The meaning of swallows and saudade

I noticed them on my first visit to Portugal, both blending in and standing out in homes, restaurants and shops. Ceramic swallows. 

I was curious about them and wanted to know the meaning behind them and the “why.” My Heart Sister and brother-in-law explained and, while I understood the explanation, I understood without emotion. It’s taken me three visits to understand the feelings that go along with the words. Why the Portuguese hold swallows close to their hearts and adorn their homes with beautiful ceramic ones.

I asked my friend, Google, to provide me with an explanation to write here. It summarized the symbolic meaning of the ceramic birds as follows:

*Home and Family: swallows return to the same home with the same partner yearly, representing stability and loyalty of family and home. 

*Love and Fidelity: their lifelong commitment to a single partner is a powerful symbol of love, loyalty and fidelity.

*Spring and Renewal: their return from warmer climates after winter is a sign of renewal, joy and prosperity."

These definitions I understand. The words are straightforward and uncomplicated. It’s the final definition, an undefinable emotion, that has taken me three visits to feel.

Saudade.

Saudade is a deep, emotional feeling of longing, nostalgia and bittersweet melancholic longing for something or someone absent. The definition is clear but how do you capture, in words, what it’s like to long for a person or place? Fado singers sing songs hundreds of years old about sailors set to sea who long to be back in their homeland, nestled not only in the love of family and friends but in the arms of food, culture and comfort of familiarity.

Books and poems are written expressing longing. But sometimes words, no matter how poignant and beautiful, fall flat. Sometimes you simply need to bow your head, open your heart and immerse yourself in feelings you cannot explain.

If saudade is the longing for someone or something absent, then I’ve felt it in different ways. I've felt it — and continue to feel it at times — for My Favourite Husband. Different than grief, longing for him encompasses not just the man and our dynamic but the routine, the familiarity. It’s not a constant ache, though — not by any means. I’m comfortable in my life now, in the possibilities of the future. It’s not longing of what will never be but the nostalgia of what was.

It’s the longing of simpler times and days when the world has complications that make it harder to understand. Of people from those days -— my dad and grandparents — times when rules and order were clearer. 

Saudade is also the longing for my second home in Portugal; for my Heart Sister and brother-in-law; or their three dogs, their sprawling acreage, their historic stone house. It’s the feeling I have as I come through the gate, the exhale, the sense of belonging.

It’s home. 

When I’m back home in Canada, it’s the melancholy I have for not being able to share, at whim, all the things I feel I need to say immediately to her, the giggles we get, the silly things we share.

I have all of this in Canada as well: beautiful Heart Sisters, family, a welcoming home. But I belong in two places and I long for each of them in different ways.

My Heart Sister and I were recently in Belem and wandered into a shop. Among the many different things they carry are bracelets — thin string with cutout painted cork swallows as the only adornment. She bought one for herself and gifted one to me. I gulped hard at the gift because it’s everything that I feel and now understand. It’s family. It’s renewal. It’s saudade.

It’s a reminder of my second home when I can’t be there. 

It’s love.