These #@&ing Portuguese pipes

And how some problems simply can’t be outworked.

Cutline: Do *NOT* be fooled by that cute Portuguese tile. All that glitters is not gold.

Cue that song, “Suddenly I See” in that scene where Anne Hathaway is frolicking around New York City, trying to start a new chapter as Meryl Streep’s assistant in The Devil Wears Prada — she’s full of hope, awe, and the jittery energy of someone who is determined to make it work, no matter what.

You know what the scene is about — it’s about grit. And grit is precisely what I’ve been channeling during this international move. Sure, there’s always going to be some measure of self-doubt, but I just kept telling myself, you’re here. You made it. If you just want it badly enough, everything is going to work out.

Cody and I were the embodiment of Anne Hathaway on February 1 as we tumbled out of our Bolt XL from the airport, fresh off a flight from North Carolina. Our necks craned to take in our second-floor balcony, freshly painted a seafoam green, and we hoisted our three suitcases and plastic totes onto the sidewalk outside of our first Lisbon apartment. We’d signed a one-year lease, had enough clothes to last us a couple of weeks, and we’d seen beautiful photos of the space online.

“Bonjour!” Our landlord called from a window above. “Hi!” We grinned. I, for one, was hilariously caught off guard by a greeting in French after working so hard to get some basic Portuguese under our belts before the move (we’d later learn that our chosen neighborhood, Campo de Ourique, had a huge French presence).

We struggled to lift nearly 200 pounds of luggage up steep steps to the second floor (actually the third, since street level doesn’t count in Europe), because our apartment had no lift. The place was charming, with original wooden floorboards, darling houseplants, and natural light refracting off every surface. Our landlord gave us a short tour; the kitchen was self-explanatory (save for the gas canister we had to switch on and light with a match prior to cooking). “Rodrigo is about eighty, give or take,” we were told. “He’ll try to bring up gas replacements himself, but you should help him. He only takes cash.”

There was no oven.

As is typical, there wasn’t a dryer either, so we hung our clothes out our back window (well, I did, as Cody was terrified of losing his shirts to the patio of our neighbor below). “She’s not the nicest,” our landlord said, with a smirk. We’ll win her over, we thought.

The office (a closet) had a rickety, peeling chair. The closet drawers smelled like mold. Ducking was a requirement for Cody to get into the bathroom, which was three feet shorter than the ceiling throughout the space. So cute, we thought. So darling.

We shook our landlord’s hand, he left, and we stood silently, shoulder to shoulder, not sure if we were actually allowed to be left alone without supervision. What if we set ourselves on fire with that gas can when we tried to make dinner?

That didn’t happen, but alas. Our own little chaos ensued. Our tub leaked water to the tenant below — she was not happy. Within days, our clothes sprouted soft, pillowy circles of mold when folded even in close proximity to the musty shelves. When people walked around upstairs, dust rained down from the ceiling and sprinkled onto our pillowcases. Our fridge pooled water into the veggie drawer. I took meetings on a metal folding chair because the wifi didn’t work in the office closet. My back suffered. The futon broke within days of our arrival. But my God, the worst of all? It was cold.

February in a cute as a button, but uninsulated Portuguese apartment will test your fortitude, your marriage, your faith. It is a unique type of cold, exacerbated by high humidity that traps moisture in the air. It makes you want to take the hottest showers ever, but balk at the idea of even a droplet of water on your skin or clothes because they simply won’t dry. You walk up to your darling apartment each night and dread the fact that the temperature inside will be degrees colder than the chilly night you’ve just left. You can see steam come off your food as you eat, and you fight over all the covers, sweatshirts, and mugs.

(And yes, I know what you’re thinking: Ashley, you sound like a bratty American. Indeed; the things I’m recounting are real, normal attributes of Portuguese life that many have grown accustomed to, and I probably seem like a diva for complaining about them. I realize this, and I’m trolling myself anyway, because I believe people ought to know the real about how this gal is actually adjusting to her new Portuguese life.)

“Honey,” I whispered to Cody one night in bed, when his cold, bony ankle made contact with the one strip of exposed skin between my sweatpants and sock. “I’m not sure I’m going to last here.”

“I know it’s cold,” he chattered. “But soon it will be spring, and it’ll be warm, and we’ll be able to dry our clothes and walk around without all these layers on.”

I blinked slowly. “Cody,” I breathed.
He sighed. He looked at me. I clasped his hand.

“Okay,” he said.

