Bom dia!
At 7a I feed the chickens. Jake follows me alertly, his ears high and forward. You seem to be feeding livestock, those ears say. I am alive and therefore getting food! those ears say. Jake is a Labrador, food is not just food, it is an event.
Immediately after breakfast, me asking Jake the whole while when oh when is he going to stop requiring someone to hold the bowl while he eats but at the same time not really minding and maybe even liking the way his velvety chocolate nose bumps my fingers as he eats, Jake starts pestering me for a dog biscuit - Jake feels entitled to a post prandial and really it’s just civilized- then a walk.
When I fetch the leash from its high nail in the mud room, Jake begins to tap dance with poorly suppressed joy. He begins herding me out the door and down the driveway, away from the distractions that are causing the walk not to happen right now.
Side note: The NY Times has a feature about a woman whose dog, a golden doodle (I think) has access to a kind of dog version of Siri - the dog has memorized which buttons are associated with which words and says things like Sad today. I thought immediately how Jake would just issue a few words that were also commands: swim now, walk now, right now, hungry, hungry snack snack snack swim walk swim now right now. That’s what Jake would be saying, all the time, no question.
In fairness to Jake I am a bit scattered, going back to the house for doggie bags, then sunglasses, then my phone. At last we are ready to go: Jake stands still for the leash then we proceed down the driveway, chickens casually strutting past, including Driveway Mama (Stella) and her madly cheeping brood of eight, and out the gate.
Today we go left, following the sidewalk - the same tile you see all over Lisbon - behind the bus stop and through a parking lot in front of a car repair business that often has sleek BMWs and Cooper Minis in the lot. Jake sniffs the wheel and bumper of each car we pass, but I don’t let him lift his leg, though his body language says Everyone else is doing it, relax.
Sorry, I tell Jake. You can read the news but you can’t become part of the story. We hang a left and immediately we’re walking up a steep hill, so steep you have to lean a bit into it. Jake bounds up the hill - I mean that literally, I am forced to break into a run to keep up with him. He lopes all the way up the hill pausing near the top to sniff at some flowers.
We take the sidewalk past low rise apartment buildings with traditional tile facings. Across the street a group of men in construction hats stand on the top of one of the half dozen mid rise apartment buildings dotted among big rectangles of common gardens, tree parks and a couple of playgrounds. Another man operates a cherry picker hoisting materials up to or down from the roof. We hang another left - our walk is 1.5 square miles within which sit our five historically neglected acres - and now we’re on a shady street dotted with park benches.
Bom dia, I say to the man sitting on the first bench. He has a cane, a hat, and a small scarf at his neck. He smiles at Jake who sniffs his knee and continues on his way.
Bom dia, says a man standing at the corner having a smoke and watching the cherry picker. Bom dia! I reply while Jake insists on sniffing at the Victorian ruffs of hosta leaves growing at the base of the trees. I imagine they are literal fonts of animal information, positioned where every neighborhood dog likely passes by at least once a day.
On the next shaded bench there are two women, octogenarians in vibrantly colored house dresses, gesticulating. I debated whether a Bom dia would be too interruptive or something.
You never know. Once I passed a loose knot of four older ladies standing at the intersection of two of the five little streets that comprise this neighborhood with its network of interconnected sidewalks and parks. They seemed to be chatting without pause but when I passed and said Bom dia they responded in a chorus that was as unexpectedly prompt as it was musical. Bom Diiiiiiiiiaaaaaa! they proclaimed in unison.
The bench ladies smile at Jake, point at him and make cooing sounds. I let Jake say hi whilst I dispose of his business. Next to the public receptacle is another pair of older ladies, talking away. One looks over as I toss my trash and I give a little wave before turning back to retrieve Jake from the bench ladies who are now rummaging in their pockets for food and laughing fit to split at the prompt and unmistakable message of Jake sitting at attention in front of them.
We pass two ladies standing mid-intersection by the playground who say Bom diiiiia! and laugh at Jake’s confident gait. Jake sneezes and they laugh more.
