Spain Dad, a baby blog

I set down my knife and fork and turned around in my chair to watch Alleke and the handful of other kids who had come with their parents to dine at this restaurant, which amounted to a few checkerboard tables in the corner of an empty square at the end of one of the tiny streets that ran back and forth up the side of the mountain to the Acropolis, where the Parthenon sat perched like a crown over the city.

The kids were infinitely more excited about the empty square in which they could run around freely and the cat that they had found sleeping under one of the tables. I watched for a while as they huddled around the table and giggled as the cat batted his paws at a piece of straw one of the little girls had found.

Eventually we returned to the conversation April and I were having with my parents about how they had noticed that a lot of tourists were taking pictures of Alleke, sometimes even when we weren’t aware of it. They had seen this a number of times since they were usually walking behind us.

“Do you want strangers taking pictures of your daughter?” my mom asked.

I looked at April and shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said.

When Alleke was younger, I didn’t mind when people took pictures of her. I liked it, actually, because it meant people thought she was cute, and so did I. Alleke was growing up fast, however, and lately she had become more self conscious. She was shy when she met new people. She would come running over and hide behind my leg or beg me to pick her up so she could hide her face in my chest.

She was old enough to know that it’s not normal for strangers to take pictures of her.

“How do you think Alleke feels about strangers taking pictures of her?” my mom asked.

I glanced over my shoulder to see where Alleke was. I couldn’t find her at first until I noticed an over-weight woman in a sun hat at the far end of the square lifting Alleke onto a stone bench. I watched as the women took out her camera, asked Alleke to smile, and took her picture.

“Alleke, Alleke” April called, “Kelly, go get her.”

I bolted out of my chair, and by the time I reached Alleke I had already frightened the woman so badly she was hurrying down the street and around the corner, holding onto her sun hat with one hand and dragging her husband behind her with the other.

Still enraged, I grabbed Alleke by the arm and marched off towards to our table. Alleke broke free and stopped. Just before she turned her back to me and crossed her arms, I saw the tears streaming down her face.

“Why did daddy do that?” Alleke asked, sniffling.

I just stood there for a while, not sure what to say. I had over-reacted, there was no question about that, and instead of protecting Alleke from an unwanted situation, I had put her in one, making her feel like she had done something wrong and embarrassing her.

I sighed. “I thought you didn’t want that woman to take your picture,” I said.

For more, take a look at our photos from Greece…