Mamas New & Not, Jake the Party Pooper, Pain & Stuff

In which we attend a birthday party destined to be referred to as "the poo incident"

a pretty sight, a painful tattoo

If you’re a mom, I hope it was a nice Mother’s Day for you. If you never got the chance to be a mom, are a forgotten mom, or someone really missing their mom a lot - hugs from me.  And if you’ve never wanted to be a mom and will never be called a mom, or if you’ve got a mom that you don’t or never did have the relationship you wish you had, I hope your day was at least as good as any other good day and no worse than most.

Neither Kirsten nor I are mothers but we both have mothers. Kirsten is my sister-in-law from Alaska, she and the h’s brother Tim are our nineteenth and twentieth guests here at Brokedown Palace in the past eight months. Kirsten called her mom while we were at a restaurant on Sunday, finishing a late lunch  right after my tattoo session. Everyone at the table waved to Bobby - she looked much the same as she did during my last visit for Thanksgiving 2022. She was a fit lady with a very active puppy, Benjy, and an enormous angel collection.

I sent my mom flowers - a bouquet with a ceramic flower in the middle, a memento with a sentiment that was unintentionally but appropriately macabre coming from me: If mothers were flowers I’d pick you! I also tattooed her favorite flower on my arms, part of my recent tattoo story of one flower for every place I’ve lived. 

You’re such a good daughter, my sister Karen texted me along with a photo of the flowers.

For Mother’s Day Sophia texted me a photo collage of pictures we’ve taken together over the years, including the one where we are begging the h to let us get a dog (can you guess which one that is?), one from the roadtrip taking her to college, one from a protest, one from Norway. She is a thoughtful girl and though I take terrible pictures I look passable in all of them, which means she sorted through a lot of typically terrible ones to get these, how nice is that?

There’s a new mama on the property, a hen who had eight babies just a few days ago - sadly (but typically) she’s already lost one. I tried to find it, a heartbreaking little task I won’t tell you about. She was living in the garden shed, a relatively safe place, but on the second day led the chicks down the cottage steps, hooking a left into the apple orchard. The apple orchard is really just two apple trees, once quince tree, and two grape arbors - wild grapes, and old vine grapes, both are already heavy with fruit, the grapes hanging in miniature clusters, each individual grape half the size of a bb.

There’s a new mama in the family, too - our oldest daughter celebrated her first mother’s day, her little one just past a moth old. We’ll meet her for the first time when we go to the US for a few weeks for Sophia’s college graduation, officially making us empty nesters.

I keep wondering, how did this happen? It feels like she should be a sophomore at most. The one thing no one prepares you for about life is the way it picks up speed as you get older. The days go by in a blur, especially in a place like this where the to do list sometimes feels neverending. All the things that are lined up to do - it’s like a constant bass hum. We need to get the wood chips out of the camp to the Secret Garden. I need to pick up glass and tile on the footpath in the campo. I need to pick up glass and tile newly exposed now that the Sunken Garden is cleared of brush. The rows of potatoes need to be weeded. We need to organize the brush piles already created by the chainsawing and weed whacking of Tim and Kirsten. The next big milestone is getting the windows in the quinta so we can move in. Then, we can worry about finishing the kitchen and bathroom.

We’ve actually set a target date for completion of the whole property. That date feels safely in the future but I know that little speck of light in the far distance will pounce on us like a freight train before we know it.

This weeked, for the first time since moving onto the the property, the campo is empty and the Sunken Garden is empty, both containing a large burn scar and little else.  The Sunken Garden is mostly an idea at this point - but now I can see that it’s a good one. An area maybe ten foot wide and thirty feet long, it slopes down, walled on three sides. One of the walls is quite pretty, and in great shape. The plan is to plant some ornamental trees like jacarandas above and within the garden, and create an area to sit among the flowers and write, or have morning coffee, or maybe lunch al fresco. 

