Little House on the Praia - Summers in Portugal

I used to dream of being a writer, inspired by the time I spent in this place. Those lonely weeks of journaling and reading while waiting for friends or family to arrive always stayed with me. I was always early. It was a small fishing village in northern Portugal called Praia Da Torreira, nestled between the ocean and a river—probably a peninsula, I guess. My parents first brought me there when I was just six months old.

I grew up in Newark, playing in abandoned houses surrounded by overgrown weeds. Our street was lined with turn-of-the-century factories, some still operating, others left deserted. We didn’t have grass lawns, just concrete. On weekends, we might walk a mile to the park. Like many other Portuguese families, my parents turned our backyard into a little oasis with grapevines and rose bushes. We lived next to an airport, where planes flew overhead every five minutes. Sometimes, I’d sit outside with a notebook, playing a game where I tracked the airlines passing above. A few houses down, my Polish best friend had the only underground pool on the block, and I’d swim there on hot summer days. His dad was the coolest—he’d take us to the stadium a few blocks away so we could race bikes on the track. I always lost because I had a cheap bike, while he had a souped-up Huffy. Most nights, I came home with dirty fingernails and bruised knees. I thought that was the life until I visited Portugal for the first time. I had been there as a baby, but experiencing it at six years old was something entirely different. 

In Portugal, there were forests, a river, and a vast ocean all just ten minutes away in any direction. I vaguely remember my father proudly telling me about growing up there and how beautiful it was. Most of my core memories come from this place and the awe I felt at everything I saw. Our house was five minutes from the beach, where I’d hear waves crashing at night and, in the morning, fishermen blowing their horns to call workers to the beach to set the boats assail. On good days, they would launch their boats more than twice a day. In the 80s, there were about five boats on the beach, and they used bulls to pull in the nets. In Portugal, we call this the Arte of Xávega, an ancient practice that has been done for over a hundred years. 

I always wanted to be a writer, but it never happened because I thought I had nothing to write about. Since 1997, though, so much has happened. I also doubted my ability to write due to my ADD and struggles with grammar. But now, there's a story inside me that I need to share. After 1997, I didn’t return to Torreira until 2022, the year after my dad passed away and my boyfriend of eight years left me without warning. I lost my dad and my best friend, and the only place where I could heal was Torreira. It had been my refuge as a teenager, and it came through for me again as an adult. In 2022, I traveled to Portugal alone, I flew into Lisbon and took a train north. It wasn’t like me to do something like that on my own, but I was so broken that I didn’t care what happened to me. When my aunt picked me up in Estarreja and drove me to Torreira, I felt the blood warming in my veins again. There was a sign I remembered from childhood, marking that we were near the bridge leading into the peninsula, down the stretch of road that would bring us right into Torreira.

My aunt Mariana drove me down that road straight to the front of my house, where my niece and mom were waiting for me. I took a deep breath, and the familiar taste reassured me that the healing process had begun. I'm writing this book for the people of Torreira—not the visitors, but the ones to whom the village truly belongs. I write this for my father and my sweet little grandmother, who gave me so much love that my heart bursts every time I think of her. Where to begin? Let’s start in 1988, when my parents sent me there for three months to stay with my maternal grandmother in her little house on the praia. I'm writing this introduction from Torreira, in my parents' house in 2025, feeling completely healed and authentically myself for the first time. I'm over the boyfriend—he was a jerk—and I still miss my dad, but I feel his presence most here.  Every sentence I've pulled out of me has brung tears so I know this book and it's pages came from the salt of my tears and the ocean air all around me.   I can't help but think of that young girl and adult and how sad I was when I got here.     <3