Actually it was a few days in Parede. Laura and Tony live here. They are 30 minute train ride outside the center of Lisbon, near the sea. Parede is a small community where people greet each other on the street. You see old ladies hunched over, heads held together almost touching, as if they had the best gossip of the town. The town cronies are sitting always in their familiar spot in the corner table of their favorite cafe. Tony is almost always there. He joins them around 11:30 in the morning after he has had his breakfast at home with Laura and completed a couple of his errands of the day. Then he makes his way home before 1 for lunch. That is just the way of life here in Parede.
Lunch is a big affair…meat, potatoes, bread, salad or sometimes it is a nice fresh fish from the sea.
Laura cooks up a storm
These days Laura does not leave the apartment. For two years now she has been suffering from pain in her left leg, her left hip. No one is really sure where she has pain. All we know is that she can’t or sometimes won’t walk. They bicker. They argue. But not much has changed. They are just older and more strickened with age.
Tony has regained some of the weight that he lost during his fight with cancer.
We ate at a Chinese restaurant…Portugese Chinese food and damn but it was good. They had a novel idea to have you plate up fresh seafood, veggies, meat and a young man would cook it up in front of you. AND that was on top of the open buffet filled with other choices.
He told us that the disease has changed him forever. It has taken a toll on him and he would never be the same again. I know he means the way he eats and sleeps but I also know he means the way his body is so sensitive to food, lack of sleep, exercise or even no exercise…just the unpredictablilty of life and life’s influences on his body. However, it was good to see him twice as healthy as the year before, so there is hope he will come back to his former self. Life is empty without hope.
We had no expectations, no requests. We came into their lives to share a few days. Laura cooked and we had to eat. She would be insulted if we did not take second helpings. “Oh you don’t like Laura’s cooking!” Tony would accuse us. It was a relief to stay at Tony’s apartment. There was less pressure to have her prepare breakfasts, the big lunches and then the light soup at night. She would insist on feeding us and then we would hear of her painful leg. But she cooked all day anyways. Then she would sound disappointed and insulted that we did not eat all our meals with them. Our last lunch was a truly grand effort. She not only made a magnificent baked fish with potatoes and carrots soaking in juice and olive oil, salad and baked apples but she also made bacalhau portugues.
It takes hours to prepare but hers were the tastiest. And I tried many others during this short visit.
Now I made that with her on my last visit and I know it took her all morning just to make this one dish. It was always a treat to sit down to one of Laura’s meals. I just wish it did not pain her so much.
On our last day they insisted on driving us to Cascais to show us the sea. “Oh oh look look at the sea” Tony would exclaim. “It’s really rough today” He talked like an old fisherman testing the day, the wind condition and the currents before heading out to sea.
Tony would get so excited when he showed us the sea, almost as if it was his own personal sea.
I took some photos since he stopped often to show us the waves. “Send me that one” he would insist. Every shot of the waves was important. 
“Look there’s a fisherman…do I know him?” he truly expected to know every fisherman along those miles and miles of beach. Just like Tony junior, he should know everyone because that was just the kind of guy he was. I almost wonder if it is just a Portugese trait to be involved with everyone and with your community! It was just what you do.. acknowledge everyone. 
..and be acknowledged back. There is something to be learned here.