It was fathers' day today in Spain. I felt terrible when I realised I'd
done nothing for it. My husband hadn't forgotten. He'd got out of bed first
when he'd heard Sol wake up and she had rewarded his enthusiasm by crying
extra loudly for MAAAMI MAAAMI.
Maybe I should have got Sol to make a card with some glitter or pasta glued onto it. Thing is I'd been looking ahead at other dates. My Mum's birthday on 21st March,
for instance. She'd had a flight booked to come over and I'd been so excited
because I haven't seen her since November. Cancelled, of course.
Then after her birthday, we had been planning a special party for my husband's 40th at the beginning of April. Cancelled, too.
All these important birthdays, coupled with a pandemic and not being
able to leave the flat... well, I hadn't been in the right frame of mind to remember fathers' day.
Even once I realised, I didn't do anything about it. Getting some work done is critical at the moment and I was struggling. My current assignment is writing place
guides about places I can't visit. I need information about restaurants, shops, sight-seeing...
I want to get into my car and drive over to these places and soak up the
atmosphere. Instead I hunt
for information online until my head hurts or track down friends of friends who
live there.
Mid morning I emerged from my office feeling frustrated with my lack of
progress. I found my husband on the living room floor beside a new homemade toy. He had transformed a cardboard box into a series of
animals with cut out mouths. My daughter was feeding them with food he'd drawn
on pieces of paper. There were grapes, oranges and a banana. "They're all
vegetarian," my husband informed me, before turning to our little
daughter, "give the Mem-Mem a grape, go on!" (A Mem-mem is a frog. We
have no idea why. )
I hope my hug transmitted to him this: I THINK YOU'RE AN INCREDIBLE FATHER TO OUR DAUGHTER AND YOU TOTALLY DESERVE A CARD WITH PASTA GLUED ONTO IT - and next year, providing there's no pandemic, we will do a better job of celebrating it.
And how can I not mention my own Dad in this post? My wonderful, eccentric, creative, deep-thinking, ever-surprising father, who I don't talk to half as
much as I should.
He's in London and has been self-isolating alongside my Mum for over a week.
He hasn't stopped for a second. In the last picture mum sent us he was painting the
kitchen ceiling. "If he falls off
the ladder, you'll have to treat him," my brother told my mum, "no
hospitals!"
My Dad's celebrating a very big birthday in August and there's going to
be a family reunion in a village in Catalunya. I hope so, anyway. I like to
think of us all together around a long wooden table looking back at this time. "That was
crazy, wasn't it?" we'll say, "but we managed it."
We'll share stories of what we felt during this lockdown, and what
we did, and how we
made the best of it. And the toast to my Dad on his birthday
will grow into a toast for all the other things we came to value. We'll savour
it; the freedom, the conversation, the love, the fresh air. We'll not take any of it for
granted.
Thanks for reading. You can find me on my Facebook Author Page or on Instagram.
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