Things Dad Would Have Liked

imagining a visit that will never happen

Dad, I’m moving to Portugal, I said. It was Christmas. Dad had just been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, a disease that would take him much faster than any. of us expected. At the moment of this conversation, though, Dad was still much the same as normal, though he couldn’t think of words here and there. I thought we’d have years, yet, but there was only one.

Portugal! he said. I thought you moved to Alaska.

Well, we did, I said. We moved to Alaska first. Now, we’re going to get our residence cards for Portugal.

No more California?

Nope.

Well I’ll be, Dad said.

We have a koi pond, I told him. He brightened. I really miss those fish, he said.

I felt a pang. The house in Belleville, where all of us kids (mom and dad included) grew to adulthood, had a koi pond, one of dad’s many yard beautification projects. After selling the house dad would at times - and at the new owner’s invitation, he insisted - stop by to say hi to his fish.

Dad they didn’t mean it, my sister groaned. Oh my god can you imagine them? “Hey Bob saw an old man going into your yard last week.” “Oh yeah, the previous owner likes to chat with the fish.”

They always gather when they see me coming, dad said. You can tell they’re happy to see me.

At the time I didn’t understand so well the depth of the connection one makes with the animals in one’s care. As I type this I have Princess Leia, a 15 week old hen, perched on my left wrist. Yella Amarella is perched at the top of my screen, pecking at the words. I Dream of Jeannie is perched at the bend of my left arm. Black Haired Cher sits in a patch of sun on a horsehair chair. It would be easier to type without their feathery weight riding the keys but it would be less fun too.

And then of course there is Jake who lays on the cool tile, his beautiful velevet nose against my left shoe. We’ve been taking our walks earlier and later, avoiding the heat of the day which Jake seems to tacitly agree with, roaming about making shade nests in the nice chicken-aerateds soil under the trumpet bush, in the woodchips under the pampas grass, on his green mat on the sun-warmed calcadas, on the always-cool slate tile courtyard beneath the plane tree at the quinta.

Maybe we’ll get koi for the pond….whatever we get I hope it is compatible with the existence of frogs and turtles. And whatever we get, I’m sure that, like my dad, after feeding them and witnessing their pairings and their births and their passings, they will recognize me and show trust and even affection. And like my dad, I will want to make the existence of vulnerable little animals safe and happy, which is why I have four house hens now.

Dad would have liked the koi pond and had he had the chance to stay here two weeks or a month at a time he might have developed a relationship with them. At any rate we don’t have the koi yet, we only just managed to empty the pond of its freight of furniture and trash a few months ago. When we do finally fill the pond and stock it, I will be thinking a lot about my dad.

Dad would have liked all the birds on the property and would no doubt find a way to attract more. He would be disappointed not to see hummingbirds, but delighted to see Italian parakeets in shades of green and blue flocking around the neighborhood.

I don’t know the names of the songbirds I hear, but there are a few of them, and they are fairly active in the morning and early evening hours. The evening hours also feature bats flitting about.

Of course Dad would have liked the name of the village - Belas - for sure. I remember when I was a kid being little-girl-impressed that he knew what Belleville meant - “beautiful village” in French. He would have enjoyed the coincidence of him being from Belleville, and me choosing Belas. Just like your daddy, he would say.

No doubt dad would like the roosters and the hens, noticing the way the older roosters patrol the perimeter of the flock and keep an eye on the sky, and never eat before a hen. They all have highly individual personalities. For example Yella Amarella, one of the house hens, will not compete for food but will stand off at a short distance as if in a daze while the others scrabble for bits of blueberries and apples. Leave the back door a crack open and she slips through it and disappears into the garden of the front courtyard, scratching around ecstatically in the dirt and not even caring where the other amigas and Leia are.

Another thing dad would love about the place is the huge driveway. Every year for Christmas the aunts and uncles and cousins descended on our little three bedroom house in southern Illinois. About a week before the big day dad would start mentally mapping who would be driving what car, and where they should park based on their approximate arrival time relative to other guests. And every year, everyone just ignored his attempt to traffic-direct the parking, and he’d grump about it. Our driveway would give dad plenty of room to gesture everyone into their optimal parking spot, preferably using those long flashlights they use on naval aircraft carriers to bring planes in for a landing. It is like a dream come true for dad, this driveway.

