Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 84: When It Flowers

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 84: When It Flowers · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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my playful wife it flowered he said so i can
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give tara hers now not can i so i can as though
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the flowering itself had only ever been the condition
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that had to be met first the tedious precondition
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before the real event which was the giving It
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flowered on a Thursday, in the last cold week
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of the year, months after Kabir had pressed the
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seeds into the soil, and long after every one
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of us had privately, quietly, given up on it.
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Papa, Papa, call me. Look. I came the way I always
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come because I made it the whole business of
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my life a long time ago to come when that boy
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calls, and I found him out on the balcony in
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his school uniform with his bag still on his
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back, standing over the two clay pots on the
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sill, and I saw that it had happened at last.
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Both marigolds had bloomed. Overnight, in the
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cold, on no schedule but their own, and certainly
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not on mine. The tight green buds that all of
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us had stopped watching had opened into flowers,
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gaudy, oversized, and orange so bright it looked
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faintly rude against the gray deli morning, the
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most ordinary flower in the whole country, and,
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on that sill, on that day, the single most astonishing
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thing I had ever seen. Kabir was not saying anything
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at all now. He was only looking at them, and
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then looking at me. And then looking back at
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them, checking in the way that he checks, that
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this was real and that I had seen it too, and
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that our seeing it together was what made it
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true. I had answered that particular call a thousand
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times by now. Pop a look over a leaf, a beetle,
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a millimeter of nothing, and answered it fully
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every time on principle because I decided long
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ago that a boy who calls you to look should never
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once find you too busy. But I had never before
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been called to look at anything remotely like
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this. All those thousand small dutiful lookings,
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it turned out, had been rehearsals for this single
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one. The morning the looking finally had something
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enormous to land on, and I understood, crouched
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there beside him in the cold, that the whole
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long discipline of coming when he called had
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been quietly building toward a day I could not
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have predicted and would not have missed for
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anything on this earth. You have to understand
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how long we had waited, because the waiting is
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the whole point of it. He had planted these in
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another season, back when the very idea of wanting
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a future had been so new and so frightening to
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him that his asking for a packet of seeds was
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an event I had nearly wept at in the middle of
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a vegetable market. That was months ago. Since
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then the seeds had come up. One green thread.
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at dawn, that had undone all three of us on the
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balcony, and grown, and put out their leaves,
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and thickened, and then simply, maddeningly,
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stopped. They had held there at the very edge
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of flowering for weeks, for more than a month,
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green and healthy and utterly refusing to bloom.
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Kabir had checked them every single morning.
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He had moved them around for the light and fretted
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over them on the days when nothing changed and
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asked me, more than once in a small worried voice,
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whether they were broken, whether he had done
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something wrong, whether they were ever going
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to flower at all. And I had told him the truest
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thing I knew, which was also the hardest thing
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for either of us to sit still inside, that you
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cannot make a flower open by wanting it to, that
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it keeps its own time and not yours. That all
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you can do is exactly what he was already doing,
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the water, the light, the patience, and then
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wait, exposed and helpless, on a thing that is
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entirely out of your hands. I had been talking,
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of course, about a marigold. I am always, it
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turns out, also talking about the boy. It had
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been, if I am honest, the single hardest thing
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this whole volume asked of me. Harder than the
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assessments, harder than the fear. Harder even
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than the night of the grief. Not the doing, the
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waiting. I am a man who fixes things, who intervenes,
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who cannot leave a problem alone, and everything
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in me had wanted, through all those flowerless
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weeks, to do something, to feed it or force it
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or somehow make it hurry, exactly as everything
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in me had wanted. For two whole years. To fast
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forward the boy to some settled, safe conclusion
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I could finally stop worrying about. And the
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whole lesson, the only lesson, was that you cannot.
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You do the water and the light and then you take
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your interfering hands off. And you wait. And
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the waiting is not the passive part. The waiting
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is the work, the hardest act of work there is.
