Summer is upon us once again and as we approach the middle of July, the calendar nudges me closer to the date when I can mark a year without my dad. It will soon be an entire turn around the sun, when the world has kept spinning but with my father no longer in it. Such a strange thought, no? That someone or something that has existed since the beginning of time is, in a broken heartbeat, suddenly gone. Sometimes, it’s convenient for us to ignore the fact that as sure as the sun rises, the people who surround us now will one day no longer be. Eventually, the last time will actually be the last time.
Armed with this truest truth, how grateful I feel for every bright and beautiful moment that this summer season lays at our feet. The chance to thank someone wholeheartedly now rather than in their eulogy. To savour a moment with someone held dear, our heads thrown back toward the blue sky as we roar with laughter on a street corner. To feel the afternoon breeze at the end of a long day as I ride my bike downhill, totally and blissfully alone.
These stiflingly warm months present us with a potent and rich mix of thoughts and feelings and interactions - some of them bitter, most of them sweet; all of them a reminder that life – which is a mix of joy and grief, wonder and sadness – will surprise and delight us. And sometimes blindside us too.
The things we say to our children will one day become their inner voice; I can hear my father’s words in my ears right now. He’s telling me to “be tough,” to “make some waves,” to “have fun.” To keep eating life with the biggest spoon.
So as soon as all the excitement of the MST Summer Camp ends, my children and I will be bundling ourselves onto a plane to fly halfway across the globe so that – for the first time in seven years – me and my sister can squish our faces together and hug each other so tight we can hardly breathe.
Her children and mine, along with their dozens of cousins, will laugh themselves senseless at family lunches that will last for hours, gorging on jamón and fuet and helado de turrón. We’ll race once more through el Parque del Retiro, retracing the paths where their feet, much smaller and many years earlier, once stepped. We’ll return to Toledo and wonder how many hundreds of people, going back how many millenia, once stood where we stand, watching the afternoon light set this ancient walled city ablaze with colour.
And as we run hand-in-hand, cheering, into the Balearic sea, we will remind ourselves what it is to be alive.
Happy travels, stay safe, and keep well,
Gel Vicencio
Assistant Head of School
Comments