Dad never seemed to be much of a view person. I never was either, until I found out that I was basically wrong, that views are indeed “worth it”. I think dad would like the view from our second story bedroom that looks down on the koi pond and fountain, the bamboo growing as tall as the house all around it.

Dad would like the way the pool sits on one level while the pool house sits up a level, and you can sit on the patio under an umbrella having lunch or just talking, everyone able to keep an eye on whoever happens to be in the pool. I don’t think dad would swim in our pool; he was more of a lake man. I think he’d be content to toss shiny coins for kids to dive down to the bottom and get them.

Huh, they like to do that here too, he’d say and I’d laugh and say Yeah kids everywhere like swimming and money.

Do you know what those are called, he would ask me, gesturing at the urns and angel faces and spires that appear here and there, wherever the palaceta roof peaks or gables. Finials, I would say, and he’d give me a double take.

That’s right, he might say. How’d you know that?

I read a lot, I’d remind him. It’s a long running joke between us.

It’s a term architects use, he would say.

Dad would not just like Alberto but recognize in him a kindred spirit. As we near completion of the cottage renovations, the h spends. more and more time up at the cottage with Alberto, Tiago and Paulo.

Look, the h showed me a drawing in three colors of ink (!) , each color representing a different aspect of the metal gutter they were designing for the cottage roof.

Look! I almost whispered it - the drawing had Alberto’s signature, the kind of thing my dad did too.

I know for certain dad would be interested in the h’s greenhouse and horta. He’d peer through his bags of fertilizers and composts and soils (which look the same here as they do at Home Depot and gardening stores) thinking to point out which he used himself and had luck with.

That’s in another language, he’d joke at the bags of composto.

He would have loved the big trees - the medieval plane tree with its green, shifting shade, and the huge umbrella of the Monterey pine. The figs with their Medusa branches. Well look at that, he’d say of the apples and pears and grapes.

He would appreciate Olive Tree Lane, and the h’s efforts to prune the trees into the graceful ladies they once were and will be again. He might even share the story about pruning the maple so hard in our front yard of the house in Belleville that we all assumed it was dead, only to have it grow back full and lush and lovely. I was worried, dad admitted, only after the tree was beautiful again.

I don’t know if he’d like the palms but he’d respect them. I guess you’re stuck with those, I can imagine him saying with a laugh. Or, Can you imagine lighting those up for Christmas? The thing is, that was the kind of thing dad could imagine, and, as an electrical engineer, take it from imagination to execution. Our house always had the best light displays of any house at Christmas time.

When I asked the h what my dad would appreciate here, he immediately said exactly the right thing: The need for tools, the h said. After a moment he added: Being surrounded by men who take care of their tools.

It’s true, the h, Tiago and Paulo, Alberto, and my dad all share a kind of…organizational zealotry when it comes to their tools. They will share them by all means, but in such a crowd return it in better condition than you found it, promptly, or find yourself an exile when it comes to borrowing again.

I took a picture of dad’s workshop when I went home for his funeral last July. It felt almost church-like down there, in the basement, in a space behind the staircase and the furnace. Even if you walked into dad’s shop in the middle of a project, you’d never find a mess - he always cleaned up at the end of each day, and spend the last fifteen minutes making notes for the following day while I fiddled with the pencil sharpener and the red vise that were attached to his workbench.

Looking at that picture of dad’s workshop still feels as personal as looking at pictures of his face. I will always remember standing there in the silence with the h, having a last look around at all the tools hanging from their pegs, all the nuts and bolts and washers sorted (and labeled) in their drawers and tins. I ended up taking the smallest screwdriver in a set of what seemed like dozens.

The h has already identified a spot where he will have his workshop here in Belas: it’s a building that sits at the back of the campo, just below the two-level quinta garden. It came as no surprise to learn that once upon a time, a long time ago, Alberto himself used that space as a workshop, when he was doing regular projects for the previous owners of the property.

Now it will be the workshop of the h, who will travel back and forth from Alberto’s shop to his own, and Alberto will also travel back and forth from his workshop across the street to the one at our place that used to be his place back when our place was the place of someone else. It will be like time travel, the workshop and even Alberto himself a portal to the past and the future. It’s stuff like this, and having my nickname on the front of the house, emblazoned on tiles a hundred years old, that make this whole thing seem like a dream sometimes.

