Love Is... (3.5) (16 page)
is…
By Etta Alvez-English
Some people might think it’s strange to grow up with two Dads. I never did.
When I was a child my friends would ask me if I was sad to not have a Mummy, but the truth was, I didn’t know what that was like so how could I be sad about it?
I was born in London almost exactly twenty one years ago to my Papa, Rafael and my Dad, Matthew. A wonderful lady called Suranne carried both me and my younger brothers for my parents and she and her wife Dee are still incredibly close friends of our family.
We moved to Cornwall when I was five. My parents bought a big house overlooking the sea. Dad proposed to Papa in Thailand and they’ve been sentimental about the beach ever since. Papa opened up a second café when we moved and a third a few years later, Dad’s business takes him and us all over the world anyway, so he didn’t really have to make many changes.
I grew up in a fun, happy home and I had cousins coming out of my ears!
Holly came first. She’s my Aunt Pippa and Uncle Ben’s daughter and was closely followed by Beth and Bobby, Aunt Rosie and Uncle Jackson’s twins. Dillon and Daniel are Aunt Lou’s kids and were born a week after Phoebe, Aunt Rosie’s third child. I was next. I was followed two years later by Cooper from Aunt Pippa, then my brother Joseph, and lastly, my baby brother, Jack.
As you can see, Christmases are expensive in our family!
We all live spread out across the country but our parents made sure that they got us all together as often as possible. I’m so happy that they did. We were born to be the best of friends and have lived up to it.
Summers were usually spent at our house since we lived at the seaside. When my aunts and uncles weren’t able to get time away from work then my cousins would still come and stay with us. We’d build dens and play on the beach. My Dad and Papa built an amazing playroom with our own little cinema in the loft conversion and we would camp out up there, watching films and eating junk food until we felt sick.
Dad would let me go to work with him sometimes, especially when he was running outdoor boot camps. I would stand at the front and shout at the participants with Dad’s megaphone. I could get away with it when I was eight and pigtailed, they didn’t respond so well when I was sixteen!
Papa taught me how to cook. We would spend hours in the kitchen baking and inventing new recipes. Some were total disasters but we would laugh until we cried as we fed them to our family and waited for their reactions.
I didn’t really become aware of any prejudice towards my parents until I got to senior school. I was brought up to be open and accepting of all and presumed that everyone felt the same way but passing comments and downright nastiness opened my eyes to the truth of the world. People would say things to me to try and get a reaction, but honestly I felt sorry for them. How could I become angry at them when I was so happy in my life?
It helped that I knew I had the abilities to beat any of them to a pulp if needed (thanks Papa!) but I never did. I would just smile and let their words wash over me. My brothers weren’t quite as disciplined and got into a few fights at school, but they soon learned that it didn’t matter. We had a great life and nobody could take that away.
When I was fifteen, I got my first boyfriend. He was sweet and it was all fairly innocent. It didn’t last long after we argued about why his parents didn’t spend a lot of time together. I would go to his house for tea and then his parents, after hardly talking during dinner, would go to separate rooms to spend their evenings apart. This just didn’t make any sense to me.
As we approach the twenty fourth year of marriage for my wonderful parents, I am inspired. Inspired to live big, follow my dreams and fall in love.
My Dads are so in love to this day and I can honestly say that they are the best of friends. They argue at times like anyone, but it’s usually about something tiny and ridiculous and is resolved before it’s really begun.
Sometimes I sit and look at the photos of their lives together. I’ve never seen two people that adore each other so much that you can see it in every single photograph. They’re the epitome of the word soulmates.
I watch the video of my Dad proposing and I cry, the video of their wedding and the speeches that were given just show so much love, between the two of them and the rest of our family. I have grown up in a world where family means everything. Where children bring joy and love is given openly and frequently. I’m not shy about showing affection or expressing my closeness to my loved ones and I never will be.
Little girls read about and dream of getting their happy ever after, the fairy tales that we listen to at bedtime tell us to kiss frogs until one turns into a prince, but not many of us are lucky enough to find that. Some people spend their entire lives searching for ‘the one’ and never find that person that holds the key to their heart.
After years of kissing frogs, neither Rafael Alvez or Matthew English were on the lookout for their prince, but when they locked eyes across a crowded room twenty six years ago fate stepped in and they both knew…no more frogs! After all, everyone deserves a happy ever after!
When I was asked by my editor (who happens to be my uncle) to write this article about what love is, I initially felt under qualified. I have been in love, briefly but it didn’t last. I laughed to myself and thought ‘I obviously don’t know the recipe!’ Then I thought about my papa, he taught me to cook without recipes, we didn’t need one.
So I wrote down a recipe, one that I have known all my life…a dollop of romance and a pinch of attraction, a cup of respect and a bag full of friendship. A teaspoon of humour mixed in with common interests and we’re almost done. Just a couple more ingredients to achieve the desired result, a bucket load of patience and two halves of the same whole. That’s the secret, that’s my parents, that’s what love is.
"Writing is my happy place, my escape and my chance to truly express myself. When I develop a character, I commit to them, and to their life, they become real to me and I become as lost in my writing as I do when reading a good book"
Cassandra P Lewis was born on 1st June 1984 in Birmingham, England.
The youngest daughter of Pauline & Alan Lewis, the family relocated to Staffordshire in 1999 to run a pub.
Cassie always harboured a passion for creative writing but was held back by a lack of confidence, inspired by her father's terminal cancer in 2012, she decided that life was too short for regrets and set about writing her first novel, Meeting Mr Write.
Cassie lives in Derbyshire with her fiancé Aaron and their dog Busby.
www.facebook.com/meetingmrwrite
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My Now & Forever (Milly's Story)
My Mistake (Willow's Story)
Coming Spring 2014