sea mist

It was a day when the sea mist was so low that we were paddling in clouds. I was going to say swimming in them, but it was too rough for that in the Atlantic even in summer.

We were five: two mothers, three boys between us. Missing their fathers though in very different circumstances of time and permanence.

It was the two youngest boys who brought us together. They found each other first because we were two of the most lax school-gate mothers who allowed them (aged 8 then), virtually unlimited access to the world of online gaming. Their friendship was forged in Minecraft building projects and in Fortnight skirmishes which soon spilled over into in real life games and playground dance moves. 

As we grew to know each other too, it was a pleasure to find we shared an inclination towards libertarian parenting, a love of cats, and of singing intricately structured renaissance music.

All three of our boys will stop in the street to say how’do you do to a cat and they know to treat them with gentle accommodation. 

All three like to make a lot of noise: Shouting and shrieking with laughter at video games, rocking out on their first electric guitars. Messing around together making beats and silly videos when they should have been in bed. Modest, soulful, clever H, shown once, then picking out Bach from start to finish on the piano. L singing his heart out in tune and in time, as my heart swells.

They can be heartbreaking and hilarious, often in the same moment: The time I woke with a shock at 3 am during that great misnomer ‘the sleepover’ to see them standing, pale little-walking-wraiths at my bed side – A staring at me hollow-eyed, ruffle-haired, and struck silent by sleep deprivation, as my equally tousled boy gravely explained the situation: the thing is Mum, A spooked himself, can hear something tapping outside, can’t sleep, has to go home, so you need to phone his mum. Now Mum. So will you?

I shuffled out of bed murmuring some gentle nothingnesses, as I shepherded them back to bed. The next morning, my story of their overwrought night-visitations had us doubled-up with laughter.

All three are forensic experts at examining the arbitrary nature of whatever it is the grown-ups are telling them to do or not to do:  Why is the whole class banned from playing tag because the boys were fighting, when you know Mum, the girls weren’t playing Tag or fighting.  Or on bringing home, laminated achievement certificates, saying with a shrug come on Mum you know by now, everyone gets at least one every year.

Last summer, Grandma, being by some measures the most grown-up, made the entirely arbitrary decision to move to Portugal. This gave the rest of us a marvellous excuse for a holiday and so here we were, five of us having a bit of an adventure at the seaside.

Getting here involved a bus, a complete lack of any knowledge of Portuguese and only a vague idea of where we were going. Initially stony-faced with none of the obvious charm of their near-neighbours, our fellow passengers turned out to be very kind. They pointed us to the right bus and once on it, they counted stops for us and raised a smile for our scruffy children. 

When we reached the end of the ride, the way to the beach was through a wetland park and beneath an underpass so that we came upon it around a corner carrying our bags filled with towels, and bottles of water , suncream and snacks and suddenly the sea and sky were so big and the horizon so heavy with mist, that we adults had to stop and catch our breath and work out where one thing ended and another began.  

Our boys seeing freedom and sand, did not hold back. They ran ahead flinging off their shoes for us to pick up. As if we didn’t have enough to carry. 

Earlier in the day on the way to the bus stop all three boys had scrambled up the base of a huge war memorial. Portugal’s own Nelson’s column, but without any of the air of Whitehall bureaucracy surrounding Nelson’s figure. At the top of this column a gigantic gaping-mouthed lion stands back arched over an eagle it has killed. The eagle’s once proudly-held head hangs over the edge its throat exposed, its broken wings spread wide. This  statue of triumph of  a righteous war can be seen for miles. No pity or mercy in it, only the simple horrors of pure power. A rape of Leda. Poor Parisian pigeon killed by the swinging-balled tom cat of an Anglo-Portuguese alliance. At the base are more literal and horrific scenes of war at land and sea, figures captured twisted by the effort of living and dying by cannon fire and ship-wreck. Gasping-mouthed-hollow-eyed souls – drowning in blood and sea-foam. 

Our boys clambered among the gigantic figures, as close as they could get by climbing the base. We took dozens of photos and even though the eldest had reached the age where his long fringe came down like a curtain between him and the world, they were all so happy and excited that even he forgot himself and smiled in some.

Now at the wide beach, H found a rocky outcrop as a lookout and sheltered place to sit and read The two younger boys carried on running to the sea. Together they faced the crashing white waves and yelled into the wind for their father Poseidon to come and play.

They wrapped seaweed as bracelets around their arms and made olympian wreaths of it. They dug trenches that filled and flooded as quickly as they dug. 

A held up a mussel shell in front of his eye, vivid purple as a bruise. Dark amber eyes, copper hair a flaming sun burning through the hazy sky. They played and shouted and splashed, pale-shining, running in the wet sand.

Looking at our boys standing tall but still so small against the horizon, it was unimaginable how those early explorers could look into the fearsome churning water not knowing what lay beyond the fog and ever set sail. It may as well have been a voyage to the moon. Even more terrifying, than the moon because we know her face. These men set sail across the oceans to find a veiled bride, with what feverish dreams of taking her and her rich dowry?

When we had had enough for now of the sun and wind and sea, we walked along the quiet wide promenade to find ice cream and somewhere sheltered to sit. We were happy and tired and nearly ready for the bus ride back to the city.

A tall slender African man had laid out carved wooden lions and elephants, giraffes and antelope, along the sea wall. Smiling he told us he came in the summer from Somalia to trade and would go home again with the swifts, come winter. The boys chose lions and an antelope as souvenirs. 

Then the trader held up rainbow cotton-braided bracelets for us each to choose one as a gift for spending our money so generously: this one for happiness, this one for luck, another for wealth. We each chose our one bracelet hopeful but a little anxious whether we had chosen wisely for our future. 

Together we tied the pretty charms around our children’s small wrists, knowing that our boys will face the sea again long after the cotton has frayed and untied, but knowing too, that this day cannot be undone. 

e.antoniou –  may 2020