The Father and the Ordinary Tuesday

Wake-up feel: 5.

A Rehbock barked in the night. Or I dreamed one.
Twice — then silence — then a stamp.
I lay in the tent and listened. Nothing more came.

Wendish ground. Old bark in an old forest.

No Bodden. No reed beds. No fisherman.
Tent. No water pump. No electricity.
First days without morning coffee.

Close to my children. In the middle of the wound.

Root day. Moon still in Virgo.
The body knows before the mind does.

Monday night: Mattheo brought the food — bread, bacon, eggs.
He built the fire without matches.

How is a father a father when he is not at the kitchen table
on the ordinary Tuesday?

Tuesday morning: the local coffee shop, father and son.
The bridge. The old water wheel — still turning.
The lock there — rusted, cobwebs hanging.

Later: Julika, Mattheo, Papa. Picnic in the garden — all three.
Mattheo — sixteen — went home. His girlfriend, school in the morning.

Then the beach.

At the beach Julika said: papa, you go there
and I go there to meet my friend.

She went. I was somewhere else on the same beach.
Once in a while she came — for water, for an apple,
for her needs or just to know her papa is there.

When her friend went home, she came back.
We lay on the beach together.

At the crossing: two directions.
Julika and her mother, home. I, base camp.
I felt gratefulness in Julika's heart and something sad in her eyes.

Seven places were on the table. Now three.
What I am naming is what I need from wherever I land.
Not only mine. The needs of those I love belong in this too.

Day 62 — Phase 9 — Hearing — Pericardium — Amethyst — Psalm 46 + Gospel of John
Gut Nisdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Baltic Coast
© 2025–2026 Michel Garand | A Pilgrim's Fitness Plan | CC BY-SA 4.0
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