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The cool breeze of the refrigerator brushed over Rafael’s bare arm and he let out a loud, lazy yawn as he rifled around for the egg carton. Theo and Rosalie sat quietly at the breakfast bar behind him, watching as he manoeuvred around the kitchen preparing their breakfast. They giggled as he yawned again, more exaggerated than the last. Theo flicked through a tattered comic book while Rafael filled a saucepan with water to boil. It was a lazy Sunday morning in the Barba household; pyjama-clad, barefoot and relaxed, the three of them were left to their own devices for the day.
Rosalie released a strangled whine when she saw her father grab the bread bag.
“What’s the matter, Mija?” Rafael looked up as he untied the plastic bag, letting it untwist in mid-air.
The toddler looked up at him, her blue eyes large and pleading and whispered, “waffles?”
His head shook slowly from side to side and he leant down across the counter to be closer to his little girl. “Sorry, Rosie. Egg and soldiers are on the menu today.”
He left a quick kiss on the tip of her retrousse nose to sweeten the news, though she didn’t appear to appreciate the act.
“No egg and told’yas.”
Theo looked up from his comic to his little sister beside him, “soldiers.”
“Told’yas,” she repeated, her tongue tripping over the sounds as she tried to mimic her brother.
“Soldiers.”
“Told’yas!”
The water was bubbling and boiling away behind him as he watched his children bicker. They were talking around in circles, Theo eager to help his sister by stressing the S while Rosie made a slobbering mess on every attempt.
Tired of her brother’s coaching the toddler finally screeched, “Waffles!”
Theo, placid and unfazed by his sister’s behaviour, shrugged nonchalantly and returned his attention to the comic book as she repeated her demand.
Ever the attorney, Rafael attempted to cut a deal with his fierce little three year old. He leaned over the counter again, his face as close as possible to his sweet little cherub. He was hardly the intimidating figure he usually cut in the courtroom; his Harvard t-shirt was faded and frayed while his hair was fluffy and wayward from his night’s sleep.
“Okay Miss, I’ll make you waffles. But…” he paused for effect, holding her stare. “…No maple syrup, there have to be three different types of fruit, of my choosing, and you have to eat every last piece.”
He counted out his conditions on his long fingers as he spoke.
Theo watched as they negotiated, his fingers toying with the curled edges of his book. His eyes darted back and forth waiting for Rosalie’s answer.
“No, Papá,” she insisted. “Maple!”
“That wasn’t part of the deal, Mija. Either you have the waffles with fruit or you can have eggs with toast.”
Silence.
A fiery glare adorned Rosalie’s face and she folded her arms tightly in front of her chest, the cute smiley characters covering her ‘Babar the Elephant’ onesie at odds with her current expression. Rafael flinched then raised an eyebrow. He wondered how often she used this defiant little pose on her mother and how often it worked. The toddler’s lips pursed tight together and her eyes remained stormy as they stayed trained on him. Rafael hated to admit that she probably inherited this less-than-appealing trait from his side of the family.
“Nutella,” Theo broke the icy silence and Rafael turned to his son, ever grateful for his little arbiter.
Calmly he clarified his negotiations, “Nutella instead of syrup and two fruits.”
“Three,” Rafael stated, “with a small spread of Nutella.”
Rosalie clapped her tiny hands together, “Deal!”
Their attention returned to her as she bounced in her seat, elated by the turn of events. Rafael turned the stove off and returned the ingredients to the fridge, silently impressed by his son’s mediations and secretly glad for the outcome; he loved the hazelnut spread and delighted in any opportunity to include it in his diet.
The little girl clapped again, “’tella and no told’yas!”
The trio sat quietly at the counter as they hummed and chewed their breakfast. Rosalie’s fingers and cheeks were dabbed with Nutella and she proudly picked the last blueberry from her plate and popped it into her mouth.
“See Papá,” she grinned. “I ate all the banas, b’ueberries and ‘t’awberries.”
“It’s bananas, Rosie, not banas. Ba-na-nas,” Theo tried.
“She’ll get it eventually, Mijo,” Rafael smiled, placing his large hand atop Theo’s messy curls.
He collected their plates and helped the two down from the high bar stools before instructing them to wash their sticky hands and faces while he cleaned up the kitchen. Sated from his impromptu breakfast he ran a hand over his belly and checked his phone; no messages, just his three most cherished people beaming back at him from the lockscreen.
When Theo and Rosalie didn’t return he assumed they’d found something to occupy their attention, Rosalie had stuffed toys and games spilling out of her ears and she always managed to wrangle her big brother into playing some ridiculous imaginary game with her.
