the lanterns that border the front gate - they are still missing glass panes but otherwise look almost new in their shiny black coats. The h filled them with tiny lights so they glow like a bunch of fireflies having a festa.

We love the symbolism of those like-new-looking lantern lights that bracket the steps leading to our door, which are in turn bracketed by the tall twin palms that grace the front of the courtyard. Both palms and lanterns were in sorry shape when we arrived, draped in ivy and rust, the biggest and most obvious signs of decay and neglect any visitor encountered on the property. Now the palms stand clean and slim against the sky, now the lanterns gleam like new.

In other other news we have harvested large amounts of Portuguese style radishes, and the cucumbers and tomatoes are getting larger every day.

The hydrangeae has a second pink blossom. The trumpet bushes are beginning to drop yellow horns off their branches. The marigolds in the greenhouse are flowering.

The fig tree has really filled out after the h trimmed it last year. It’s positively bursting with figs.

We had the most perfect peaches, white peaches shaped like little satellites. Peaches are perfect in a way other fruits can’t be. There can be a perfect pear - but not really a perfect orange or perfect apple, they are either good enough or not. There is a perfect plum, but not a perfect grape or cucumber - again, who cares? We’ll eat them as long as they are good enough but we won’t talk about them the way we’ll talk about a perfect peach. We’ve had some perfect persimmons too, Alberto brought them over and I’m looking forward to persimmon season *so hard*. Bananas and avocados are all about whether they are ripe or not, it’s just yes or no, a toggle vs. a scale of perfection reached. After giving up on tomatoes in America I am back to eating many tomatoes weekly. They are red and juicy and taste like the promise of the hot part of summer, just around the corner.

Signs

Unlike in English, when the Portuguese find a new meaning for the same word they create a new word. So a sign in the window and your Zodiac sign are not the same word, they are A sinal nesta janela, and seu signo. The h and I share a signo - we are Sagittarius (Sagittarii?), excelers at sports that require running as well as great travelers - that’s what the sign says, and that’s what we are. I’m not saying I believe in astrology but I find it worth reporting that The Big Book of Birthdays assigns a kind of personal description of each birthday of the year and the h is Day of The Lone Wolf and mine is Day of Soaring Imagination. My imagination skulks and crawls and slithers as well as soars, and for some reason has always urged me to buy the h….wolf totems, even before I consulted The Big Book to learn that’s what he is (psst I didn’t need the book to know that).

The other day I was out walking with Jake. Jake’s nose chose a route we don’t usually take. I am thinkinga bout my dad - this past Father’s Day was the first time in my life I did not call or send a card or flowers. I can’t remember what I sent him last year, his last Father’s Day - was it flowers? one of those pop-up cards? Seven days later he was gone. I feel the space between his last breath and now like a physical thing, something that is stretching with time and distance.

He’s never going to see me here, I think. It’s a thought that keeps appearing out of the blue, the way a baseball must look to a window just before crashing into it. My eyes feel hot and I hope I won’t cry right there on the sidewalk and that is when I look up and see the graffiti on the wall. Graffiti in English, though I am in a country where its citizens do not speak it.

Love you, said the message on the wall.

As usual I never feel confident in the signs even when they are spelled out for me.

I wish you could see us, I say. Then I walk past a cafe with a large sign in the window.

A vida e super, the sign on the window said. A message that can be read no matter what side of the window you find yourself.

I see some folks sitting inside, one makes a comment, they turn as one to look at me. I wave, and they wave back

I started thinking that there was a sign in these signs, and wondered, if good things come in threes, what the third sign would be. Acontece em Portugal, said a big sign as tall as me, lining the glass window of the bus stop. You are loved, life is super, it’s happening in Portugal. I can work with that.