The first sound comes in at 6:43. “Papa! Papa! Is it the day yet?” one shouts. “Papa! Papa! Is it the day yet?” echoes the other. You open your eyes. The woman laying next to you doesn’t look too pleased to be awake either. You grab your glasses. You glance at the clock. You yell “No.” You hide your head under the covers. But it’s useless. You’re up. And the grumblings from across the hall let you know you’re not the only one.

Like a lot of babies, our first son came out in tears. The world is cruel. Life is hard. But something interesting happened when the nurse handed Little Liam to me — he stopped crying. It was instantaneous. Just like that. My wife smiled. I remember that. It calmed me down. I was terrified of being a parent. I wasn’t so terrified after that. It happened again. Only this time, it took a little longer.

I didn’t really understand what was happening the first time I was taken to see the man in the hospital. I was young. But I knew it wasn’t good. I remember seeing him lying in bed. Him reaching for my hand through all them damn tubes. Me flinching. I remember the man looking me dead in the eye and asking me why I couldn’t talk to him. I regret not saying anything back.

If some Costa Rican wearing a “Pura Vida” t-shirt hadn’t stolen most of my money, we never would have met. If some Italian hadn’t made a massive mistake and told her he needed a break, we never would have met. If I hadn’t taken what little money I had left to buy a one-way ticket to Barcelona, we never would have met. If she hadn’t gone to Dublin and worked odd jobs to learn English, we never would have met.

It was the fourth week of quarantine when my wife began to cry. One of her dad’s favorite things to do is to go hiking every Tuesday with his buddies. For the ten years I’ve known him, the only thing that’s ever stopped him from going is either being hospitalized or lockdown. Bad weather doesn’t stop Lluis. He loves the mountains. It’s his place. The moment he steps onto a trail he blends into it.

“Can we eat a peach?” My son was close to turning four. We were walking back from the Tuesday morning market in our town. It was summertime. I still had to work. He didn’t. “Can’t it wait till we get home? I’ve got things to do.” “I’m hungry. It’s just a peach!” And with that, the two of us grabbed a seat on an empty park bench across the street from our apartment.

“I wanna go to the park! I wanna go to the park! Why can’t we go to the park?” Life as we knew it ended on March 15th of last year. At least it did here in Spain. It was the first day of 40 that my two kids didn’t see a blade of grass. It’s hard to believe my youngest has lived close to half his life inside this mess.

“What else has to happen in Italy for Spain to close everything down? Have they not learned anything from us?” This past Friday, March 13th, on my way home from running one last errand in Barcelona, I received the message above from a friend in Rome. My stomach dropped. Due to the spike in coronavirus cases in Spain, schools were already closed and my children were home with my wife. By the time I reached our apartment, an hour later, I was greeted with the news that effective Monday, the four of us, along with the rest of the population, would be spending at least the next two weeks in lock-down.

Story originally featured by Forge editors on Medium.com on September 24, 2019 The phone rang. This was it! I thought. At last, all the years of struggle I’d endured were about to be worth it. Growing up with a severe speech impediment and social anxiety, I had a very limited view of what I was capable of achieving. But as I grew into adulthood, I began to push myself far beyond my comfort zone.