Leaving it another few minutes while he stacked the dishwasher he decided it was definitely too quiet for his liking. Padding down the hall to their bedrooms there was no giggling or squealing, no raised voices or arguing. Their rooms were empty and he spun back around into the hall toward the living room. He found his heart to be beating a little faster at the unexplained silence in his home.
“Rosie be careful,” he finally heard Theo whisper from the master bedroom where he found them sitting on the floor, their backs leaning against the bed as they rifled through a blue shoebox. Quietly they whispered to each other, surrounded by handfuls of colourful post-it notes. Standing in the doorway Rafael’s face felt warm once he realised what they had discovered.
“Where’d you find those?” he queried, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the dresser mirror. His ears were red, his one true tell of humiliation.
Theo’s head shot up to meet his father, “Rosie was looking for Mama’s dress-up box and this fell out of the cupboard.”
“What are t’ese?” she looked up, her brow furrowed in confusion. “What t’ey say?”
Rafael loved the way her voice raised an octave when she asked a question.
“Papá writes them to Mama,” Theo explained to her.
Rafael moved closer to them, his eyes frantically scanning the notes. “You know about these?”
The boy shrugged, “I see her find them. She says you’re a…” he tried to recall his mother’s words. “She said you’re a romantic at heart.”
That sounded about right, he thought. He prided himself on his measured stoicism though he knew that didn’t leave much room for his more intimate and heartfelt considerations. Between the violent relationship with his father and the hard exterior required for his work asserting his affection didn’t come easy to Rafael. As gifted as he was with his words he still struggled to say exactly how he felt and he’d lost count of the missed opportunities where he should have said the words aloud.
It was always easier for him to demonstrate his unceasing affection with a tender kiss on her temple or a squeeze of her cool hand. He made sure to never sleep a single night without some sort of contact, a hand on her hip, his face burrowed against her neck or a leg tangled between hers. Though none of that dulled his fear that she didn’t truly know the depths of his love for her.
Rafael smirked at the mass of notes; he assumed she threw them out after she read them. There would be too many pieces of paper to count given he’d been writing the messages since their engagement. The overstretched rubber band at his feet explained how she was able to keep them all in the box though if she was planning to keep them he may have to find her a better storage system.
Rosalie was carefully sorting the notes by colour, creating four separate piles of yellow, pink, blue and green papered messages. Observing the vast assortment of post-it notes still spilled around his children he carefully bent down on creaking knees to crawl closer.
“I had no idea she kept them,” he murmured as he settled beside Rosalie and plucked the yellow note from her chubby fingers. His messy scrawl ran across the paper and he carefully read the declaration.
Your sense of humour is dark and absurd and I’ll never get enough of it.
Some notes were written in pen, others thick black sharpie. He spotted at least two written in crayon, borrowed from their children’s collection. The glittery blue Crayola spelled out a very simple message.
Your spirit is resilient and strong.
Rafael usually wrote the notes in the mornings before work, while the household was quiet and his family snuggled safe in bed. He left them hidden for her to find – on her mirror, in her purse, the box of granola in the pantry, once he stuck one to her forehead for when she first woke up.
Theo leaned over the box to fish another pile of notes out, his keen interest not going unnoticed by his father. “Is that a good thing, being a romantic?”
Deciding this was as good a time as any to educate his little ones he pulled Rosalie onto his lap and rested his chin on her head while he coaxed his son closer to him. “Everyone likes a little romance,” he smirked.
“Read t’em,” Rosalie ordered, blindly shoving a handful of notes in her father’s face.
Plucking them from her hand Rafael frowned, “Don’t be bossy.”
“Read t’em, pees?”
Theo leaned over to correct her again, his little mouth ready to demonstrate the right pronunciation when Rafael stopped him with a slight shake of his head.
The first note in the pile, green and curled from age, was written in clear block letters. Rafael remembered writing it while she fed a very tiny week-old Theo in the nursery. He’d hid it in the diaper bag she kept in the stroller.
I didn’t think it possible to love you any more but then I saw you with our son.
Skipping to the next note he recalled a particularly rough case he’d tried years ago, one he didn’t think he could win. Late nights poring over witness statements and photos and endless cups of coffee kept him away from their bed but he still took the time to write her a little message.
When everything feels like too much you give me the strength to keep going.
The paper was stuck to another note and he smiled at how appropriate the two were together.
You inspire me to be better.
Picking up a pink note Rosalie held it up to her father. “What t’at one say?” she demanded, annoyance clear in her voice that she needed help to understand the notes she had serendipitously discovered.
Theo peered over to interject, “something about a cat?”
