Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 70: A Good Day

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 70: A Good Day · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. Saloni and I sat up after he
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had gone to bed, in the quiet of a day that had
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cost us nothing and given us everything, and
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she said, that was a good day, and I said I knew,
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that I had noticed it while. It was a Sunday
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some weeks into the new arrangement, and I noticed
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somewhere in the middle of the afternoon with
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a small shock that stopped me where I stood,
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that it was a good day and that nothing whatsoever
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was happening. No crisis, no storm, no carefully
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managed threshold, no metro question asked in
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the dark with a child's whole future trembling
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behind it. Just an ordinary Sunday, slow and
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unremarkable. Three people in a flat doing nothing
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in particular, and I stood in the doorway of
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the front room holding two cups of tea and understood,
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with the force of a thing arriving that you had
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stopped daring to expect, that this was it. This
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was the thing. This plane. eventless, contented
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afternoon, with the light coming in and a child
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on the floor and my wife at her cloth, was the
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entire prize that all the months of work had
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been for, and it had arrived so quietly, dressed
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so completely in the ordinary, that I had nearly
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walked straight past it without noticing it had
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come. This is the cruel joke the good days play,
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that they do not look like anything. The bad
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days announce themselves with sirens. The dramatic
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days come labeled, but the good ordinary day
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arrives in plain clothes, makes no noise, asks
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nothing, and is therefore the easiest thing in
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the world to spend without ever once realizing
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you were spending the very thing you had wanted.
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I had nearly done exactly that. I had been moving
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through the afternoon on the low hum of routine,
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refilling teacups, half thinking about nothing,
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and it was only some accident of attention, some
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snag of the discipline I had spent years building,
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that made me stop in the doorway and actually
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see what was in front of me and recognize it
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with a jolt as the thing itself arrived happening
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now. The morning had been nothing, which is to
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say it had been everything. We had eaten breakfast
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slowly, the three of us, in the unhurried way
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of a day with nowhere it had to be. Kabir had
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read the back of a cereal box and then his metro
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map, as he always does, but he had read them
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at the table with us rather than retreating to
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read them alone, and there is a whole world in
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that small migration. The difference between
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a child who takes his comfort object away to
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a corner to be safe with it, and a child who
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brings it to the table because the table has
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itself, slowly becomes safe. Saloni had made
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too much, the way she does, and Kabir had eaten
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more than he used to, which is its own quiet
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miracle, because a child who has been hungry
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and uncertain hoards and rations even when the
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food is plentiful, and the slow relaxing of that,
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The willingness to simply eat his fill without
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watching to see if it would be taken away was
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a thing I had learned to read as one of the truest
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signs that something in him was fractionally
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unclenching. I had learned to read these signs
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the way a farmer reads weather, because with
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a child like Kabir the large declarations never
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come and you must take your evidence from the
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small involuntary things instead. He would never
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announce that he felt safe. He could not have
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said it, and would not have believed it if he
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had. But his body said it, in the language body's
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use, which does not lie the way words can, in
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the unhoarded second helping, in the comfort
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object brought to the table instead of hidden,
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in the slow lengthening of the stretches during
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which he forgot to be vigilant. You learn to
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stop waiting for a child to tell you he is healing,
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and to read it instead in his appetite, his shoulders,
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the distance he is willing to sit from the door.
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The body confesses what the mouth still guards.
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We took the metro in the afternoon for no reason
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at all, which was the point. This was Saloni's
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idea, and it was a small stroke of genius because
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we did not take it to get anywhere. We took it
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purely to ride it, to go to the end of a line
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Kabir had never actually traveled and see what
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was there, simply for the pleasure of the going.
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And something happened in him on that aimless
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ride that undid me a little to watch, because
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the metro, which had been his armor, his survival
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system, the closed, reliable thing he clung to
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when he could trust nothing living, became, for
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an hour, simply fun. He pressed his face to the
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glass in the tunnels. He raced me up an escalator
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and won and was insufferable about it. He narrated
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the stations not with the anxious precision of
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a child checking that his world still held, but
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with the showing off delight of a boy who knows
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a thing and wants you to know he knows it. The
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map had stopped being a wall he hid behind and
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become a playground he was inviting me into,
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and that transformation, the control object turning
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into a play object, was healing made visible,
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the precise shape of a clenched thing beginning,
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in the safety of an aimless Sunday, to open.
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I have thought since that there is no better
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measure of a child's healing than what happens
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to the thing he clung to when he was drowning.
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The damaged hold their comfort objects in a death
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grip, defensively, joylessly, because the object
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is not a pleasure but a life raft. And the surest
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sign that the water has receded, that the child
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no longer believes he is drowning, is the day
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the life raft becomes a toy, the day the thing
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he gripped for survival he begins, instead, simply
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to play with. Kabir gripping the map in the children's
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home, and Kabir pressing his face to the glass
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for the joy of the tunnels where the same boy
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with the same map and the entire distance of
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his healing lay in the difference between the
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grip and the delight. There was even in the afternoon
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an ordinary squabble, and I have never been so
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glad of conflict in my life. He got grumpy about
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something small and irrational, the way tired
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children do. Dug in over some trivial thing,
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sulked, was briefly and ordinarily impossible.