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And then he did the thing that stopped my breath,
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which was that he remembered his promise. Because
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there were two pots, and there had always been
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two pots, for a reason he had announced months
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earlier and never once wavered from. One to keep,
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and one to give to Tara. He had told me that
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on the very morning the seed first came up, the
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future tense whole, and unafraid in his mouth
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for what I think was the first time in his life,
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When it flowers, I'm going to give the other
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one to Tara, and I had filed it away, God forgive
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me, as the kind of thing a child says in a moment
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and forgets by lunch. He had not forgotten. He
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had grown that second plant for months, tended
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it exactly as carefully as his own, watered a
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flower he had intended, from the first day, to
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give away, and now that it had finally, finally
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bloomed, The very first fully formed thought
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in his head, before school, before breakfast,
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before anything, was that today was the day he
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got to keep his word. It flowered, he said. So,
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I can give Tara hers now. Not can I. So I can.
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As though the flowering itself had only ever
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been the condition that had to be met first,
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the tedious precondition before the real event,
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which was the giving. I want to be clear about
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how large this was. because from the outside
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it is only a small child keeping a small promise.
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But this was a boy who, when he first came to
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us, could not let himself want a single thing
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out loud, because wanting was dangerous and having
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was worse, since anything you were seen to value
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could always be taken away to teach you a lesson.
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For that boy to want something, to grow it, to
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wait months on it, and then this is the part
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that undoes me still, to have wanted it the entire
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time, not for himself, but in order to give it
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away, was not a small promise kept. It was a
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complete reversal of everything his first years
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had taught him about how the world works and
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what a person can safely allow himself to love.
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He had been made. by us and by the table and
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by time, into a child who makes promises about
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the future and keeps them. There is no larger
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thing I have ever had a hand in building. Tara
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came in the afternoon. Her mother dropped her,
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the way she does now, into the ordinary weekend
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traffic of our home. I will not pretend that
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what followed was a graceful ceremony, because
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it was nothing of the kind. He is eight, and
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the giving of enormous things at eight is done
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at speed and sideways, and with a tremendous
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show of it being no particular event. He more
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or less shoved the pot into her hands in the
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doorway before she had even got her shoes off.
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Here, this is yours, I grew it, and went red
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to the ears and stared hard at the floor, and
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then immediately began explaining the watering
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schedule to her at great and unnecessary volume.
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to cover over the sheer enormity of what he had
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just done, which was to hand another living person
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a living thing that he had kept alive for months
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for precisely this purpose. Tara, who is a serious
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child, took the pot in both her hands and looked
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at it properly. The way you look at a thing you
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understand is not really only a plant, and she
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said thank you in the small, solemn voice of
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a child who knows she has been given something
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real, and she asked what its name was. Kabir
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said it didn't have a name. It was a marigold.
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Tara said she was going to give it one anyway.
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Kabir said fine. And that was the whole of it.
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Two children and a pot of loud orange flowers
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in a doorway on a winter afternoon. I had to
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go and stand in the kitchen for a little while.
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I did not want either of them to see me, which
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is its own small lesson I have had to learn late.
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There is a way of witnessing your child's important
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moments that quietly steals them, that turns
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his event into your event, that makes him perform
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his own milestone for the audience of your feeling.
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I did not want to do that to him. This giving
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was his, entirely his. The first wholly generous
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act of a life that had begun with nothing to
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be generous from, and it did not need me weeping
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in the doorway and making it about the long hard
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road the three of us had traveled to arrive at
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it. So I took the road and my part in it and
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my wet eyes. off into the kitchen where they
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belonged and i left the two children their doorway
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and their pot of orange flowers uncomplicated
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by the enormous private weight of what it meant
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to me because i understood watching my son give
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away a flower that he had grown Exactly what
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it was I had been watching all this long chapter
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of our lives without ever quite having the picture
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for it, and the picture was the marigold, and
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the marigold was Kabir. We had planted him. No,
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that is not right. We had not planted him. He
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had come to us already a seed that a dozen careless
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hands had failed even to get into the ground.