Dad would totally grunt with approval at Alberto’s sketch using three colors of ink. How do you say his name? he might ask me, to make sure he gets it right. He’d be relieved that Alberto has some English, enough for the two of them to get through a tour of Alberto’s workshop, my dad saying I’ll be darned and would you look at that a lot. There is no doubt Alberto would offer him a coffee at some point - a bica. And if it was not too late in the day dad would accept the offer of cafe and maybe even sip the aquavit and roar with laughter at Alberto’s trying to get him to take a shot in the middle of the day. I’ll be asleep in three hours, he might say.

But he’d finish the coffee, and once we were back over on our side of the street he might show an interest in climbing to the cottage, which sits at the top of our property and where there is an excellent view of Alberto’s garden across the way.

He’s a heck of a gardener, dad would say, his eyes taking in the length and breadth of Alberto’s horta, the lemons at the back of his property so big and yellow you can see them no problem from our place no need for binoculars even.

Whereas the big American feet of the h and Sophia’s boyfriend Tasan hang over the throw of the Portuguese steps, dad’s dainty size nine foot would fit perfectly on our staircase.

When we’d walk to the park my dad would note all the benches available and how most were occupied with people just loitering in the good weather. He’d like how clean and neat the Sintra municipality keeps the park. He’d like the fountain in the village park and note the way it has been skimmed for leaves. He would note how every person who passed us either initiated or responded to a Bom Dia or Boa Tarde. I’ll be darned, he’d say.

He wouldn’t say so but dad would like the way older Portuguese men often wear hats, as he himself did.

It still makes me gasp, sometimes, how fast it happened, how quickly it became clear dad would never make the journey to Beautiful in Portugal. He slipped away in inches and pounds and memories, inexorably, and we couldn’t slow or stop it any more than we could slow or stop snowmelt trying to reach the ocean.

My mother’s health in the year since dad passed has been very fragile. I have a trip scheduled that will bring me home to her house in the cornfields of southern Illinois for a visit. She’s been struggling with back pain and awaits the results of an MRI to diagnose the problem. I hope I get stronger for your visit, she said when we chatted today. I will be coming from Beautiful, to Beautiful, I point out and she says how amazing that is. And you’ll return to Beautiful, she says.

I know my dad would especially like the people that are all around me and the h - Alberto and his family, Tiago and Paulo and their families, the Anas and their husbands and dogs and kids. Such nice people, dad would have said, had he attended the little Start of Summer barbecue we had to celebrate Tim and Kirsten aka the Alaskans’ visit. He would fall immediately in love with Tiago’s three daughters, and language barrier or no, would have had their full attention within an hour of meeting them.

Dad would have liked watching the h with all of his projects about the property, from painting walls to regrouting a shower to installing the kitchen cabinets to repairing a plumbing leak, the h can do a lot of things, which would no doubt have reminded my dad strongly of himself.

He would enjoy listening to me speaking Portuguese. What did he say, he might ask me of something a server said. He said I speak good Portuguese, I would tell dad. But I don’t, not really, everyone’s just nice about it when you try.

But dad would note their unfailing courtesy at my attempts, and the way people say hello, good morning, sorry, thank you as they pass you on the street. He would note the way Alberto would return my wave every morning, he at the top of his driveway, me at the top of mine. He’d note the way Tiago jogs from place to place on the property, moving multiple projects forward as the situation and weather demand.

What a good bunch of people, he would say to himself. He was always impressed by hard work.

I’m proud of you hon, I imagine dad might say as we walk home after dinner from one of the restaurants in the village. I would hold his arm and take the position near the traffic, knowing the narrow sidewalks of downtown Belas are disconcerting to Americans. Perhaps we’d catch Ricardo and Sandra coming home and parking their little car, and make introductions. They would offer coffee, dad would chuckle at the notion of himself consuming caffeine at such an hour, and we’d all promise to try to have a get together before dad returned to the US.

You’ve made a really nice place for yourself here, he would say as we walked across the street under a sky finally on its way to dark at nine o’clock.

I love it, I’d say as we went into the house, lit warmly with yellow light. We both loved it the moment we saw it, we think it’s just… beautiful.

Around us the solar lights would be flickering into life, illuminating the palm trees and the face of the palaceta, the long cottage steps, the top of the garage, the wall that borders Olive Tree Lane.

Yes, dad would agree with a smile at my little play on words. It is Beautiful.

In loving memory.