Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Photo: Instagram/@kensingtonroyal
Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle marked Father’s Day this year by sharing some heartwarming revelations about her recent New York Times best-seller kids’ book, The Bench. In her first sit-down interview since the conversation with Oprah earlier this year, she joined NPR Weekend Edition on June 20 to talk about the gift she gave husband Prince Harry on his first Father’s Day in 2019, weeks after the couple’s first child Archie Mountbatten-Windsor was born.
During the interview, recorded shortly before she welcomed their second daughter Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor on June 4, Markle shared that a poem she wrote for him that day was accompanied by another big present she got for him; a bench.
“As most of us do, you go, what am I going to get them as a gift? And I thought I just wanted something sentimental and a place for him to have as a bit of a home base with our son,” the 39-year-old Duchess said in the interview.
On the back of Harry’s bench is a plaque on which Meghan’s poem, which inspired The Bench, appears. “This is your bench/ Where life will begin/ For you and our son/ Our baby, our kin,” it reads.
A page from The Bench. Illustration by Christian Robinson, courtesy of Random House.
Meghan also expressed The Bench as a “love story.”
“I often find, and especially in this past year, I think so many of us realized how much happens in the quiet,” she shared. “It was definitely moments like that, watching them from out of the window and watching [my husband] just, you know, rock him to sleep or carry him or, you know … those lived experiences, from my observation, are the things that I infused in this poem,” she said.
“It’s really just about growing with someone and having this deep connection and this trust so that, be at good times or bad, you know that you had this person,” Markle added. She also went on to reveal how The Bench includes references to “Easter eggs” in her book, including Princess Diana‘s favorite flower. “There’s a lot if people start digging,” she stated.
“I think you can find sweet little moments that we’ve tucked in there, from my favorite flower, even my husband’s mum’s favorite flower, forget-me-nots, we wanted to make sure they were included in there,” the Duchess of Sussex shared.
This isn’t the first time Markle has used the forget-me-not flower to pay tribute to her late mother-in-law. The couple were pictured planting the flower with school children at the Preschool Learning Center in Los Angeles on August 31 last year, the anniversary of Princess Diana’s death.
