Portrait of a Family

We have been here for ten minutes and words have been spilling out of our mouths at some pace, a-tumbling they go. One, our daughter and I have come to visit a family of friends. The German man and his Spanish wife (she is actually half Spanish and the other half is German) have a daughter two weeks older than our own excited child (a bag of toys was introduced to the room not long ago). Our friend’s daughter, Freya, just switched her face from uncertainty to an enormous smile, lighting up our own faces. That is the magic of children. She was eating in her highchair until only moments earlier and is now sitting on the floor with Kid O as they are facing each other and playing with toys, analysing one another, becoming reacquainted after a while without meeting. Freya is showing Kid O her toys and there are sweet snacks on a plate now being passed between the children. The mother, Consuela, seems more Spanish than anything, and her and her husband, Michael, flank their daughter as they all sit on the floor, the adults watching the children, One sitting with Kid O in the foreground in front of me and in between me and the lovely, friendly young family. Their flat has a wide-open patio door to their balcony and the church bells that loom high over their flat – mere footsteps away – chime frequently and splendidly, pouring into the room from just around the corner in the town square as Sunday afternoon’s unique charm washes over us all, relaxing in the rooftop flat they live in.

After a break for some delicious apple pie that Consuela baked this morning - and explaining that my writing does indeed incorporate such details, coming across much like a literary paella – I get back to work with their portrait.

Freya’s toys are all over the floor, as the children play, explore, and quietly move objects and the adults’ things, anything they can get their hands on, around from one place to another. The children keep nibbling on small pieces of a banana cake that Consuela also baked earlier today. She is obviously a mother with too much spare time on her hands (nudge, wink!). Consuela grabs Freya, who has a huge piece of banana cake wedged unmoving in her mouth. It is approximately two inches wide. She then carries on about her business playing with her friend as if the food were not uncomfortably jammed there. Freya has very light brown verging on blonde hair (in German it is called ‘mittel blond’ and a fringe just over a centimetre above her eyebrows and hair cropped neatly (I am told cut by her mother).

Freya then starts to feed a piece of banana cake to Kid O – which is rather comical - before she opens her birthday presents we had bought her, as she turned one two weeks ago and we had not been around for the birthday party.

Freya is wearing a grey dress with white unicorns and some strange other creatures on it along with hearts and rainbows. It has no sleeves and underneath it she has a pink long-sleeved t-shirt. Her outfit is finished off with black leggings and bare feet (our daughter having also shed her socks, it really must be a thing). Consuela puts her hand into the red gift bag we brought with us and she takes out the olive green and white dress we got Freya as a birthday gift. The other present of jigsaw puzzle cubes had been opened and unleashed on the floor a little while ago, already forgotten by now, old news. They had also taken the card out of the gift bag and read it.

Michael is now lying on the floor on his elbows, with his head and upper body held up, observing the scene of the room. There is much activity – the kids and the adults constantly shifting positions and then suddenly, I am alone, everyone having departed for one reason or another. The family of three returns first. Michael is wearing a long-sleeved navy-blue t-shirt with squiggly horizontal white lines, a grey t-shirt underneath, just making an appearance at the neck, and blue jeans and light blue socks. Michael has a wedding ring on his right hand, as Germans tend to do, though he explains its presence there is that it would be too loose and therefore slip off if it were on his left hand. Consuela’s engagement and wedding rings are both on her left hand. She is wearing a blue dress with white flowers thereupon. She is also clad in black leggings and black socks with brown-framed glasses of the more intellectual variety. Her long, edging-towards-light-brown hair is tied back neatly in a ponytail. A few small collections of strands of hair fall around the sides of her face, creating a wondrously imperfect image, there to be tucked behind her ears, which she does every so often. Consuela is slim, has quintessentially Spanish-coloured skin, and her husband Michael is a smart and intelligent, pensive-looking creeping-towards-dark-blonde German man with a matching short and tidy trimmed beard. He has blue eyes, as does his daughter, while Consuela’s are green.

Freya has a small green tunnel that she crawled through earlier – starting on the balcony and ending in the lounge. We have all made a beautiful mess on the floor. There is no dining table. It was sold in the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic this year as there would be no visitors for a good while. There is a small wooden table near the patio and an abandoned balcony – as we all stayed inside in the shade. It is quite hot out and remaining inside appeared the sensible option. Looking outside, the pretty two shades of yellow awning, the table and chairs and plants in pots, it looks like if people were sitting there it’d be a scene to paint for Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir or the other classic Impressionist greats. Freya, like our own daughter, hates being told off as well as having the word ‘no’ directed towards her. She is wandering around the flat non-stop, searching for everything and nothing, doing what one-year-olds do. Michael is sitting on my right in a lovely yellow, brown, beige, and black armchair. The couple are tired and have been for a year as their child does not sleep so well at night and certainly keeps them on their toes. Despite their tiredness, they are infinitely welcoming, talkative, and amiable.

They have a recent sign of birthday celebrations – a balloon with HAPPY BIRTHDAY on it – and there are two shelves attached to the wall above Michael filled with books that look both rather old and new. There is also a lovely vinyl record player with a small selection of vinyl records – passed on by parents and grandparents – that are hidden from view in the cupboard below the player and are screaming to get out and be given a spin.

Freya gets to her feet and walks over to One to give her a hug - suddenly becoming affectionate with one of us for the first time – and then wanders off clutching a wooden spoon. The atmosphere calms and it becomes clear the playing and writing are reaching an end.

Afterwards, I ponder how the two girls were facing one another, touching, playing with, occasionally grabbing the hair or face of the other and generally enjoying each other’s company. Freya had kept looking at us, smiling regularly at us unlike on previous occasions, almost glowing with excitement, proving that we become increasingly familiar and trustworthy to children the more we see and interact with them. Freya is growing in every way imaginable, all the time, just as we see in our own child, and it is wonderful to compare notes with two delightful fellow parents.

It was an incredibly rich, vibrant, and hectic scene. The children - each a little hurricane blowing through the land of the room – were having a brilliant time together, and watching their interaction was a pleasure as the church bells chimed and that distinct Sunday buzz quietly filled the background.

13/09/2020