May 30, 2023 and we are back home, at our little quinta whose name still escapes us. I chose Bom Feito, thinking it meant well-done, only to be told by Portuguese that the word doesn’t exist. So it's Bem Feito for now (which does mean well-done, sort of)…
After being gone for half a year, we returned in wonder to our 4 hectares, which were overgrown with wildflowers, tall grass, and olive trees thick with blossoms. This was a relief after last year’s drought, when our olive trees remained dormant, thirsty for rain.
It’s raining today and the constant drizzle gives me the perfect excuse to finally write. During the last few weeks, we’ve been in constant motion trimming and raking the grass, planting vegetables and trees, landscaping, pulling weeds, and just falling into the next project. I constantly underestimate how much time physical work takes up—there’s both the work itself and the need to relax afterwards and recover your strength.
Physical work demands full attention, just as writing does. So today, with the rain, my focus shifts.
I am writing from our bed in the camper, which boasts two magnificent views. The first is of a pine forest, the wild part of the land we rarely touch. The second is of a tiny white chapel nudged into the road, which Dennis and I use as natural clock, reading the shadows falling across it to determine the time of day.
Our bed is a camper mattress lying on top of pillows. It’s basically a convertible bed perched on a table, though we never convert it anymore because we eat down at the house. The camper acts as our little house on the hill, guarding the entrance of our property as we rebuild the bigger houses in the valley below.
Everything on this bed has a story to tell. The blue, yellow and black checkered blanket comes from Burma, where it kept us warm during a night ferry; the curtains, which I mis-measured several times, were made by a friend; there’s Charlie, a stuffed toy sheep (both a pillow and friend), which I bought on Texel, where I managed to back the car into a tractor; and there’s the camper itself, which Dennis bought 5 minutes after seeing it parked at Ijmuiden, between empty warehouses and fishing boats with immense nets.
This bed makes me think of other beds I’ve slept in: the bed Dennis and I share in Amsterdam, with its fantastic sturdy mattress, overlooking our balcony and a leafy maple tree loved by fat wood pigeons and the city’s lime green parrots. There’s the bed I had in the center of Amsterdam, with a view of the historic Western church, where Rembrandt is buried, and I slept under rafters as old as the American constitution. An awful bed was the hard, cheap Ikea fold-up bed in the Huidekoperstraat, where an insomniac wrestled with his sheets above me nightly, reducing me to tears. But the most uncomfortable bed I ever slept in had to be in Barcelona, where I stayed with locals during a language exchange to learn Spanish. The female owner served me salty soup, kept a lock on the fridge and routinely went through my garbage. It was like living with a prison warden.
This bed is one of my all-time favourites. I love it because it overlooks our serene valley. There’s a spaciousness and silence here, which is like the space between notes or the pause between breaths. It reminds me to just be, surrendering the distractions of constant thoughts, activity, entertainment, goals or seeking a sense of purpose. Being here is about, well, being here—something that challenges me, even after all these decades.
I also love this bed because it is the bridge between now and the vision we hold for this place. From here, we enjoy the adventure that is unfolding, full of unknowns, new faces and learning. This bridge also extends into our future, to our vision of creating community, hosting workshops, breathing life into our property, and putting the shine back on what we see as a diamond in the rough. This bed is the perfect place where Dennis and I can dream, laugh, bond, deepen our experience of this move to Portugal, and receive the goodness of life.
*A quick ironic note: last night, the camper roof leaked directly over the bed (nowhere else, thank goodness). We had to move into the house, though the bedroom still needs to be plastered, so fate has accelerated our move. Our view still faces the pine forest (though now deep in the valley), and I find this a nice twist, we are directly across from a small stone bridge that leads into the forest.
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