Also in the burn control department: more pruning and weed whacking in the Back 40, where Tim and Kirsten have already spent the better part of two days with chain saws and weed whackers. I am sometimes forcibly reminded of the size of the property when something like this happens - two people disappear for hours on end, the only sign they are here the distant whine of their power tools.

In other news, I did not kill the naked ladies. Not everything Alberto has given us to transplant has survived our efforts. But we have many beautiful examples of success blooming in the planters that surround our front courtyard and the quinta garden, both of which are full of flowers and trees and bushes all growing nicely, thank you very much. The naked ladies, it turns out, are supposed to be kinda dead looking at this stage. Alberto brought us twelve plants last fall. Ths spring, they will be green, he said. Next year, flowers.

I was excited because naked ladies are a type of flower that grew wild in the Presidio, a giant park with trail systems, a golf course, tennis courts and playground that served as our backyard when we lived in San Francisco. Every year the spring announced itself with raw pink naked ladies growing on the hillside, wisteria climbing the top of the wall and Presidio Gate like a large plumed purple hat, a place where where tourists often jumped out of their cars for a good picture of the distant bay, sailboats on the ocean blue, between the legs of the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s like a song by Crosby Stills and Nash, They took their pictures of the bay below / standing high above where the naked ladies in their purple hats grow.

Normally we measure progress by how much things are growing - trees, food, flowers, the renovation of a kitchen. But during burn season progress is been measured by how things are diminishing/disappearing; the amount of weeds in the campos, the tree limbs piled ready for disposal, the deadfalls being burned and chipped.

The gaps in the wide blue smile of our dry swimming pool are being filled; the h says we’ll be swimming in August.

At the tail end of the week I went up to the garden shed to leave mama some fresh food and and found the rooster sitting in the middle of the shed, his feet tucked under him. I followed his gaze and saw five  new babies, all blonde with stripey baseball hats, bubbling around mama. She lifted up a bit and I saw number six struggling to leave the nest. Mama sat on it before I could see more. I thought I saw two eggs unhatched under her, still.

Congratulations, I told Preto. He stepped out of my way but stayed in the doorway of the garden shed as I gave the mama her food and water. When she was just sitting on eggs she’d keep her eyes closed but now there were babies and her eyes were open and staring at me hard. Don’t try anything, that glare said. Later I went back up to freshen the water and she adjusted herself and I counted eight babies under her. 

Jake and Leia hang out a lot; she likes to stand behind his dog bed, where a mirror leans against the wall. I think she thinks she’s standing next to another chicken.  Often I will come into the house to fnd Leia perched on Jake’s back while he sleeps.  Or, she walks up his back and neck to the top of his head and launches herself, usually at the table. She has an eagle eye and when any kind of food is happening screams immediately about fairness.

Princess Leia has become the living signifier of the alarm clock in Jake’s belly. Usually he will materialize from wherever he’s been - napping in the courtyard, napping on the couch, or hanging out in the garden near his daddy - to stand brownly at my elbow when one of his three mealtimes has arrived. If I don’t stop writing, he will nudge my arm and if he’s really hungry he’ll put his nose under my hand and toss it in the air, or move his big head in front of my screen. 

But Leia if anything looks more forward to mealtime than Jake. Squee! she yells, running over to the silver bowl. When I pick it up she follows me, her dinosaur feet pattering behind me. She stands in the kitchen watching me slice and dice carrots, snap peas, blueberries and apples. I cut a blueberry into eighths and feed it to her piece by piece while she squeals with excitement and leaps and gulps. As Jake eats she stands under his bowl, ready to pounce on any bits that rain down. FOOD SHOWER, she screams. And when Jake is finished and has moved on to asking for a treat, Leia sits in his food bowl like it’s a hot tub, pecking around.

Over the weekend Leia got trampled underfoot - to be precise, under Jake’s paws, as he danced with anticipation for a treat in the small kitchen. Excited to be in the kitchen - FOOD! - Leia was not able to escape the forest of legs suddenly around her, and Jake stepped on her little dinosaur foot.

