- Meghan Markle revealed her first Father's Day gift for Prince Harry in a new interview on NPR's Weekend Edition.
- The Duchess of Sussex discussed her bestselling book The Bench—and the real-life bench, a gift to Harry, that inspired it.
- "I just wanted something sentimental and a place for him to have as a bit of a home base with our son," Meghan shared.
Well, this is lovely! In a new interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition—her first since the Sussexes sat down with Oprah Winfrey—Meghan Markle revealed the first Father’s Day gift she gave Prince Harry, shortly after the arrival of their oldest child Archie Harrison in 2019. The Duchess of Sussex previously revealed that her bestselling book The Bench was inspired by a poem she wrote for Harry—but it turns out the bench itself was a gift as well.
“As most of us do, you go, what am I going to get them as a gift?" Meghan recalled. "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." So she decided on a bench, complete with a plaque on the back featuring the poem that would later inspire her book. "This is your bench/Where life will begin/For you and our son/Our baby, our kin," the poem reads. Anyone else suddenly feeling a little teary-eyed?
"I often find, and especially in this past year, I think so many of us realized how much happens in the quiet," the Duchess 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."
Meghan and Caldecott-winning illustrator Christian Robinson also spoke about the commitment to inclusivity that guided their creation of The Bench. "I think for me, inclusivity and representing as many different families as we could was at the heart of this book," Robinson said.
"Growing up, I remember so much how it felt to not see yourself represented," Meghan added. "Any child or any family hopefully can open this book and see themselves in it, whether that means glasses or freckled or a different body shape or a different ethnicity or religion."
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