Rainbows, Parsley and Ruy

After the drama of 9th September 2001, where all our attentions were focused on what was happening in the United States, I think I forgot that I was due to have a baby. We spent days pined to the television watching the awful images over and again as the disbelief turned to something else - not understanding but something more stark - realisation.

As I think back now, it was an otherwise very pleasant period. My mother-in-law had come to stay for a fortnight. I had denied her the opportunity when Mateo was born, preferring to be on my own to deal with a new baby as I simply wasn't sure how I was going to feel and needed to find out alone. I don't regret my decision but I knew how difficult Amelia had found it and so I was very keen to make up for what must have seemed to her very strange and stubborn behaviour. She arrived on the 6th September and was due to go on the 19th - the intention being to have a week before the baby was due and a week after the birth. However, the days came and the days - and the Twin Towers - went and no baby arrived. Mateo and his abuela spent hours wandering around near our home, picking blackberries and enjoying the Indian summer weather. We visited Bretton Hall Park in Yorkshire, which we love and so did Amelia and I remember feeling very well indeed.

Amelia was due to leave on Wednesday morning and on the Sunday - still no signs of baby - we went to my parents in Knutsford for a meal. It was a lovely and very special time - which I know both our mothers will remember for the non-stop conversation they had, (though my mum doesn't speak Spanish and Amelia doesn't speak English).


On our way home on the motorway (M62) over the Yorkshire Pennines we drove past the Red Rose of Lancashire and the White Rose of Yorkshire and almost literally on the border, we left bright sunshine behind us and faced a wall of dark clouds and showers ahead of us. Travelling from west to east also meant the sun was behind us and at where the two 'weathers' merged, there was the brightest, biggest and most impressive rainbow I have ever seen and we seemed to go right through it! The effect was stunning and I remember thinking it was a 'sign' - a sign that my baby was coming... and we should call him/her Rainbow. (I hadn't been drinking but I was feeling very calmed and possibly a bit too relaxed.)

That evening, Amelia was clearly beginning to worry that she might have to go home before she saw another Rainbow or have to cancel her flight, so she made me a 'special' omelette. It contained quite a lot of parsley which she knew, from growing up in a small Spanish village, helped to induce birth. Well, it might have been coincidence but just two hours later, things began to happen and by 7.30am the next day, we didn't have a Rainbow but having Ruy was like finding the pot of gold at the rainbow's end.

Happy 10th  Birthday, Ruy. Here he is this morning, with his necklace of sweets, which Cesar makes for them all every birthday - and a giant Chupa Chups which I found yesterday and couldn't resist buying for him!