1st fortnight of Juny 2011 Barcelona. Montanyans 1 (Bº La Ribera)
A new dad’s first steps are always clumsy and imprecise. Luckily, babies, though have no patience, do not get frustrated with their caregivers (in that, they are clever from day one) and that’s the reason why they provide such broad possibilities: laughter mixed with weeping, calm and quiet moments mixed with anxious and hurried ones. Moreover, if your windows are wide open to the street, as the morning goes by the sounds of people passing by, of children playing in the park, of birds, of noisy shops (like the saw cutting at the butcher’s shop beneath), of people whistling, of the wind chimes on a neighbor’s balcony, of bells, of sirens, or the neighbor’s dog barking amongst others, configure a continuous flow of sounds that merges the public and the private, the articulated with the simple, the environmental sounds with those from specific activities, the meaningful with the mere anecdotal... and all this is spiced up with some music and other T.V. incursions. In the end, it all conforms a totum revolutum that involves and accompanies us in our daily routines, whether we pay attention to it or not: whether we take advantage of it or not.
English version: Noemí Aznar

A pleasant awakening? (1/6)



10:00 a.m. Envolved by the discrete ringing of the cathedral’s bells, the chirps of birds fluttering by my window, and the strikes –scattered but decided, of the broom that the cleaning lady manouvers around the building’s inside patio’s baseboards (today is cleaning day) I wake up a morning of any day in early June. I’m rested but with a long day ahead. It's true that I'm on a shared maternity leave and, thus, I don't have to go to work, but it's also true that I won’t be short of things to do even wihtout moving away from home.

(02:00) Once I decide to get up, I find Alea in a deeper asleep than usual... but I prefer to wake her up because in short it will be her feeding time and I should start preparing everything. Street sounds (better yet, Montanyan’s alley sounds) to which the window faces, become present until they invite one to join in, even if passively, in conversations or events that are taking place... and there are all quite varied.

(03:00) We leave the bedroom and I place the baby girl on her blanket by the living room, all stretched up on the couch so she can wake up little by little and sneeze peacefully (this is very common). The little balcony door (which faces the corner of Carders and Allada Vermell’s streets) lets the neighborhood sounds slip into the living room. At this moment the street is very quiet and the sounds of birds are prominent, alternating with Alea's babbling (and her dad's babbles too, who also joins in).

(06:30) Ah… of course she wants to eat… and daddy hasn’t got the bottle ready so, as he prepares her breakfast he will have to bear the disconsolate cry of a hungry baby. In moments like this, rushing never serves as good comforting means…

(09:00) …and kisses don’t solve anything either. Only holding her in my arms and providing a little bit of movement will do.
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