In your arms

March 28, 2028

Thank you for your comments! Really thank you!Exceptionally not on Friday here is the chapter that will clear up your confusion !!See you soon

I am deeply surprised, for the umpteenth time, to discover how children manage to make everything easier. It may be that they have less experience, less superstructure, it may be that they keep a pure soul even when they might be pissed off at life. My experience with children continues to be limited, my reference sample is one, Lucia, but I think she is the most important reference sample in the world.

Lucia arrived in the least fair way possible, but I am discovering, day by day, that the concept of "fair" is as relative as it gets in the world, and maybe it is time for me to adapt.

L < will you take me to see the frogs?> Lucia implores me, with her clasped little hands and soft eyes. I nod and get up from the bench on which I had found solitary refuge.

The zoo experience, which was supposed to be something intimate and familiar, has turned into an outing with friends, and the tolerance level, especially today, is at an all-time low. Another one of the things Lucia is teaching me, though, is that my needs, today, carry a different weight. I am still a little hesitant when I reach out my hand toward her, who instead without a second thought shakes it with her little hand.

Flashback March 28, 2027 - Easter, LA

I run around the house, barefoot, trying not to lose patience with the inevitable delay we are accumulating. Despite all the strategies I have found over the years to try to optimize the time as much as possible and always avoid finding myself with a layer of annoyance as an appetizer to every meeting, appointment, errand set with Carina, today nothing seems to help. Not even the threat of leaving her behind.

If I look around then my hair straightens even more: through a series of shrewd investments, fits and starts and negotiations earlier this year Carina and I moved house. In our plan, which for now still involves only two people, she and I, we intended to find the house of a lifetime, the permanent one. It was also a long negotiation related to the choice of the place, finally falling on a terraced house, single-story, with a piece of garden, in a quiet neighborhood, standing between my work and hers. We did not go overboard with square footage and space, while retaining a guest room. To Carina's delight, the bathrooms became two, with tub and shower, and we also found a living room with a fireplace. I was sorry to give up some space in the living room, which is smaller than what we had before, but in return I won both a small vegetable garden in the backyard (currently to be made completely from scratch) and a basement tavern, which we are still haggling over: Carina would like to make it a huge dining room for parties; I would like to make it our hobby room. There is also room in the garden for a barbecue and the kitchen is immense, much to Carina's delight.

We would have liked to host all our friends here today to celebrate Easter together, but there are still too many chores to be done and a few boxes still lying around, not to mention the backyard still upside down, so we all folded up by going to Ben and Miranda's house, who live just two blocks away.

M < Carina, please...!> I exclaim, exasperated.

C < amore, you weren't complaining so much when we were in the shower and you were on your knees in front of me, though!> she says quietly, making me almost choke on the water I was drinking.

M < Carina!!> I exclaim and hear her laughing from the other side of the house.

C < are you being prudish now, Maya?> finally dressed she arrives in the kitchen.