Oh how she screamed, the h said. You could tell it upset him by the way he scolded Jake, But Jake, even at his mature age of thirteen, is only guilty of his typical lunkheaded attitude around food; he still gets excited as a puppy every time it’s time for food - breakfast, lunch, dinner, dental stick, treats, it doesn’t matter, each time he approaches the food as though he were a dog long accustomed to starving, and this morsel you are gifting him is saving his life and would you happen to have more?

Today is day 2 after being stepped on. Leia is favoring her left foot, holding it pathetically up off the ground. She gamely hops around but spends more time sitting, especially on our shoulders or chest, and most especially if we have the down blanket around, which must feel exactly like her mamma’s underside.

I hated leaving Leia to limp around alone in the living room while we left for a birthday party for the wife of a friend of a friend. We took Jake with us and I hated putting her in her box, so I set Leia down in front of her favorite spot, by the mirror, with some water and food. When we arrived back home she was still there, glancing at the chicken in the mirror occasionally, and twittering to herself. She hopped up on one leg when we came into the room; I brought her an eighth of a blueberry and she shrieked with delight and grabbed it out of my hand.

NOM NOM NOM she yelled. She is no longer a chick but not quite a pullet. She grows taller and gawkier, by the day, her fuzzhead looking too small for the new feathers growing around her wings. She stretches her fuzzy neck when she is curious or wants to be picked up. She runs and jumps to get flies, her neck striking with cobra-like speed

I had two main events this weekend; the birthday party on Saturday and a tattoo session on Sunday. The party was in a nice neighborhood in Cascais and most of the attendees were expats who lived in Cascais, some as long as twelve years. It was strange to be in a room where only English was being spoken.

The h for some reason thought it would be a good idea to bring Jake. They live near the beach we can take him swimming after, he said.

I love how the h just thinks about the best thing that could happen when he makes a plan, and never ever thinks about how it not only could go wrong but based on history definitely WILL go wrong, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Like the fact that Jake is a perfect dog in every way except the way he acts like a big fat baby in the car, panting and moaning and struggling to thrust his head out the window you have to crack for him. He will drape his huge, hot, panting body across yours, drooling on the knees of your pants which you can’t even yell about because he puts his big soft chin on your knee and sighs with misery and you have to admit his car sickness is something you failed to anticipate in the equation, and pat him and tell him it will soon be over.

The moment I came through the door of the house party and observed the highly curated furniture and art I knew what a mistake it was to bring Jake. He’s a very calm dog who has a stolid, for want of a better word lunky way of standing in the center of a room so he can inconvenience absolutely everyone in it. He could probably be discouraged from sitting on the furniture, but he would relentlessly patrol the rooms searching out the appetizer plates with remnants left on nose-high tables. He would circle the rooms as many times as it took for me to avert my gaze from him long enough to pounce on the lowest hanging fruit - in Sunday’s case, Jake showed early and high interest in the vegetarian meatballs being served and left to languish on little plates placed at perfect eye-height for a Labrador.

I was the only woman at the party not in a dress besides my sister in law, who wore flowy pants from Chile. I do not care about such things however I am going on year two of a very very small rotation of outfits and this was only the second wearing of this particular outfit so I was feeling like I looked great because living on a farm makes you forget about things like how to dress for a Sunday garden party in Portugal. I wore white jeans and a gray sweater with a high-low hem, and my new shiny white shoes that make me feel like I could break out in a tennis game any second.

Both Kirsten and my brother-in-law Tim are adventure guides; she is a heliski guide, he is an ice climber. They are both expert rock climbers, crack climbers, extreme skiers and snowboarders. They spend the spring heliski season in Valdez, the salmon season in Chickaloon, and in both locations they live in the middle of true wilderness, in the kinds of places you are apt to see more moose and bear in a day than people. They have the taut bodies of Hollywood stunt doubles and their conversation is peppered with job sites like Morocco, Cochamo Valley, Denali, Tibet. They are the friendliest, nicest people, and have life saving skills which is a great combination for the rest of us. Within 24 hours they were texting with many of the people they met at the party getting advice on where to climb locally, and have even been on one of those climbs, picture proof below.

