A Bridge Back Home

by Cynthia Houchin (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Portugal

Outside the open balcony door drifts squeals of children playing and the now familiar sound of streetcars gliding down rails, soothing as white noise. The curtains ruffle slightly. There’s something mystical about the light in Lisbon. I may not be Portuguese, but I have always felt the ache of saudade in my bones. A yearning for something lost. My red eye flight steals me into Lisbon during the witching hour. I fell through a portal to this parallel universe, like a hazy dream of the San Francisco from my childhood. Back then, my parents set hard boundaries: no wandering past the front mailbox. I never could stop myself. The city’s deserted, a sleeping giant beneath my feet. Pombaline-style buildings line the streets, beautifully patterned tiles glinting in streetlamps. But in the morning, light cascades in, the shutters peel back and doors fling open. Breezy cafes emerge. People sip espresso with all the time in the world. Blissfully good pastries, pastéis de nata, are my favorite fuel for the steep hills climbing around every corner. Sunny yellow streetcars wind through the narrowest streets in the Alfama district, stopping every now and then to inch by carelessly parked cars. As dusk settles, crowds cluster on the street, outside the bars rather than in them, sipping bottles of Sagres and speaking all manner of languages. In nearby Cascais, a rangy Brazilian surf instructor, rash guard tied rakishly around his head, is impossibly light on his feet. A century ago, he’d surely have been a pirate furtively skirting these beaches, sailing under cover of night, rather than dancing around in a wetsuit in broad daylight. He urges our class in clipped English, “Don’t fall easy.” It sounds like a lesson for life, not just catching waves. So I venture further out of the city to Algarve. Once the western edge of the world, from the shoreline, I know the horizon is just an optical illusion, even if it still looks like a flat edge dropping off into nothing. Just a couple hundred years ago, Portuguese explorers sailed beyond the maps into the unknown. I envy them. The horizon presses on me, an invisible boundary. My sea kayak has a simpler mission. Scope out secret beaches for sunbathing. Back on the shore, my friends and I stake our territory and stretch out in the sand. The sun arcs across the sky as the tide edges in, swallowing our beach whole and forcing us back. Yesterday, it rained for the first time. Slick with raindrops, the white cobblestone sidewalks pattern together like iridescent fish scales. I saw a man gliding down the street in the Chiado district like a figure skater. He would take three quick steps and then slide, laughing gleefully. But those cobblestone can be unforgiving too. This morning, at the grocery store, a delivery man lay motionless, flat on his back. His right arm was flung over his face, head twisted to the side, lips a thin pinched line. Store clerks hovered over him, holding umbrellas, anxiously awaiting an ambulance. Up on the top of the biggest hill in Lisbon is São Jorge, a Moorish castle, my favorite miradouro lookout point. It was there I watched my first local sunset dip below a gleaming panorama. The 25 de Abril Bridge over the water is a suspension bridge so like the Golden Gate it brings back a very old memory I had long forgotten. I was in the backseat of my parents’ old Capri, crossing the Golden Gate on our way home. It was dark and it was way past my bedtime. I could no longer hold my head up. I laid down on the seat and to my surprise, I saw something bright winking between the rust-colored rungs of the bridge, a watchful eye. The full moon. It was the first time I ever saw it glinting over the bay. Sleep felt like surrender and I never wanted to give in. But I felt safe. The city was alive around me. My parents were watching over me. My eyelids sank down. I had forgotten what it felt like to feel that safe. Here in Lisbon, somehow I sleep like a baby again.