Yesterday, Pádraig received a be-lated birthday package with a great gift: a Happiness Kit. I had never come across a Happiness Kit before. I wonder what the customs people thought when they read the description on the envelope!? It probably made them smile! What a nice idea! Luckily, the ‘piece of string’ is 50m long – so nothing will fall apart here!

Today, I couldn’t believe my luck: Germany’s Father’s Day was just over when Ireland’s Father’s Day was coming up. Two Father’s Days in such close succession – any father’s dream! So today – Irish Father’s Day -, I didn’t get up. I stayed in bed, in anticipation of my lovely family bringing in my nicely buttered toast, hot dark coffee, and a soft boiled egg. I must have dozed off. When lunch time was coming up, I decided it was time to get up, just face up to the real world (and not to feel too bitter about it), to recognise that I had missed breakfast, and to make sure that I was not going to miss lunch as well.

Someone in our family – and, unfortunately, I don’t remember who it was – once asked why we couldn’t be just like any other family, just a normal family, like everybody else? I was asking that myself this morning: why could we not just be like everybody else? Surely, in any family all over Ireland today fathers were treated to breakfast in bed, right? Why do we have to be different???

Pádraig sat out in his wheelchair today. Mightn’t sound like anything special, but it is. Very special. Because it’s Sunday and it takes the initiative and the time of the nurse in charge of him to organise the transfer and get him out of bed – which hadn’t happened for a long time on a Sunday. (During the week and on most Saturday’s it’s still the therapists who are moving him into the wheelchair, something we hope to be able to do ourselves some day soon, just to give them a hand.) It was great and encouraging, he needs to sit up as much as possible for a dozen different reasons.

He also was on the speech valve. And here comes his present for Father’s Day: he made sounds and we believe that they were purposeful, several times! The first time when Pat was trying to teach him the ‘A’; the second time when he was on the phone to his aunt who asked him to say something; and the third time when the nurse tried to get him to say ‘A’ in German – her name starts with an ‘A’ 🙂 He also continues to successfully answer the simple yes/no questions – not always, but now over several days.

Just a reminder that TOMORROW at 8pm will be the meeting in the Conradh to get everybody together who would like to take part in the next round of the recording of Amhrán do Phádraig / Song for Pádraig.

Today’s (German) Music Tip
Loudon Wainwright (Fufus’ Father), Father and Son (1998) – not a German music tip today, simply because I could not find a song for Father’s Day in German. There are a few in English, this is one I didn’t know before. I like the lyrics, it’s a song that in many ways is very close to reality without being too ‘sweet’.
What’s hot
Father’s Day
What’s cold
Waiting for breakfast in bed ’til lunch time
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Da kannst’e lange drauf warten!