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We had potted him then. We had given him a container,
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Saloni's word, from the very beginning, a warm
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and holding shape with his own initial pressed
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by her thumb into the base of it. We had kept
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him watered, and in the light. We had sat with
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him through the dark seasons when nothing at
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all seemed to be happening, when what came up
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out of him was grief instead of growth, and I
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was privately certain we had failed him. We had
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not been able to hurry a single day of any of
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it. And now, at the very end of the long tending,
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on no schedule but his own, the boy had flowered,
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and a flower I finally saw, standing at my own
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kitchen counter with my back to the room, is
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not a plant's reward to itself. A flower is the
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thing a plant makes when it is at last safe enough
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and strong enough to turn its whole self outward
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and offer something to somebody else. Kabir flowering
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did not look in the end like kabir being happy
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or kabir being healed or any of the inward and
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invisible things i had spent two years anxiously
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watching for it looked like a boy shoving a pot
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of marigolds at a girl in a doorway the proof
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that the cultivation had taken was never going
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to be that he grew it was that he grew enough
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at last to give this is not i have come to think
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only true of children or only of the wounded
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It may be the truest test there is of whether
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anyone at all has been made whole. The frightened
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horde, the starving cannot share. A person still
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fighting for his own survival has nothing left
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over to hand to anyone else and ought not to
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be asked to. You know that a person has finally
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been filled, all the way up to safe. Not when
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he seems content, which can be performed, and
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not even when he stops being afraid, but when
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he begins, unprompted, to overflow, to give,
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to feed, to tend some living thing outside himself.
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Generosity is the flower of safety. It grows
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only on a plant whose own roots have gone, at
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last, deep and unquestioned into the ground.
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Kabir had bloomed because Kabir was finally that
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secure. I stood at the counter and let the whole
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of the volume move slowly through me. Celony's
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hands, which had made the pot, and which had
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made, before the pot and around all of us, the
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entire home that the pot was only a small clay
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model of, the metro map still tacked to his wall,
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the fixed and faithful lines that had held him
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steady enough, long enough, for the unfixed living
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things in him to dare to grow. The birth mother
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in her photograph, whose loss he carries still
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and always will, in the very same chest that
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had, that afternoon, been so extravagantly generous.
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The three lost mothers threaded through this
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whole story, his and Saloni's, and hers before
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that, all of them somehow still here, still carried,
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at the long table, in the recipes on the sill.
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My own old father. who had learned to look up
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too late for me, and exactly in time for his
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grandson. The six notebooks, five of them full,
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and the sixth one filling. And the room, the
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new room, the empty room I had stood in at the
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start of all of this not knowing whether the
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two of us dared, the room that was now so entirely
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full of a boy and his friends and his flowers
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and his gaudy, loud, ordinary aliveness that
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i could no longer even remember what the silence
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in it had once sounded like it had all been the
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one thing the whole time it had all been the
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growing of this flower i thought standing there
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of the man who had walked into that empty room
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at the start of all this and how frightened he
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had been and how certain that he was not equal
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to it he had believed that man that he was being
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asked to perform a rescue One great decisive
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act of salvage, he did not have it in him to
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pull off. He had been wrong about the very nature
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of the task from the beginning. Nobody had ever
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been asking him for a rescue. He had been asked
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only to show up. every ordinary day, with the
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water and the light, and to keep showing up through
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the long stretches when it looked as though nothing
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at all was working, and to trust a slow process
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he could not control and could not hurry and
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could only humbly attend. He had thought the
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job was going to be heroism. The job was patience.
