Happy birthday Daphne

Yesterday was my little Daphne’s second birthday. It’s unbelievable how fast these two years gone and it is unbelievable this little girl that runs all around and tries to say words and small phrases in three languages is my little Daphne. Last night I felt tears in my eyes.

I still cannot believe how many things have changed in my life these last two years. I know, I know everybody had warned me that becoming a father brings a lot of changes but ..this is totally different from what I heard.

Everybody, just everybody told me about waking up in the middle of the night, belly aches and new teeth. Bu nobody had told me that every day will be nothing more than a constant waiting to put her in my arms. Nobody ever told me that her smile will be life for me and that every time she says ‘daddy’ I feel tears in my eyes. Nobody had told me that my life will be just …her!

Two years old and I still check every night, twice three times if she breaths ok, if she has fever and if she’s covered and worm. Is so selfish what I’m going to say but I just cannot imagine my life without her. I just cannot imagine what would happen to me without her.

I live in her little words, her small phrases and her small steps. Every time she says something new I feel having a party, even though sometimes I have no idea what she says since it is in Finnish.

Happy birthday my little baby.

The holy island (2)

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“Just stand up and clean your face, you are fine!” yes fine, my pride was squashed under the apricots and I could not even see it bleeding, so bad. What made it worst was not what she said but the way she was looking at me and even though I was still on the floor face down or better, face inside the bag with the apricots I could feel her eyes burning on my back.

The next thing to come was her voice saying “I told you so.” But I was determine to be calm and keep what was left from my dignity alive or at least in better condition than my new t-shirt that was full of apricot liquid.

“I told you about the step, didn’t I?’ what’s worst from my grandmother saying I told you so? The fat short woman with the shrieking voice saying the very same thing. I knew it. I knew from the first second I saw her that I was going to hate her. My instinct was correct.

However hard it could be I took the decision not to bother with her. So trying hard to avoid my grandmother’s look, I stood slowly up; picked the two plastic bags I was carrying all the way from Piraeus with all the vegetables and walked towards a metal bench that I was sure that it was representing the kitchen. I metal sink proved that I was right.

“You take care of your things and feel comfortable and in the meantime I’m going to bring the towels.” While saying that she moved backwards to the door and dragging her thick sleepers she moved out of the room closing the door behind her. That was the total horror but … I had promise to my self to keep calm.

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The holy island

Mid-august in Greece is very hot and humid. Fifteenth of August in the rocky island of Tinos is despise its reputation of been a holy island and the island of Maria, is like hell. Burning hot and even though sometimes the wind from the Aegean Sea is strong doesn’t help much. You just have to stand for a couple of minutes under the sun to understand. And that’s something difficult to avoid. Not many trees around just some dry bushes here and there.

The nights are different. Soft wind from the sea and the smooth smell of all the night flower that bloom in that blessed island.

“Be careful, there are steps here, you will fall!” and it was the third time that shriek voice this woman we had just met in the port was yelling at me and she was saying for the third time exactly the same thing. The last two times was when we passed the garden door and once more on the hallway going to the room my grandmother had red for three nights.

“Be careful, here is the step!” and while I was turning my face towards her really angry ready to say something not very polite the eminent step found its way in front of my feet and I found my self on the floor with a plastic bag full of fresh apricots melting under my weight and the speed of my fall. My grandmother didn’t say anything, just stood there next to that fat strange woman staring at me.

My face had turned totally red, like an Easter egg and I could feel my ears shaking and burning. I get this thing when I’m …sentimentally overwhelming even now I grew up. Of course nobody wants to admit that my ears shake, nobody wants to understand what am talking about, neither my friends nor the two wives I had, different times!

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Create a family

“When are you going to create a family?” My grandmother used these exact words very often adding in the end, “the day you will create a family I will die!” and for my grandmother the word was ‘create’, not make.

You are not making a family, you create a family, and you build up a family with a lot of work, patience and love. For my grandmother family didn’t mean two people living together and been blessed from the church, that was nothing. Family for my grandmother meant kids.

That’s what she meant and one evening sometime ago, I called her to tell her …that I was creating a family. Few months after she died.

So here I am now, two years and a few months after I lost the person I loved most in my life and two years for a few days that I got the person I love most in my life. Two years now I cannot believe that my grandmother gone and I’m sure that the telephone will ring in a minute and I will hear her voice, you see I was unlucky enough to live a few thousands miles away and not have the chance to see her in her last moments. But two years now I look in the eyes of my little daughter and I have the feeling that she’s somewhere in there happy that I created a family.

So my little Daphne, this is where I’m going to tell you everything about this grandmother you never met but will be always inside you.