Problems in Portugal

I was in a Lisbon airport eight months after my husband’s death in early winter of 2000, exhausted from a night of traveling and a long layover at Charles de Gaulle Airport, the earthly testing ground for purgatory. The outfitter I had hired from my desk in Virginia, fumbling with my phone and my credit card, was not there. The trip to Portugal was an eleventh-hour escape from my first wedding anniversary as a widow. I had somehow felt, until the last possible minute, I could face the prospect of spending this night alone in my (our) bedroom. But as the day drew near, my resolve to be a pulled-together person crumbled. 

I had less than a week to make these desperate plans, and the morning of departure, I locked my house wondering what essentials I'd failed to cram into a suitcase overstuffed with horseback riding gear. I was not in good shape. While packing I tried to make coffee, which in comparison is a simple task, and the result was a hot brown river running over the counter and into the towel drawer.

I was no more than a short flip back in the calendar from needing to do battle with myself to venture out for pet food and milk. Leaving home filled me with an unfamiliar, indescribable dread. Yet here I was, alone in the Lisbon airport—before the days of cell phones, when people were relegated to the use of pay-phones that required actual coins. Given my lack of organizational skills under the best circumstances, I silently admitted (and it was not a comforting thought) that I could possibly be in the wrong city and definitely at the wrong airport. I was fairly confident of being in the correct country.  

In a wave of panic, I dragged my suitcase back to the information booth to confront the clerk, who had nonchalantly waved me away earlier that morning with a quick spurt of Portuguese. Apparently, being in charge of ‘Informacao de Aeroporto’ meant, to this person, exchanging gossip with the pastry vendor. Seeing me approach again, she leaned back slightly and folded her arms over a built-in countertop of bosom. Hair the color of a half-ripe banana sprouted in stiff tufts from her head, and she drummed long red nails. As she drew in a breath, I preemptively locked eyes with her and held her gaze for a few seconds without blinking. “I know you speak English,” I said, pausing to drive the point home. “I’m not leaving this time until you speak it.”

It’s not always so easy to overcome a breakdown in communication, and the estrangement that happens in a foreign country can occur with the people we love, from no further away than across the street or room. The proverb To understand is to forgive says in five words one of the most important of human truths: compassion arises naturally from understanding.

I began the All-Weather Friend with the goal of deepening empathy and tolerance between people when life heads in a grim direction. Both qualities, I believe, flow more freely from compassionate understanding than good intentions alone. A person who has never lost a loved one may imagine what the death of a spouse or child would be. She may feel genuinely moved by another’s grief. Imagination is transformed to true empathy when she suffers such a loss herself and can identify—or when she can relate deeply to the stories and advice of those who have. With All-Weather Friend materials, I hope to ease at least some of the difficult situations we face in life by helping people help friends who face serious trouble.

And back to Portugal. Realizing the only way to get rid of me was to supply a modicum of useful information, such as the location of a public telephone and dialing instructions, the woman relented with an exasperated sigh and a glance at her fingernails.

A while later, after I had haggled my way through many foreign operators who knew collectively perhaps six words I could decipher (“Hallo,” “No, I cannot do,” and “Goodbye”), I finally managed to make contact with my booking agent. By then my own English had deteriorated. “Where is the GUIDE!?” I shrieked into the phone.

There followed an apology and an explanation: my plane, it seems, came in many, many hours ahead of anyone else’s this guide was meeting. So I would, of course, telepathically intuit the need to situate myself on an airport bench and wait patiently and without alarm for the better part of the day. I then learned the only three words of Portuguese I remember now, besides obrigado (thank-you)—cafe com leite, which means coffee with milk.