I was up at six o’clock on sunday morning, lighting the kitchen range, warming the twins’ clothes in the oven, making porridge and preparing packed lunches.
One child was spending the day orienteering; the other watercolour painting en plein air.
I felt like the father in Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays facing the ‘blueblack cold’, who ‘made banked fires blaze’ and ‘polished shoes’ and only called the family ‘when the rooms were warm’. He was never thanked and his son spoke indifferently to him. Much as I spoke to my father when he rose early, lit the kitchen range, warmed my clothes in the oven, made me porridge and prepared my packed lunch. when I fetched the twins at 8.30am, they were sleepy but appreciative. They didn’t understand, of course, how long I had spent readying everything for them or my emotions as I did so.
When I think of the last lines of Hayden’s poem, they always bring a tear to my eye: ‘what did I know, what did I know/ of love’s austere and lonely offices?’
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