Her little face lit up and Rafael watched her expression as her mind immediately leapt to the possibility of a family pet. He silently cringed as he grabbed the note from her hands and tucked it into his pocket, cursing himself for not writing it in Spanish in the first place. This was probably not his finest parenting moment, allowing his young fragile-minded children to read the dirty message he’d written for their mother after some particularly enjoyable early morning lovemaking. Despite himself he couldn’t help the grin as he remembered her expression when fished the note from her underwear drawer later that same morning.
Quickly he drew another note from one of Rosalie’s neat colour-coded stacks, opting for the first blue note he could grab. He couldn’t recall when he wrote it but that didn’t make it any less true.
My heart skips a beat whenever I see you smile.
“I like t’at one,” Rosalie whispered into his chest. “Pretty smile.”
“Where’s the notes Mama writes to you?” Theo frowned, looking around for another box hidden somewhere in the walk in closet.
Rafael scratched his cheek, stubble sharp beneath his fingertips, “She doesn’t write me notes. She doesn’t need to because she’s not emotionally stunted like me.” His self-deprecation was lost on his young audience who stared at him blankly, expectantly.
Rosalie was still busy sorting through the small pieces of paper, oblivious to the discussion around her. Though she couldn’t read a single letter Rafael subtly checked the notes she so carefully inspected, fully aware there were still a small number that were not as innocuous as the rest.
“Because Mama tells me these things all the time,” Rafael clarified.
Theo squinted, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Why don’t you do that and save the paper?”
He felt laughter bubble up and erupt from his chest and leaned over to kiss his perfectly pragmatic son’s head. “Very good question, Mijo.”
He breathed slowly through his nose, watching as Rosalie’s curls swayed from the wave of air. Hugging her a little tighter he thought of the countless cases he’d tried during his career in gut-wrenching detail, he recalled his own childhood and the broken collarbone his mother suffered at the hand of his father.
“Mijo, I’m going to tell you something very important and I hope you’ll remember it and live by it. I hope you’ll recognize it with your Mama and I and replicate it.”
Theo scooted closer to his father, placing a small hand on his arm. “Is this like the ‘Yes/No’ lesson you told me last week?”
“What was that one?” Rafael queried, eager to know whether his son had remembered.
Theo traced the veins on his arm as he recited, “’yes’ means yes and ‘no’ means no.”
Rafael’s chest puffed up in pride.
“Theo, I just want you and your sister to remember that your mother is a strong, intelligent, incredible woman who made the two of you. I respect and love her and consider her my equal. Do you know what that means, equal?”
Theo bit his lip and slowly shook his head.
“It means we’re the same and we’re entitled to the same things. It means if I had a box of Lego I'd divide the pieces up evenly with her because she should always have the same things I do. One day you'll see the world doesn't think that way but it should and you should."
Theo nodded slowly and Rafael could tell he was genuinely trying to understand the lesson his father was teaching him. Rosalie followed her brother’s lead and tried to nod under the weight of Rafael’s head though her attention was definitely elsewhere. He conceded she was a little too young for this talk but it was never too early to start.
“One day you’ll find a person just as incredible as your mother and it’ll be up to you to treat them with love and respect but you should also accept nothing less in return.”
Be better than me, he wanted to say. Don’t just write it down to be found. Say it aloud every chance you get.
Rosalie’s excited shriek broke their moment and she wiggled around in his lap, “Mama!”
Rafael looked up to find his wife beaming at him, her blue eyes bright and glistening. She joined them on the floor and kissed her babies before cupping his cheek with her soft hand. He knew his ears were red again, he could tell by the way she grinned as her fingers trailed up to the very tips of his pointy ears.
“Papá loves you,” Rosalie giggled.
Her eyes never left his when she answered, “I know.”
Their gaze was broken when she reached forward to rifle through the box of notes, her movements specific as she searched for a particular post-it. Rafael observed as she bit back a smile when she found the note she wanted, her long fingers carefully traced over the words. She stuck the sticky strip of the note to his forehead, the delightful giggles of their children filling the room.
You are perfect.
With a snort Rafael reached over to pluck a note at random, he didn’t mind which one as they were all befitting of his mate. It was yellow and written with a sharpie; he could see that from beyond the note covering one of his eyes. Gently he placed it on her forehead to mirror his.
I love how you introduce yourself to dogs before you pet them.
He read it after he’d stuck it down and immediately laughed. Well, it wasn’t untrue but it lacked the depth he required for the moment. He picked another one and plastered it to her cheek, happier with his selection the second time round.
You have shown me what unconditional love feels like.