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It is almost always, in the end, patience. I
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wrote it that night in the sixth notebook, the
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last entry of the third volume of my marriage,
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one marigold gone across the colony to Tara's
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windowsill, and one still burning quietly on
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our own. The boy asleep, the woman who had made
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the container asleep beside the space that I
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would shortly come and fill. That we did not,
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in the end, save Kabir. We grew him, which is
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a slower and a humbler and a far better thing
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than saving. Saving is something you do to a
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person once in a single dramatic act, and it
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makes the saver feel large. Growing is something
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you do with a person over years, and it keeps
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its own time, and it cannot be hurried by love
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or forced by fear, and it asks of you nothing
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grand at all. Only the boring, daily, unglamorous
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patience of the water and the light, and the
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willingness to keep sitting beside the thing
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through all the dark stretches when nothing whatever
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shows above the soil. We had done that. For two
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years, we had done almost nothing else but that.
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And the flower, when at last it came. came the
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way that every true flowering comes late and
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on its own schedule and gaudy and entirely unearnable
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and turned outward from the very first instant
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towards someone else. I had set out, at the beginning
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of this book, only to fill an empty room. I had
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not understood that you do not fill a room by
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putting a child inside it. You fill a room by
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giving the child so much safety for so long that
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he begins on some perfectly ordinary Thursday
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to give things away. You cannot hurry a flowering.
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It keeps its own time and not yours, and no amount
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of love or fear or anxious watching will coax
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the bud open a single day before it is ready.
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So do the only things you are ever actually given
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to do. Make the container as well as your hands
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can make it. Keep it in the light. Water it faithfully
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on all the days when nothing shows. And sit with
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it unhurried, through the dark stretches that
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every growing thing has to pass through in its
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turn. And understand that you are not waiting,
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in the end, for the one you tend simply to grow
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for himself. You are waiting for the further
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and later and truer sign that the growing took,
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which is the day he turns his whole safe self
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outward and gives something away. A flower is
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not the thing a plant keeps for itself. It is
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the thing a plant gives. Grow the ones in your
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care all the way to that, and then step back
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into the kitchen, out of sight, and let them
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do the giving. That is the whole of it. That
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was always, from the first seed, the whole of
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it. I kept the pen. Down the hall the boy slept
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in his boneless, guardless sprawl, and on the
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sill his one kept marigold burned quietly orange
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in the dark, and somewhere across the colony
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a second one sat on a girl's windowsill under
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a name he had let her give it, and I sat a while
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longer in the lamplight with the sixth notebook
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still open, and did not close it, because the
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book was not full, and the story was not finished.
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and the boy who kept his own schedule was still,
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even in his sleep, even now, quietly, growing.
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Then I turned off the lamp and went to lie down
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beside Celonie in the room that was no longer
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empty, that had not been empty for two years,
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and that would never, for as long as any of the
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three of us lived, be empty again. End of Volume
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3 My Playful Wife Thank you for reading. Volume
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one was the story of a man waking up. Volume
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two was the harder, quieter story of staying
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awake. And volume three was the story of what
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an awake marriage finally did with its open eyes,
19:33
which was to widen, to take an empty room and
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a passed over boy and, slowly, without rushing
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a single day of it, grow all three of them into
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a family. We fostered and feared. and were assessed,
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and waited. The grief came, and was survived.
19:51
The boy grew, and in the growing healed the man
19:55
who was raising him, and broke an old inherited
19:58
chain, and was folded in by a whole long table
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of people. And then, on an ordinary Thursday,
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he flowered, and gave a flower away. Volume 4
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turns toward the one thing that even a made family
20:13
cannot hold still against, time. The boy will
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get older. He will ride further and further out
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on his own line and become someone we will have
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to learn all over again and begin the long, slow
20:26
work of becoming himself and not only ours. And
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the awake marriage that taught itself, at last,
20:33
to make a family will face its next apprenticeship,
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which is the hardest one yet, learning to let
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that family change. The lamp is still lit. Come
20:43
with us. Mia. To be continued in episode 85,
20:59
84 of My Playful Wife. If this story is staying
21:04
with you, the next episode is already waiting.
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Subscribe so you don't miss it. The complete
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chapters are on my Patreon. Links are in the
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