A dear friend of mine says he needs time to assess our friendship, which he calls 'slippery'. In the meantime, he doesn't want to communicate with me. I wonder if he's aware of the fact that our friendship is our communication, mainly computer-mediated --take away email, and little is left, other than the good will and the good remembrances. What he must be assessing, I wonder as well. Our friendship is not very demanding, in the ordinary way: we don't see each other very much, we live very independent lives, and we seldom ask favours each other... It can't be that he thinks that by putting an end to our friendship he'll be liberated from many obligations he doesn't want to bear anymore. I might think that his main concern is about confidence. First: Am I worthwhile the trouble of speaking to me about him? And second: Am I trustworthy enough not to take advantage of whatever he tells me? Well, that could be. But I'm more inclined to locate the problem elsewhere: that he's fed up with me, actually, and has no interest whatsoever in keeping on knowing about me.

His last email was so astoundingly childlike and humourless that I think there's an underlying cause for his dislike about me he's not fully aware of, so that he needs a putative motive to refer his discontent to. What it is the real problem, I don't know. Why the hate element in the love-hate pair every friendship is inevitably made of has taken now the lead, I don't know. I feel that from some time now he's been a little uncomfortable with my being around (virtually). Well, it happens sometimes: you simply get tired of people you formerly liked. Perhaps that's what he needs time to discover: whether he's happier without my being around, virtually and eventually physically.

And that's very unfortunate for me. I miss him, already. Things which would go all the way from my mind to his and would come back enriched to me, must remain unsaid now. I lose, but does he gain?

This morning I've taken Mika to a very nice square here in Palma. I love the place because of its placidness and its rather lonely character, notwithstanding the fact that it's located right at downtown. It's an ample but cosy space, with a remarkable double line of low trees forming a way which reminds me of an agora's stoa. At one side of the square there is a large piece of empty ground. Such spaces have always caught my attention in such a way that I actively search for them when walking the streets of a city --they stand out as a wild challenge to the usually rational vulgarity of the buildings surrounding them. Closing the square by the south there is the back side of Palma's oldest grammar school --very much looking like the one I went to in my hometown.

Sat in a bench while reading the last pages of Somerset Maugham's The Narrow Corner, with Mika placidly slept in his buggy by my side, wheels blocked, I've thought about how simple my life has become since my son was born —mornings I take care of him, afternoons I go to work. Anything else is unimportant. Two months ago I wouldn't have allowed myself to idle around like this. Today I rejoice while doing it. The pleasure of reading a good book in a beautiful place with your son by your side, the sun shining, and no further assignments.

My cousin Eva María, a very recent mother too, told me some days ago that she wanted her son Román to learn how to make his own life easy, as that was the only way for him to get to understand life in full complexity.

He finally came out, alas, on April the fourth in very rough weather. Alike unpleasant days followed that very one, making it frustrating not being able to take the baby out to the street for a walk.

I don't know any popular children songs like the ones my mother used to sing to me when I was a child. That's a problem now, because I don't know what to sing to my son when trying to appease him or when playing around with him.

But then one day we woke up and the sun was there! The song came to my lips almost instinctively, and with Mika in my arms while dancing around I began to sing it aloud to him...

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it's all right

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right

To my delight and surprise, Mika was responsive to the song --he seemed to like it. Did that mean my problem was solved? I tried some other beautiful Beatles songs, and again the response was good --they're so melodic, have such a clear sound, are so apparently easy and unpretentious, that I think they're completely suitable for babies. I played him on the computer Blackbird, Hey Jude, Cry Baby Cry (this one I didn't mean him to take it verbatim), Golden Slumbers, I Wanna Hold Your Hand...

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right

Now the song's become a classic also, and above all, between us. And while he'll grow up unaware of all this, I'll grow older happier with the memory of his little head over my shoulder whenever he happens to fall asleep to the voice of old Harrison celebrating, well, life in itself.

Waiting for my son to be born. He should have been born by now, but there are no signs of delivery yet. I'm eager, dull, low-spirited and pessimistic. I know I shouldn't worry, but I do. My mother taught me to worry --incessantly, dramatically, rather absurdly. Not that she wanted to or that I resent her... But I was with her as a child all the long evenings when my father hadn't come back yet and we were there just waiting for him to arrive. He earned his living as a sales representative, and as such he spent most of his time in the road, in a time (the mid-seventies) when no mobile phones were known. My mother was very much distressed when half past nine PM had struck and he wasn't back home yet. But she didn't suffer either silently or expressionlessly, and I was there by her side, soaking up all her restlessness positively silent and expressionless. I grew up constantly worrying about my father's delays, worrying as a child worries --with terror, in solitude. Anxiety is now a key component of my personality. I only hope being intelligent enough not to pass it on my son, when it comes out, if it comes out.