Bachelor's day. A wondering Wandering Writer thinks about this day.

Today is 29 February. This year is a leap year. 366 days instead of 365.

Looking back, the one before this day was one of the last days I was pregnant with my second daughter.

It was 2020 and we had moved into a house with a garden in Johnstone.

This is the first 29 February alone with my girls.

I have been alone since the following year, 2021. The year I managed to publish the book in English 'A gathering of tales from a Cosmopolitan family', but also the year the girls' father and I split up.

Did I break up or did he break up? Probably the latter, because, like a good Cancerian, he did something I could no longer rationally accept. Because he did it the Alessia woman, who is also Alessia mother, and as a mother I would never want my daughters to live in a relationship with another person as he and I were living.

I wish for my daughters a relationship full of laughter, reflection, moments of intimacy snatched from ordinary life.

I long for a family life, where I say: "each of us is both the problem and the solution." And by family I include friends. The people who twenty years ago did not invite me to parties at their house when their parents were away, but called me on the phone in the middle of the night because they needed a proxy to access the morning-after pill and avoid pregnancy were not friends. People who didn't get in touch if I didn't write, not even on my birthday or to thank me that I had remembered theirs, weren't friends either. In these two months of this 2024 I am becoming aware of that. And it has hurt, of course, also because at 36 to have friendships is more complicated, the house, the girls' schooling, finances, studying, reading fill everything: the head, the heart, the bookshelf. And maybe, deep down, I prefer to have a few people in my life, but sincere and true. I published the book in Italian at the end of 2023 and it is my intention, in this month of March, an important month because it is the month of my second child Chimamanda Lavinia, to acquire a routine in which to massively include this blog and the YouTube channel. (1) Cosmopolitan Family - YouTube This is the link, if you would like to listen to my videos where I talk about the books I read, the fairy tales I translate, I will be immensely grateful. I am studying through websites and books, two other languages, Gaelic and the Igbo language, if you would like to learn with me some kind words and animal names I will be happy! In these two months, I have become aware that not all book authors are happy that people buy their books: Thokozile Martucci Schiavi, for example, blocked me on all social media when I complained about the non-arrival of her book, which I legitimately bought from the Le Mezzelane publishing house website, accepting to pay the shipping costs more than the book itself. I urge you, readers of the Wandering Writer, to buy it because it is another book about the colours of the rainbow and therefore the beauty of diversity, like the Cosmopolitan Family. I greet you on this 29th February 2024 with the promise that from tomorrow you will find blog articles and videos on youtube much more often, to really promote reading and the study of different languages and cultures! As 2 March 2024 will be my second daughter's birthday, I leave you the photo of the last birthday cake, so you can learn a way of saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY in the IGBO language!