We lasted four months in that apartment. Actually, we moved out after three, but had to pay an extra month to satisfy one-third of the year-long lease, the minimum required stay under Portuguese law. And then we signed a new lease, this time for three years, on the same street. The new landlords were an absolute dream, taking us out for natas and tea and allowing us to move in early while they attended to other business. Friends remarked on how utterly lucky we were — apparently here, finding kind landlords who are willing to extend a multi-year lease to us in such a hot market was rare and worth holding on to for dear life.

We were smitten.

It was fully updated, equipped with a modern kitchen, a fridge that didn’t leak, and an oven. There were wall-to-wall windows on the south and north ends of the space, ensuring proper air flow to keep the mold away in the winter and the cool breeze circulating in the summer. There was a guest room so we could host friends and family. Best of all? It was the same price as the first place. Finally, everything was perfect.

And then I started sniffing something that smelled a bit too much like sewage.
At first, it was a whiff. And then, stronger.

“Are you getting that?!” I told Cody one day as I stood in the bathroom, trying to finally decorate our space. Our very own space.

“What?!” he peeked around the corner, his forehead creased with worry. “Ashley, please…”

That was three weeks and three plumbers ago. I started taking informal polls while we were out with friends who’d been here a while. “Do your bathrooms smell?” I would ask, worriedly, after folks would ask how the move was going. “Um, yes,” they would reply. “That’s pretty par for the course. Everyone knows Portuguese pipes just… smell. Have you tried eucalyptus?”

I was aghast. I would just need to… get over it? I’d survived a Game of Thrones winter and now, I’d just need to settle for the fact that when I pooped, I’d smell more like someone else’s than my own?

American Ashley took over. (She’d never really left, if I’m honest. Her eldest daughter, work-to-fix-at-all-costs attitude is always just beneath the surface.) I surfed Reddit. I pored over FB forums. My poor husband. My poor NOSE. So many folks came in and out, some with plaster, others with drills. Cody would sit on the couch, dejected, as I supervised the work. “What if this doesn’t work?” he’d ask. “I have a feeling you won’t be satisfied, and I don’t want to move again, honey. At a certain point, something is going to have to be less than perfect.” I scowled, arms crossed. Not on my watch.

In the end, tiles were broken, a pipe was dug up, and all of the pieces of our shower and toilet were reconfigured. Apparently, when the apartment was renovated, they connected the toilet drain to the shower. (This, too, wasn’t a surprise to our veteran friends. “Portuguese construction, am I right?!” they’d shrug.)

Seven days of work. Far fewer showers. Lots of prayers.

By the time the last plumber left, I walked into the shower and breathed deeply.

At last. I could inhale.

And two days later, the stench was back.

Much lighter than before, but still unmistakably there. I found myself alone the morning it wafted through the air, with Cody out on a run, and me, bargaining and wallowing in my thoughts.

My shower drain stank. Apparently, lots of other people’s showers also stunk. But most importantly, MINE stunk. I might always live in a slightly stinky apartment. I’d left a non-stinky, well-insulated house in the States to live in a slightly smelly apartment in Lisbon. What did this mean? How much was I going to have to spend in Airwick plug-ins monthly? Most importantly, what if there was just never going to be a fix?

Could it be… that these Portuguese pipes were teaching me something?

Could it be that I might actually have to acknowledge the fact that an element of my current reality might not be able to be fixed or solved?

I’m confronting a deeply uncomfortable truth that I wasn’t at all prepared to face:

Maybe the most American thing about me is my inability to allow.

Back home, I took the blanket approach of ‘fix-at-all-costs’ for every realm of my life. Issue at work? Work on it until it’s resolved. Issue with the family? Have enough conversations to get to the heart of the matter and smooth things over. Issue with my health? Pay enough money to enough specialists to feel better. Issue with my neighborhood? Move.

For the past few months since moving here, I’ve attempted to copy and paste that mentality to this reality. I’m finding that to be a fruitless endeavor.

A wonderful friend of mine told me that pain lives in the space between our reality and unrealized expectations. That if I’ve done everything I can to change my reality and it has not, I can either adapt to what is, or mourn what won’t happen.

So, today, I find myself having chosen a country where many acknowledge it is what it is.

That there will be elements of their homes, their jobs, and their communities (Portuguese bureaucracy, anyone?!) that are bigger than what they can control. And they (apparently) have made peace. Maybe that’s it — the slow, painful process of learning to allow — that might just be the critical piece of this journey that I’ve been missing.

Suddenly, I see.

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