We were going for a walk on a Spring afternoon that felt like an early summer, and he told me about his father. He’s such a smiling, carefree person, but as he talked, I saw the sadness in his eyes. He had a happy childhood and early teens. When he was about 17, his father abruptly decided he wanted to divorce his mother. For years he had been having an affair with his personal assistant, and apparently, …
Tag: children
I miss him terribly, my son who went away two months ago to work in Amsterdam. Hopefully, only for a year, but no one knows. These two months have felt like two centuries. When dusk falls, and I’m alone in our huge apartment, when I pass by his empty bedroom and fail to hear his key in the front door lock coming from work, I feel an immense sadness invade me. A sadness that fell over me the …
I’m reading a book by one of my favourite Spanish authors, Julia Navarro, Dime quien soy (in English Tell me who I am, although I’m not sure there is an English translation). It’s a compelling story about a woman who, in the thirties of the 20th century, abandons an upper class, comfortable life to follow a communist revolutionary, who turns out to be a Russian spy who will use her for his less than transparent purposes. She shares his …
She’s driving on an autumn sunny day, and on her Spotify playlist James Blunt’s nostalgic voice sings “You’re beautiful”. She remembers driving another car, years ago, while listening to that same song on the way to meet him. At the time they were working together on a project, there was nothing between them, or maybe only a feeling of growing trust, the beginning of a friendship, of shared ideas; somehow there was a taste of something good to come. And …
Love in the time of Coronavirus He’s leaving the city and heading for the highway to the North. He brings some of the files he’s working on with him, just in case the police make him stop and ask why he is travelling. He will say it’s for his work but it’s not. He’s travelling for love; he’ knows it’s crazy, with the quarantine and all, but he can’t help it. He has to see her, to have her …
She turns it again and again inside her head and for the thousandth time she is unable to reach a conclusion. Rather, she feels unable to decide. Her life hangs in the balance and she has no clue about what she will do next. She knows what she wants to do, what she would like to do, but then she thinks of the unsurmountable obstacles and she falters. She cannot do it. But how can she not do it, and …
Tomorrow it will be precisely twenty-one years that I received the most precious Christmas gift of all: my son Pedro, “the most beautiful baby she had ever seen” in the words of his proud Grandma, who naturally had already forgotten saying the very same words almost four years before, when my son Afonso was born, on a sunny February day that felt like an early Spring. Christmas baby Little Pedro was born on a grey December day, but he …
“Didn’t I” is the title of a recent song by Rod Stewart; a poignant song, one might even say a father’s lament about how his daughter didn’t listen to his loving advice and ended up “fighting for her life”. It tells a sad story every parent relates to, no matter what. Even if our children are well and happy today, there was always a time when we feared they would not make it for some reason, namely during their rebellious …
Just the other day I was thinking about 1979 and how it was a year of major changes in my life, when I realized it was forty years ago. I simply couldn’t believe it! A decisive year First of all, it was a year of learning. I learned about love but also about disappointment and grief. New people came into my life that were very important for quite some years: I gained a new love, who would mean …
Saturday morning and it’s still early. I wake up and rejoice in the fact that I can stay longer in bed. Then I remember the boys going out last night; I get up and silently open my bedroom door and look at the corridor to see two closed doors. I smile and walk back to bed to enjoy the weekend laziness. Open It all begins with doors wide open. Well, not exactly – when you bring them home, tiny …