A day by the ocean in Cascais.
Winter by the ocean is one of life’s great gifts. The beaches are empty of tourists; a expansive land of raw, untouched beauty. The cold water on your feet, sending surging shocks of adrenaline through your body. Waves dance erratically on the shore, chasing my kids up and down the beach, shrieking with laughter.
My children are happiest by water, as it runs in their DNA. My own childhood was in Florida, which has gifted me with a fascination of the ocean, and a respect, but lack of fear of the ecosystems swimming around me unseen. As a child, I would dare myself to go deeper, deeper. How far could I swim from the shore? Most of my adult life has been a quest to return to ocean side.
However, there has always been a dichotomy of grief and bliss when I am seaside. Bliss being where my soul is most at peace. Grief knowing it’s only temporary, and soon I will have to depart back to cement and suburban plots and deadlines.
The ocean is poetry. Wild, stormy, inviting and also demanding your respect. She’ll heal all those broken pieces in you; snapped and strung out from the daily grind of hustle culture. That’s why we are drawn to her. She’s the siren who will make your return to daily life seem unbearable. If we could only live by the ocean.
Cascais is just about a 45 minute drive west from Lisbon, or you can take the train. The beaches we went to were more remote from the train station, so we rented a car for the day.
All day the sky had been gray and overcast, spitting threats of rain. But right before sunset, she changed her mind. The skies settled, and the sun came out to make her dramatic bow at the end of the last act of day.
My daughters promised, we are just going to stick our feet in, in response to my parental chiding of the water being too cold, and I don’t want you to get sick. Ten minutes later, they had hiked their leggings up to shorts, and were happily salt water drenched from head to toe.
The response of my daughters at the ocean has always been to start dancing. Wild, primal dancing; throwing limbs here and there, yelling and whooping and singing songs into the abyss of waves. They’ve been this way since they were babies, and this is something preteen-dom hasn’t touched.
I wonder at times like these: how do we live lives impressed with anything other than such raw beauty? I think of my week; glued behind the blue glaring screen of a computer. Essential to pay my bills, yes. What I was made for, no.
Traveling far away teaches us compassion; how other people love and live and breathe just like us. We are vastly different, and one of the same. Standing next to a wild ocean teaches my children to tune into their soul; to listen to her, to recognize the intuition coming in waves. The ocean is a teacher.
The sun sinks behind the shore, and pastel pink and purple highlights begin to streak across deep brown sand dunes. The kids are shivering; there’s sand in their boots and they’ve burnt every last calorie in their bodies dancing in the waves. It’s time to go.
So, I pack up my weary, chilled kids who are on the brink of a meltdown, and we head back to Lisbon to start another week of work and school. Next weekend we will search for bodies of water, streaks of pastels across open skies and greenery again.
x. Mandy
Note: All photos are copyright of Mandy Hanson Reid. Do not use without permission. Several of the photos featured are limited edition prints available for purchase upon request. Inquire at mandy@mandyreid.com . Shop Mandy in Lisbon t-shirts here. Thank you for your support.
