The Family Whistles We Stopped Using...

There really were family whistles... and anyone who grew up a few decades ago will probably still remember their own.

When I was a boy and played outside in Cruz Quebrada, Oeiras, my parents had a particular whistle for calling me. There was no need to shout my name or go looking for me through the streets. All it took was that sound, which I recognised immediately, even among other whistles, voices and children's games. And it wasn't just my family that had one... other children had their own whistle too, the one their parents used to call them, and we eventually knew the whistles of the families in the street almost as well as we knew the people themselves.

There was even a set time for the whistles... around eight in the evening, the calls to come home for dinner would begin to echo through the streets. One whistle here, another further down the road, and each child knew which one was theirs. There were no mobile phones, messages or shared locations... there was only the parents' whistle and the obligation, not always fulfilled at the first call, to come home.

That was life in a Lisbon that no longer exists in quite the same way, in that Cruz Quebrada in Oeiras where children played in the street, walked to school on their own, spent hours away from home and even went to the beach without their parents knowing exactly where they were every moment. There was a kind of freedom that today seems almost unimaginable... and there was also a sense of trust that was simply part of everyday life.

The most curious thing is that, so many years later, there is still one place where that old habit continues to work.

When I am with my mother in a supermarket and, somewhere between the aisles, shelves and crowds, we lose sight of each other, she sometimes makes that whistle... and I find her immediately. It is as if, for a few seconds, the supermarket, the years that have passed and all our modern forms of communication disappear, leaving only that sound I learned to recognise when I was a boy.

The family whistle gradually fell out of use as we changed the way we lived. First came telephones, then mobile phones, messages and now we can even know someone's exact location through an app... hardly anyone needs to whistle to call their children home for dinner anymore.

But perhaps we lost something along the way.

This article is not accompanied by a photograph... it is accompanied by my family whistle, recorded as an MP3. Perhaps, when you hear it, you will remember that there was one in your own home too... perhaps you can still reproduce it after all these years.

And if you can, teach it to your children.

Because one day they may find themselves in the middle of a crowd and hear that sound... and immediately recognise someone they love.

Just as we recognised our parents, when all it took was a whistle to tell us that it was eight o'clock... and that it was time to come home for dinner.

Paulo Freitas do Amaral

Professor, Historian and Author