Here Comes the Rain Again

On these dark rain filled Lisboa nights at the tail end of winter I often end up walking to the supermercado. Every time it gets dark, I need to get one thing, or another, from the store. Most often it is something I will need for breakfast the next day say a liter of skim milk.

As I negotiate the wet and slippery polished stone sidewalks I find myself repeating a behavior I haven’t actually needed to do for about forty years. My right hand thumb taps against my forefinger, a finger that together with my middle finger are curved slightly inwards toward my palm. I am unconsciously knocking the ash off a phantom cigarette.

I will never smoke a cigarette again. But it is not too difficult to remember the feeling of inhaling the warm smoke of a Marlboro red on a damp cold night. Perhaps it is because there are so many folks in the over 40 age bracket that still smoke in this city.

As I walk down the hill to the clean and bright grocery store, I smell cigarette smoke from the old men with their collars up. They are sitting outside the small Portuguese outdoor cafe. I will smell cigarette smoke wafting out of the windows of the purportedly smoke-free Airbnbs I pass. I will smell cigarette smoke from shivering scrawny men from Africa and the Middle East standing in the shadows of an empty parking lot.

As the mist moves back to actual rain I zip up my waterproof shell and pull up my hood. Those actions trigger another memory. I remember cupping my hands to shield my cigarette from the rain when I was standing on a street corner in my little hometown three thousand miles from here.

When you live long enough, you will realize how alone you are. It may come when you are walking alone on a rainy street remembering a behavior you gave up long ago. Realization may be brought to you when you are driving in traffic and the radio plays a song you haven’t heard in twenty years. Awareness may come to you as you wait for sleep havingsaid your prayers, your appeals, to whatever may reside in the imperceptible ether, requests and pleas you have made with doubt lingering.

But we soldier on, we travel on facing darkness. There is only one way out of the human experience so we have no other choice. It is probably best if we try to travel the road from womb to tomb savoring the moments when the sun breaks through the clouds.