The party briefly moved to the third floor where birthday cake was cut and served on a plate with a view. Jake stayed downstairs for awhile but the sound of a knife slicing through icing was more than he could bear and he materialized, drooling. The h got a piece from each cake.

We need to feed Jake, I kept telling him. It’s after five and you know how he gets when his dinner is late and there is food nearby. As I spoke I kept a close watch on Jake, patrolling the room in his pretend-languid way while in fact keeping a sharp eye out for crumbs, unattended cake, and eye-level fistfuls of goodness from toddlers.

Okay we better feed him, the h agreed. But first he wanted to finish his cake.

I decided to be more like the h and just let go of worrying about Jake, so instead of holding Jake’s collar I held a conversation with a nice man named Terry. They call me Teddy, he said, and I could see that, the tapped r of European Portuguese would make Terry sound like Teddy. Just don’t call me Jerry he said, and I agreed I wouldn’t. He was Scottish and funny and liked to golf. The h is a good golfer but rarely goes. When he does, though, people who thought they might hate him for being good at everything definitely finish the game cheerfully hating him.

Terry and the H were talking about handicaps. I looked around for Jake. Where was he?

I think Jake went downstairs, I told the h.

He did, the h said. I saw him. Now he was chatting with our host Ian.

Great dog, that Jake, Ian said. I’ve been thinking about it and I think Ian praised Jake at almost the exact moment Jake was dropping a double deuce on Ian’s porch.

I don’t like him down there alone I said, and the h said some soothing nonsense and I pretended he could be a person to be believed, right up until someone came up behind me and a Scottish accent whispered in my ear - and I am not making this up - “There’s a dog shit situation downstairs.”

We’re the only ones who know, the Scottish Terry said. So far.

The h gave me the one poo bag we brought to the party. Taking it was my first mistake. Once I took the bag, it was my problem to solve, though once again IT WASN’T MY IDEA TO BRING JAKE.

I flew down the steps behind Terry-not-Jerry. There and there and there, he pointed out. I picked up what could be picked up; for the smashed flat bits I needed a napkin. I stashed the bag of poo and ran back up the steps and inside for a napkin. To my horror much of the party had moved downstairs to eat cake. There were at least a dozen people hanging around in the living room. Any one of which could leave and come round the corner and down the steps where the dog poo situation was temporarily worse before it could be made better.

Luckily I got everything cleaned up without anyone walking out onto the porch or wanting to use the steps. I put the dog poop bag in a bin I found full of tree trimmings. But the napkins could not go in there. It was dreadfully apparent what they were stained with. I went into the bathroom and found the solution in the trashcan - a rolled up diaper. I rolled up the dog poo napkins in toilet paper in a similar way and placed the package next to the diaper.

Later I went down the steps and a man was going up, talking on his mobile phone about the terms of a deal. He sniffed, and sniffed again, the way that people do when they think they smell dog poo and they think it might be them.

He also could have just done some cocaine, but I don’t think so. It wasn’t that kind of party.

He looked at me and I sniffed, too, making a slight “is that dog poo? I think I smell it too” expression. It was entirely possible the man had run up the steps in between me cleaning up with the poo bag and the poo napkins. He very well might have skated over a skidmark on the steps, tracking it up the marble staircase.

I walked sedately down the staircase and outside, where Jake was more or less stashed behind a bush. Come on buddy, I whispered, trying to tug him out the gate down the street. I was thinking I could pull him out of sight of the sniffing man, and also get him to the car and get him fed, so he would stop cruising the toddlers at the party like a friendly brown shark. But Jake refused. I tugged the leash, and he sat down. After a second I realize, he can hear the h’s voice from the sidewalk, the partygoers’ conversations floating off the third floor deck and into the early evening air.

