So, it’s been three years and we still haven’t come up with a name for the House. After hearing my lyrical (I thought) description of the fabulous views, an American wag suggested Bellevue (“in New York City", he added helpfully, "the hospital of choice for the insane”). To my stepchildren it is Praia Grande (from the name of a beach 2 or 3 miles away), implying it’s a beach house, a notion I fight strenuously to disabuse them of. Most other people call it Colares (after the hill-town across the valley from us), which at least brings it closer to the ideal of the 19th-century quinta de lazer (leisure farm) I naively intend it to be.
To me, it’s just the House. “Hey, House”, I greet it when I return there after a spell (but only if I’m alone, bien entendu, no need to reinforce the poor opinion of one’s mental equilibrium already held by the distaff side). And then I walk around, to check the trees, “hi there, beautiful lemon tree”, “hello, noble cypress”, “hey, mighty oak” – this to a foot-high sapling we brought from the wood at Grandmother’s house in the North, and which is being groomed in a vase until it’s ready for transplantation to its place in the grand scheme of things (as I modestly call the not-quite-completely-haphazard way the plot is being planted). And only then do I enter the House proper, and go around opening windows and putting new books on shelves, and patting the ones already there (hey, little book), lighting a fire and getting a dinner going.
And after three years I still can’t quite believe I have this life.