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And the glory of it, the thing that made me want
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to laugh with relief, was that it was nothing.
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It was not a storm. It was not a test of whether
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we would send him back. It was not freighted
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with the whole weight of his abandonment. It
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was just a seven -year -old being a bit of a
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pain on a Sunday because he was tired, the most
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ordinary domestic friction in the world, and
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it resolved the way ordinary frictions resolve,
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with a firm word and a short sulk, and then the
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whole thing forgotten ten minutes later. We had
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had, by then, plenty of his catastrophic weather.
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This was the first time he had been merely, unremarkably
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difficult. The way any child is difficult, and
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I understood that this too was a kind of arrival,
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that he felt safe enough, now, to be ordinarily
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annoying, which is a luxury only a child who
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is not braced for disaster can afford. The constantly
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endangered cannot afford ordinary bad behavior,
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and people rarely understand this about traumatized
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children, mistaking their eerie early good behavior
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for actual ease. A child braced for abandonment
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is often, At first, unnaturally compliant, watchful,
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eager, because he is auditioning, managing the
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adults, working to earn a safety he does not
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trust. It is only once he begins to believe the
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safety is not conditional that he can risk being
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ordinarily awful, and so the first real tantrum
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over nothing, the first sulk that is merely a
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sulk, is paradoxically a milestone, a sign that
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the auditioning has stopped. Kabir being a normal
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pain on a Sunday meant he had stopped performing
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for his place and started simply having it. I
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would not have traded that small grumpy sulk
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for a week of his old anxious good behavior.
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And then there was the long, unremarkable afternoon,
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Saloni and the boy at the low table with scraps
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of cloth, and me in the chair not quite reading,
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and the particular quality of a contentment so
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complete that it has no events in it at all.
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She was teaching him something with his hands,
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as she does. The two of them bent over the cloth
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in the slanting afternoon light, and I watched
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them and did the thing I have spent six notebooks
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learning to do, which is to actually see the
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ordinary moment while I was inside it instead
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of only mourning it once it had passed. I made
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myself register it. The specific gold of the
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afternoon light on the two bent heads The small
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frown of concentration on the boy's face, the
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same frown he gives the metro map, turned now
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to a needle, my wife's patient hands guiding
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his clumsy ones, the absolute, unremarkable,
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world -without -end ordinariness of it. Nothing
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was happening. A woman was teaching a child to
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sew on a Sunday afternoon. It was the most ordinary
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scene imaginable, and I had to look away for
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a moment, because I knew exactly how unordinary
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it was, how impossibly far we had all three traveled
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to arrive at something so plain, and how nearly
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it had never come at all. I knew. Even as I sat
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in it, that this was the dangerous kind of day,
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in the particular sense the notebooks have taught
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me, because the good ordinary day is exactly
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where the sleep gets in. It is easy to stay awake
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to a crisis. The crisis holds your eyes open
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for you. It is the good ordinary day, the Sunday
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where nothing happens, that you sleep through,
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that slips past unregistered, that you only realize
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was precious years later. when you would give
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anything to have it back. I had spent a whole
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marriage learning this the hard way, sleeping
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through years of good ordinary days with Celonie
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and waking too late to most of them. And so I
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did, that afternoon, the only thing that honors
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such a day, which is to refuse to let it pass
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unseen. I sat in the eventless gold of it and
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looked at it on purpose, the boy and the cloth
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and the woman and the light, and I told myself,
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in so many words, This is a good day. This is
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the thing. You are inside it right now. Do not
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sleep through this one. Because the good days
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do not announce themselves and do not come back,
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and the only thing you can do with one, the only
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thing, is to be awake while it is happening.
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There is a grief built into this, which I have
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made my uneasy peace with, that you cannot save
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the good day. You cannot pin it. or keep it,
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or carry it forward. It passes exactly like the
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bad ones, indifferent to its own value, and tomorrow
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it will be gone and unrepeatable. The only thing
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you are given is the chance to be present for
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it while it is here, to spend it consciously
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rather than asleep, which does not stop it from
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ending, but does mean that when it has ended
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you will at least have actually had it, will
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have been there for it, will not be left mourning
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a day you owned and never once looked at. To
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be awake for the good day is not to keep it.
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It is only to have truly spent it. But that,
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it turns out, is everything. He still did not
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call us anything that whole good day, and it
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did not matter because the not naming had stopped
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being an absence and become simply a fact, the
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way it is in any home where the love is real
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and the words will come or not in their own time.
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I had reached, by that Sunday, a genuine equanimity
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about the name that I could not have faked a
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month before. It was not that I had stopped hoping.
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It was that the hope had stopped being a hunger
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and become merely a wish, the kind you can hold
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lightly, that does not ache when it goes unmet.