Farther up the sidewalk a stoutish older woman descends the hilly walk slowly, with a cane. Side, I tell Jake, thinking to give her a wide berth for safety’s sake. But the woman makes eye contact with Jake and smiles and Jake knows a Jakebrother when he sees one and goes to her, but slowly and carefully, wagging himself sideways to prevent his tail from sweeping her right off her feet.
She can’t quite reach to pat him so settles for a bit of a chat which Jake politely wiggles his ears at, then it was onward and upward. The woman observes that Jake seems very busy and I agree that he is very busy indeed and furthermore there is a lot of news to read this morning, gesturing at the post where, based on Jake’s intensity of sniffing apparently every dog in Portugal has left its mark.
I say all of this in my halting Portuguese and she gives me an approving smile. Bom dia! she says as we part.
We pass a little supermercado that sits ten steps from the far south end of the property . Sometimes after a beastly hot day of power washing the walls of the pool or painting the ancient walls behind the fruit orchard or cleaning the ghostly fingerprint marks off the big double doorways in every room of the house, we will trudge up the cottage steps and take the path across our land that deposits us nearly at the supermercad’s door. There we will get two mini Super Bock or Sagres beers out of the little refrigerator at the back of the store and ask the owner to open them after we’ve paid
Trabalho, she says, indicating our paint stained coveralls and we nod and say muito muito trabalho.
Next on our walk we head down a public walkway that partially borders the far eastern edge of our acreage. There are a few houses at the top and bottom of the long, sloping path of tile with tall lamps every thirty feet, illuminating park-style benches for just sitting and shooting the breeze.
We once saw one of our favorite servers from a local village restaurant on one of the benches, eating a bag lunch while reading something on her phone. Bom dia! she said. Ola, Bom dia, como via? I said.
Muito lindo ! she said, indicating Jake.
Conhece meu amigo, Jake, I said, enunciating Jake very clearly. Jake came over, eyes inquiring (treats?!)
Ah Jacques! says the girl who is sometimes a server but clearly a poet or artist lives in her soul, that she takes her lunch on this charming walkway and not at the outdoor patio of her workplace.
Turning towards home we cross what has become a very busy street in the village, at least during rush hour. There is a crosswalk with a pedestrian crossing light that responds almost immediately when you press the button. We cross, the cars already four deep in each lane by the time we’re fully across. Twice Jake tries to divert the walk to lead me up garden steps but each time I patiently wait him out til he proceeds down the walk which is narrow and curving with cars whizzing past just a tad close for comfort.
Jake tries to cross the street when he recognizes our gate but I tell him never to cross the street outside of a crosswalk. I’ve seen cars stopping as a conga line of chickens cross the road. I think they’ll stop for a dog. I think about a dog crossing sign and a chicken crossing sign to put next to the children’s crossing sign that cars daily blast past at 40 mph.
Cars have to stop for anyone in the crosswalk, even you, I tell Jake. The chickens follow us as we come up the driveway. The h is in the garage wearing his Carhaarts. I’m going to chainsaw, he says. Anything you need? Noise canceling ear protection on chainsawing safety helmets makes talking difficult so I just wave.
I make a mental list of the day’s priorities: cleaning the stove we found in the guest house (soon we will have a working refrigerator and stove in not just the same house but the same room!) oiling the cool wood and velvet kneeler chair we found, finishing painting the staircase walls leading up to the cottage, sorting through the tiles we found in the various workshops, building the roosts and nesting boxes for the flock in the chicken coop.
Did you see the mailbox? the h semi-shouts, waving a leather-gloved hand toward the gate. I jog down and behold the new mailbox from Leroy Merlin is now installed. I resist the urge to yell I am somebody! a la Steve Martin in The Jerk.
We haven’t gotten much mail yet, and all there has been is a rotted out mail box painted the same green as the gate, a box whose bottom is gone so mail pushed through the slot drops directly onto the ground where the chickens kick dirt on it and splatter guano from their roosting perches in the tree branches above our sidewalk. Now our mail can be read without chicken detritus on it.
We have a late breakfast of granola with blueberries and one of the neighbor’s perfect persimmons (diospiros) and coffee and then Tiago the gardener arrives and Jake runs to his truck and gets in the way of the door opening in his excitement to greet his new friend, and once they are done with their hellos the day clicks imperceptibly into the workday, and we scatter to our tasks.