Okay, I said. We would return to the party, I told Jake. But I was no longer a party guest, I was the Mobile System of Poo Management, I told him. I will be on you every second. So don’t think you’re going to be eating cake because you’re not.

Jake tugged us back to the house. The h came out onto the porch. If we slip out now, we won’t know if anyone else steps in it, I suggested. Also, do not step on the leaves, I instructed the h and his brother. I’d plucked. a variety from the surrounding bushes and arranged them artfully to cover remaining marks where the napkins did more harm than good.

We made our goodbyes in the entry hall. Jake waited downstairs in the stone-surfaced front yard, hopefully not pooping again because we didn’t have another poo bag and no way would I go back inside for napkins.

The hostess said to Kirsten, I’m coming to see you in Alaska!

You’re welcome to! Kirsten said, and meant it. She and Tim invited everyone they knew to their wedding in Alaska a few years before the pandemic. We all stayed in motorhomes. It was a fun time - usually people in their field of work gather for funerals and memorials - it’s a dangerous job. Kirsten lost a fellow guide and husband to her good friend and neighbor just a couple of years ago, one of almost a dozen friends who have passed on since their wedding.

It’s not often you find yourself surrounded by some of the most daring people on the planet, eating cake like you’re one of them. It was a great wedding. The bride was brought by canoe to the shore, then led to a flowered arch, the guests trailing behind chattering. Someone brought salmon and grilled it for the entire reception party, more than 100 people. Someone else made rice krispie treats and I ate one because I am not a big fan of cake but then everything went wavy and I saw big geometric color patterns whenever I closed my eyes.

Uh, hon, I said to the h.

Feeling those mushrooms yet? he asked.

There were two bands and a big plastic canopy hung in the trees in case it rained. When it didn’t rain the canopy was repurposed as a giant slip and slide down a steep hill. A hose was produced to wet down the plastic. The bride rode a blow-up unicorn in her satin bridal dress all the way to the bottom, little girls jumping up and down to greet her.

Just as long as I don’t have to sleep outside, the hostess called to Kirsten laughing.

Well you might have to! Kristen said. She laughed with the hostess but she was not joking.

Our cabin is only twelve foot by twelve foot, Kirsten said. So you really would have to sleep outside! Now she was the only one laughing; the hostess had stopped.

You didn’t tell her it was off the grid did you, I asked later, once we were home.

No, Kirsten said. It totally slipped my mind there is no toilet, she added. I said I find that a hilarious sentence and laughed for the first time since before the poo-at-the-party incident.

Weekend event number two was a tattoo, my third session with Maria. The first session was painful, the second session less so; I fully expected this one to be even less so, but it was not to be, the tattoo was on a section of skin much more sensitive than the other drawings. The pain was surreal. To pass the time I listened to the guy on the other table in the room, a scientist who was getting his first tattoo on his upper arm.

My mom will be upset, he says. I will tell her it is temporary. His girlfriend is there for moral support that he does not need. It doesn’t hurt at all, he says as the artist bends over his arm.

I’m sorry, Maria whispers. You’re going great. She outlines three flowers and colors one. You are bruising, she tells me. It is not uncommon but we shall see. She is Russian, her English always sounds like a poem to me.

Meanwhile the tatoo getter’s girlfriend is talking about moving. You should give stuff away, she said. You cannot take all your stuff.

I’ve moved a number of times and I’ve come to the same conclusion.

My mom has a lot of stuff, says the tattooed scientist. Collections! Tea cups, clocks, small little bunnies. The way he said small little bunnies made me laugh and Maria had to say, It seems wrong to say don’t laugh when there is so much pain… but you must hold still.

The girlfriend shakes her head. The more stuff you own the more you need to clean. 