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The good day had done that in part. A name felt
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suddenly like such a small thing to want from
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a boy who had raced me up an escalator and gloated,
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who had brought his map to the breakfast table,
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who had fallen asleep unguarded down the hall.
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He was giving us, daily, in a hundred wordless
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ways, the entire substance of the thing the word
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would only have labeled. I could let the label
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arrive whenever it arrived. The boy himself had
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already, unmistakably, come. Saloni and I sat
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up after he had gone to bed, in the quiet of
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a day that had cost us nothing and given us everything,
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and she said, that was a good day, and I said
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I knew that I had noticed it while it was happening,
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and she smiled, because she knew what that meant
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to me, the noticing while it happens that I had
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failed at for so long. He raced you up the escalator,
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she said. He showed off. He sulked about nothing.
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He... Ate too much breakfast. She was counting
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them like beads. The small, unremarkable proofs.
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A year ago, he was a photograph in a file. Tonight,
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he's just a kid who had a normal Sunday and is
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asleep down the hall. And there was the whole
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of it in her plain accounting. Not a triumph,
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not a milestone, just a normal Sunday and a kid
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asleep down the hall. Which is, when you have
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come the distance we had come to reach it. the
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most extraordinary sentence in the language.
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And I understood, hearing her count them, why
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the happiest people are so often the worst at
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telling you about their lives. Why contentment
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makes such poor narrative. Why the years we would
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most want back are the ones we can say the least
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about. A story needs trouble. A story is made
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of the day something went wrong. The good days
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resist being told because nothing happens in
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them that can be shaped into a tale, and so they
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vanish from the record, unwritten, while the
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catastrophes get all the pages. I had filled
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six notebooks, and I saw that most of the truly
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good days of my life had gone undocumented even
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by me, slipped through unwritten because there
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was no event to hang them on. I wrote it that
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night in the sixth notebook, the flat quiet,
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a good ordinary day setting behind us like a
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sun. That the prize was never going to be a dramatic
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thing, and I should have known six notebooks
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in, that it would arrive dressed as the ordinary
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because the ordinary is where everything that
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matters actually lives. We had not been working,
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all these months, toward a triumphant scene,
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a breakthrough. A swelling moment of a child
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crying that he loved us. We had been working
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toward a boring Sunday, toward a child relaxed
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enough to be nearly annoying, eating too much
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breakfast, racing an adult up an escalator and
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gloating, sewing badly in the afternoon light.
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That is what healing actually looks like. Not
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a breakthrough, but the slow return of the unremarkable.
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The day a once impossible thing becomes so ordinary
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you could almost miss it. The happiest days,
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I have come to believe, are the ones with no
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story. The ones nothing can be said about afterward
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except that they were good and that you were,
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thank God, awake enough to know it while it was
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happening. We had had a good day. Nothing had
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happened. It was the best thing that had happened
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to us in a year. Then the working line, the sixth
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notebook open, a good day done, and a child asleep
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who had simply, for once, been a child. Stay
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awake to the good ordinary day because it is
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the prize and because it is the one you are most
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likely to sleep through. The crisis announces
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itself and holds your eyes open. The good plain
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Sunday, when nothing happens, slips past unregistered,
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and you mourn it only years later, when it is
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gone. But the good ordinary day was the whole
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point all along. You did not do the enormous
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work for a triumphant scene. You did it for a
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boring, contented afternoon, for the return of
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the unremarkable, for the day the impossible
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thing becomes so plain you nearly miss it. So
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when one comes, When you look up mid -afternoon
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and nothing is wrong and the people you love
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are simply there doing nothing in the light.
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Stop. Notice it out loud to yourself. Say, this
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is a good day. I am inside it now. The happiest
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days are the ones with no story. Be awake for
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them. They do not come back and they do not come
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often and they are the only thing the whole long
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labor was ever actually for. I capped the pen
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and sat a while longer in the dark of the good
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day's ending, not wanting, quite, to let it go,
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the way you linger at the end of the rare perfect
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ones. Tomorrow there might be a storm, there
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would be storms again and bad days, and school
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would still be hard, and the long road of raising
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a wounded child stretched ahead of us full of
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weather I could not see. But today there had
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been none of that. Today a boy who had been passed
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from house to house had ridden the metro for
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fun and raced me up an escalator and sewn a crooked
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line of stitches and sulked about nothing and
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eaten too much and fallen asleep, unguarded,
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in a home that was, whatever he did or did not
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yet call it, simply and unremarkably his. It
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had been a good day. I had been awake for all
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of it. And I went to bed beside my wife having
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understood, at last and completely, that this
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was the thing the whole of my life had been trying
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to learn how to receive, an ordinary day, fully
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seen, with the people I had been given to love.
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To be continued in Episode 71, Terra. Symbolo
19:06
episode 70 of My Playful Wife. If this story
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is staying with you, the next episode is already
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are in the description. Thank you for listening.