1980

My Aunt Harriett married a guy whose parents had emigrated from Portugal to New Bedford Massachusetts after WWII. Unfortunately, Larry has a fear of flying, and so when my mom rented a vacation home in Cascais, Portugal in the summer of 1980, it was only Aunt Harriett who flew over to meet us there and explore his family's country. 

We started our trip in Lisbon, spending the first night in a hotel before picking up our white minivan and meeting Maria Joao, the realtor who guided us around the coast and up into the hills of Malviera de Serra to the sprawling villa we would call home for the next 2 weeks. The place came with a maid, a gardener, a pool, and a dog. It was the home of a Voice of America reporter and the furnishings and landscaping seemed out of the 1930s, a place where Hemingway might have felt at home. 

We made ourselves at home there, too, shopping at the local farmers market and cooking breakfast and dinner. During the day we explored the castle at Sintra, the riviera town of Estoril, the working fishing harbor of Cascais, Cabo de Roca, the westernmost point in Europe, and other Portuguese towns, Fatima, Teixeira, and Porto, among them. Feeling so at home in another place seemed like a magic trick of some kind, like living a different life for a while, the one where at the end of an amazing day you gaze out over the Atlantic while relaxing by your pool and snack on strawberries picked that morning as your dog snores peacefully at your feet. 

The shape of that summer would shape many of my summers after that-- I love nothing more than barreling around a beautiful place from a rented house in a mini-van and imagining what a grand life it would be.