She will not stop adding to her collections, the tattooed scientist said with finality and I knew he was right, just as I knew Bobby had added to her angel collection since I last saw it before the pandemic.

Moving is like peeling back the years of time. the girlfriend said. I found a fork that has been missing for 12 years.

I thought about the trip the h and I took out to the old farmhouse in central Illinois where my ex husband had stored all of our furniture after the divorce. We agreed it was better than paying a storage fee in some anonymous self-storage unit in San Jose. So there out stuff sat in the ticking quiet of that farmhouse for two decades as the seasons revolved outside. I’d made plans to go get my half and bring it to California, plans that didn’t work out. Then my ex got sick, and it was a brief illness, and way way way before anyone was ready for it he died and it wasn’t long before his wife asked, can you pick up any of this stuff before the end of the month, I am selling the house.

The h and I flew to St. Louis, rented a Budget easy ride van and drove northeast the four hours to the farm, where the house sat alone at the intersection of four fields. we packed the van front to back. The farmhouse had been abandoned lo these fifty years or more; it was odd to see the furniture of grandparents mixed with the furniture of the Austin Texas home I shared with my ex.

There was no electricity; we wore headlamps and set up work lights and worked deep into the night, the headlights of the truck backed right up to the back door.

Farm trucks bettled past; the lights from neighboring farms glowed to yellow life in the middle of the night. The ex’s Uncle Larry made a few calls and verified the stranger with the van at the old Miller farm was me. When he drove up in the morning I recognized him right away though I hadn’t seen him for twenty four years. We both cried when we hugged, feeling the absence of who was missed between us.

All this stuff, I said to the h when the van was fully packed. What was I thinking, buying all this stuff? I was honestly puzzled at the version of myself that had bought the chairs and the fancy couches and the velvet upholstered footstools. I had way more stuff than I needed, even leaving more than half of it behind, I was taking back to California a huge amount of stuff to combine with all the stuff I already have.

It was one of the reasons this property in Portugal appealed; there are a lot of houses, and we have a lot of stuff, the h and I. When we got together we brought together the contents of four houses. What are we going to do with all of this stuff, we asked each other, as the number of storage units crept from two to three to five to seven.

Turns out it’s just enough stuff to spread around the houses here on this property, which there number four, or five depending on how you count them.

What about you mom’s stuff, the he asked me last time we were home. Mom, like the tattooed scientist’s mom, has a few collections - notably at Christmas (snowmen and reindeer), but also certain things she likes - baskets and wooden boxes, interesting-looking jars, pictures of leaves and trees. Mom’s stuff is highly organized; I could direct you where to go and what to do to put up the Christmas decorations in the yard and the house with nothing more than my memory and a FaceTime call with you at their house.

Halfway through the tattoo the h and Tim and Kirsten arrive to announce they had no luck getting cash from the ATM. They fill the tattoo room, a dim cave of pain, with their big American healthy outdoorsiness, like three acrobats suddenly somersaulting into the room then just as suddenly leaving, the air refreshed in their wake.

We’re going to eat, we’ll send you a pin, the he says.

I’m sorry, I tell Maria. About the cash situation. Maybe we just do two hours since I don’t have all the cash for hour three?

We are all human, she says with her Jedi smile. And we should stop soon anyway - your skin is bruising. Such a difference from last time, she says. I agree, the pain last session was negligible, while this time it was so bad I was afraid to look, so shredded it felt. But the skin, though a bit bruised looking was not shredded, instead a beautiful orange and yellow California poppy bloomed there.

Next time, you will use a numbing cream, she says. I will have one more session to finish the tattoo before my daughter’s graduation at the end of the month in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

I’ve been thinking about stuff a lot, not just because of the tattooed scientist’s mom. As much as we are bringing over from the US to Portugal, we gave away even more including twenty years’ worth of plants the h had nurtured. I was glad to give them to new, good homes. I’ve made it a habit to give away stuff before I move out of state - something I’ve done six times now. And still, I have a lot of stuff.

