Dispatch No. 1

There is a village in central Portugal, two and a half hours from where we've been property hunting on-and-off for the last two years, where my husband grew up. We spent several days there this trip at his family home, eating his mother's food, watching our two-year-old daughter Vera discover that the world is significantly larger than our fourth floor apartment in Washington, D.C.

I want to start there, in that village. Not in the quintas I toured further south, not in the property negotiations that are currently making it very difficult for me to sleep, but in a barbershop on a cobblestone street that has been cutting hair in the same spot for as long as anyone can remember.

My husband went to this barber as a little boy. And during this trip, he took Vera.

Vera, who at two years old has fierce opinions about which cup her water comes in, sat completely still and let this man give her a little trim. She emerged and gave her new hair a sweep with her hand, the way you do when you know you look good. I could have cried.

My father-in-law installed a small playground not far from the barbershop during his tenure as mayor, a position he recently stepped down from after a long career in local politics. He and I cannot speak to each other directly. Our only shared language is cheese and our love for Vera.

But I have been thinking about what he and I have in common. Both of us in the middle of something ending and something beginning. Earlier this year I sold my flower shop, She Loves Me, seven years, nationally recognized, deeply mine, and have been figuring out what comes next ever since. He spent decades as the person his community called when something needed doing, and now the calls are fewer and the days are longer and he fills them by giving Vera a cookie any time she asks for one. And I do mean any time.

Neither of us is sure what we're building next yet. Both of us are staying busy, in the way that people do when they're not quite ready to sit with the question.

The property search, for context: two years, twenty-seven properties, three offers. The details of those offers are stories I'll tell eventually, when I have enough perspective to tell them right. For now I'll say only that each one taught me something, and that the losses got easier to absorb, not because they stopped hurting, but because I started to understand that I was looking for something specific enough that it was always going to take time to find.

We are currently in negotiations on an estate in southern Portugal. Grounds, outbuildings, the kind of place that has clearly been many things and feels ready to become something again. It sits slightly above budget. I have run every version of the financial model there is to run. My husband has suggested, gently and more than once, that the answer is not another spreadsheet.

He is right. I know he is right. And yet I opened the spreadsheet again this morning.

I don't know yet what this hospitality project will become, in the end. A place to stay. A place to make things. Something worth gathering around. I'm playing a long game, longer than I sometimes have patience for, and I've learned to trust that the patience is part of it.

What I do know is that I have the desire to create something spectacular for my family and, eventually, our guests. Some of us know exactly where we belong — the barber in his shop, Vera within arm’s reach of a cookie. And some of us are still working that out. I’d argue that’s where the real fun is.

Properties visited in two years: 27

Offers made: 3, stories for another time

Properties in active negotiation: 1, the one, I think

Times I reopened the same spreadsheet: Many, my husband is right. I know.