My mom knows she has a lot of stuff. I should live in a smaller place with less stuff, she said. We all agreed, but when she started getting rid of stuff that belonged to dad, some of us kids got upset and cried. I’m glad that, when caught between a rock and a hard place of what to do with dad’s stuff, mom went ahead and gave it away. The other day my sister was going through some more of mom’s stuff and found the Happy Mother’s Day plate she made for mom in girl scouts. It’s not the kind of thing mom needs to keep but one gets why she didn’t throw it away.

A friend of my sister’s bought dad’s car. We were all so happy about that, until one day my sister looked out her window and saw dad’s car, as she has on a million Saturdays, and caught her breath and didn’t exhale until the friend who bought the car knocked on the door.

I’ve been finding about seven eggs a week now. And some of the flowers I planted in the fall are coming in. They are tall with leaves like rooster tails and large painted flowers that remind me a little of gladiolas, a little of orchids. One is an awesome coral color; another is brilliant red. There are six in all.

Tim and Kirsten were here less than 24 hours when they applied sunblock then went up to the back 40 with chainsaws and weed whackers, gassed up and ready to go, hats with sunshades and bottles of water and work gloves.

Chaps? I asked and they all said nah. 

Jake galloped after them, trying to act like he was part of the crew. I called him back and he came but watched them go with longing.

It doesn’t look that overgrown, Tim said. The’ve trimmed it twice a year even while it was vacant - fire is public enemy #1 in Portugal, we tell them. The four of us are all from wildfire states - Tim and Kirsten live in Alaska, we just recently established our address there, from California, and both states have famously wild wildfires. We’ve never had a structure threatened, but it was pretty smoky in Tahoe once or twice, and we had to wear masks indoors a couple of days.

Once, the house of the ex-wife of the h’s was threatened by the Tubbs fire - she lived on the end of Tubb’s lane. We are in Mexico, they texted us. We were glad Sophia was out of the normally healthy California air. The fire is on the news here, they wrote. We can see our house in the helicopter footage. Can you go to our place and grab some things? They included a list.

Herb left immediately but already they were shutting down ingress and egress to the town. A Sheriff’s car blocked the road.

No sir, he told the h. 

It’s my house and I just need to grab a few things, the h told him.

You’re sweating, the Sheriff said. What a terrible part of his job, to try to keep people safe from a devouring wildfire but also safe from devouring grifters arriving to take advantage of the chaotic situation and rob a few wine country chateaus that were now unattended, no alarm systems even.

Yeah I’m sweating, it’s hot!  the h said. Behind the sheriff visible lines of fire crawled down the hillside at the end of the road - the very Tubb’s lane the fire was named for. 

OK the Sheriff said. But if you don’t come back through here in an hour, I’m going to find you. He took down the h’s license, registration and ID.

The h grabbed the Picasso, cases of wine, boxes of files. He texted me with each milestone. Truck loaded, headed back, he wrote.

How did you protect the paintings? I texted. 

Wrapped in bedding. 

That gave me pause. When you are using your bedding for something other than the bed, things are serious

What did the Sheriff say to you when you drove back through? I asked the h.

Nothing, the h said. He was looking for me, there I was, so he just nodded and I nodded back. I still sometimes wonder what that Sheriff would think if he found out the h was not the homeowner at all but in fact an ex husband, taking priceless art from his ex-wife’s house. I mean, sure, at her request to do so - still it’s funny to imagine his face. I would tell him not to feel bad, the h is super Obi-wan Kenobe like that.

At least once a week I go down into the Secret Garden with a trash bag and I pick up all the garbagey stuff near the wall, where people just chuck stuff up and over the top and into our backyard. Mostly it’s empty plastic water bottles, empty glass beer bottles, cans, and plastic. But recently I found Christmas decorations plus the plastic head of a curly lamb, and sea shells. The h found the jawbone of a pig. Tiago found a candlestick that looks just like lumiere from Beauty and the Beast. And of course I find eggs.

Alberto brought over even more bread, then asked if we had any ginga left.

Um pouco, we tell him.

You give bottle,  I bring more! he says.

I went to get the old plastic soda bottle but first emptied it of a load of macerated cherries.

No cherries left, I tell Alberto.

Of course not, he says. The best part.

He returned with two bottles (“You have company!”), the soda bottle now full, plus the Glenfiddich bottle we gave him last Christmas, now full of ginga, the bottom deep with cherries like little science experiments.  He also brought, like an afterthought, another bag of bread. Last night he gave us four rolls and a half loaf of wheat bread; this morning two more rolls and a loaf of olive bread, plus another bag of lemons.

We made a lunch of leftovers; avocado and tomato sandwiches on bakery rolls with lettuce from our garden, cold pesto pasta salad, cheese and olives, plus a salad of spinach from the garden mixed with dried apricots, baked feta and sunflower seeds in a homemade mustard vinaigrette.  We made lemonade from Alberto’s lemons and for dessert each had a square or two of the chocolate Tim and Kirsten brought all the way from the US - twelve bars of it. It’s always been our favorite chocolate and after they tried it, theirs too. It is 79% cocoa, so a serious dark without being snooty. On the tongue a square quickly dissolves into a silky intensity with a lovely dark indigo undertaste. I don’t know what I mean by that but it just feels right. 

On Sunday morning before my tattoo session the four of us toured Alberto’s garden and workshop. His garden is a wonder to behold. Oh, and there’s this, he would say, explaining the many different crops, how this flower becomes a passion fruit, how there are seven kinds of onions. In addition to all the food crops there were red poppies, white calla lilies, pink roses and smiling margaritas.

this flower becomes the passion fruit

His workshop, if anything, is even more wondrous, a place for everything - old sheep bells, old rotary telephones, safety glasses - and everything in its place.

It reminded me of my dad and I felt him there for a minute, everyone in the other room looking at something Alberto was showing them, me lingering by his tables of tools and equipment organized much as my own dad’s equally busy workshop. The sunlight streamed through a skylight, illuminating the old spider webs hanging there - even they knew their place in a place like that.

Someday, I thought, Alberto will not be here, nor the h nor I, and all of this will just be someone else’s stuff.

After the tour Alberto served us coffee and a shot, the latter of which came in a beautiful little cut crystal shot glass that I coveted instantly (which is why I have too much stuff, I love little stuff like dainty etched glass for drinking dainty shots of alcohol!)

For the men, he said, brandishing a clear bottle. And for the ladies, he said, holding aloft a bottle of ginga.

He pointed at the clear bottle. My wife’s grandfather took a shot of this every morning for breakfast, no coffee, he said. Even when he was eighty five!  

That’ll put hair on your chest, Tim remarked. The h sniffed it and laughed at the pure grain alcohol smell of it.

You put in coffee, Alberto says. Is good!

my dad had a paint shelf just like this. See my coffee cup?

Later he brought over a bottle of pear liqueur - the bottle is placed around the pear when it is just a seedling, and the fruit grows to maturity inside the bottle. Then it is snipped and soaked in a high octane liquor, then the bottle is filled with wine. the whole thing cures for two years, a stick of cinnamon dissolving. It looks and tastes like a magic trick.

a pear in a bottle

After my tattoo I went out to the street amongst the jacarandas. I clicked on the google maps pin the h sent, walking towards jacarandas rather than strictly following the map directions. But it worked out, I arrived before the restaurant was closing. Kirsten ordered me a glass of wine. I ate the leftovers they’d saved back for me, Kirsten called her mom and we all said hi and blew kisses. Our waiter spoke great English and was from French speaking Canada, not far from where my brother-in-law was born. He gave us his card, and I’m glad to have it, like another piece of tile to lay down in the mosaic of my Portuguese life.

We drove home as the sun was starting to set, under the jacarandas.