Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 29: What We Keep

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 29: What We Keep · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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Do you understand that? Yes, I said. I have a
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page like that. We keep the foundations where
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we can see them, so we don't get careless and
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forget what the house is standing on. She nodded
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slowly. My Playful Wife, Episode 29, What We
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Keep, written by Mia. There are things you keep
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and things you let go, and the wisdom, if it
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exists at all, is in knowing which is which.
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I had kept the notebooks, all four of them now,
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in the drawer of the bedside table on my side,
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the three large ones and the small fourth, alongside
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the other things that gather at the place where
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a person sleeps, the reading glasses I had started
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needing this year, which I resented and wore
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anyway, the phone charger. A strip of medicine,
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a pen that worked and two that didn't, the small,
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unremarkable sediment of a life, deposited nightly
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within reach of one hand. The notebooks lived
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among that ordinary debris, which felt right.
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They were not relics to be enshrined. They were
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tools I still used, filed with the other tools
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of being alive, the glasses for seeing the page,
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the notebooks for seeing the life. Seloni had
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kept the rose -dark fabric, not the collection
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piece, that had gone a year and more ago, to
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the woman from Emetabod who wept when she touched
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it. The dress arrived at its weeper, but there
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had been a length left over, cut off before the
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lingo was made from the rest, a remnant, the
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way there is always a remnant. Most remnants
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get folded into the great anonymous stock of
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leftover cloth that fills a maker's shelves.
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This one she had kept separate. It sat on a shelf
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in the workroom, not filed away with the others,
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not hidden but out, visible, present, a length
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of that deep rose, the color of something ending
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that turns out to be opening, the color she had
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reached for blind in a lodge -putt -nugger crowd
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while her other hand reached back for mine. She
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never said why she kept it where she could see
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it. She didn't have to. I understood that it
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was her version of the first page of the first
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notebook, the thing you keep in sight not because
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the memory is pleasant but because it is load
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-bearing, because the whole structure of who
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you became rests on it, and you do not let yourself
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forget the foundation just because the house
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built on it is warm. I found her looking at it,
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once, just standing in the workroom. Not working,
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looking at the rose -dark remnant on its shelf
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the way I had sat on the bed looking at the first
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notebook's first page. I stood in the doorway
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and didn't speak. After a while, she said, without
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turning, I keep thinking I should use it, make
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something from it. And then I think, no, some
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cloth isn't for making. Some cloth is just for
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keeping. She turned then and looked at me. Do
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you understand that? Yes, I said. I have a page
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like that. We keep the foundations where we can
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see them, so we don't get careless and forget
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what the house is standing on. She nodded slowly.
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The house is standing on a bad October, she said,
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and on every day since that we chose not to leave.
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That's the foundation. A wound and 10 ,000 choices.
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She looked back at the cloth. I keep it to remember
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both halves. The wound and the choosing. People
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only ever want to remember one or the other.
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The wronged ones remember only the wound. The
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guilty ones only the penance. I want to remember
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both. The cloth is both. But the episode is called
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What We Keep and I have been speaking only of
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keeping. and that is half a truth, and I have
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promised myself not to deal in half -truths anymore.
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The wisdom, I said, is in knowing which to keep
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and which to let go, and we had let go of things
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too, deliberately, with as much care as we kept
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the rest. We let go of the plastic stool. This
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will mean nothing to anyone but me, so let me
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explain it. There was a plastic stool, an ordinary
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cheap molded thing, the kind every household
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has three of that had been in the worst stretch
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of the worst year, the place I sat, in the dark.
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At night, when I couldn't be in the bed and couldn't
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be anywhere, I would sit on that stool on the
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back balcony and try to work out which road a
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man takes. It had held me through the nights
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I am least proud of and most grateful to have
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survived. It was, in its mute plastic way, a
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witness, the only thing that had been with me
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at the very bottom. One day, that second spring,
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clearing the back balcony, Saloni went to throw
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it out with a stack of other broken household
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things, and I stopped her, not that one, and
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then stood there with my hand on it, and understood
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that I had to decide. Keep it, the way I kept
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the first page. and she kept the cloth as a load
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-bearing relic of the foundation, or let it go?
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I let it go. I carried it down to the rubbish
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myself, the cheap cracked stool, and set it down
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with the other discards, and stood there a moment
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in something close to ceremony, and then I left
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it, because some foundations you keep in sight,
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and some you bury, and the wisdom is in telling
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which is which. The first notebook page I keep
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because it reminds me what I climbed out of.
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But the stool was not the climbing out. The stool
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was the bottom itself, the lowest place, and
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a man does not need to keep the lowest place
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within reach. He needs to know what happened.
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He does not need to keep the furniture of it.
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When I came back up, Celonie was waiting, having
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understood the whole thing without explanation.
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Gone, she said. Gone. I said. She nodded. Good.
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You don't have to sit on it anymore. You haven't
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had to in a long time. Let someone else's flower
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stand on it. We never spoke of the stool again,
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and I have not missed it. And that is what letting
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go is. Not forgetting, but no longer needing
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the thing within reach. We let go of other things,
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too. Smaller and larger. We let go. Slowly. of
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the need for anyone outside the four of us to
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understand. There is a part of a wronged man,
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and I had been, by any conventional accounting,
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wronged, that wants the world to know it, that
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wants the story told, so the verdict can come
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back in his favor, that hungers for the validation
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of strangers who would take his side. I had carried
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that hunger a long time, secretly, even into
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the good years. The wish that someone would be
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told the whole thing and would say what you did
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was extraordinary. And one day I noticed I had
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stopped wanting it, that the verdict of strangers
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had become worthless to me because the only verdicts
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that mattered now came from inside the four of
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us, from people who had the whole map and they
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had already returned theirs daily in chai and
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letters and held hands and hello yourself. No
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stranger's applause could add a thing to it.
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So I let the hunger go. And we let go, both of
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us, of the demand that the story be tidy. This
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was the largest letting go, and the one that
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made the rest possible. I had wanted, desperately,
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in the first year, for it to resolve. For there
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to come a day when it was finished, settled.
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A thing we'd gotten through, and could stop caring.
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There was no such day. There was never going
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to be. And the freedom, the real freedom, the
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one that finally let me rest, came on the day
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I stopped waiting for it and accepted the untidy
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continuation that was the only thing actually
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on offer. We let go of the ending. In exchange,
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we got the thing that has no ending, the ongoing,
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the daily, the more of this. It was the best
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trade I ever made. I gave up a clean conclusion
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I was never going to get. and received in its
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place an unfinished life I get to keep living.
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We had kept each other. This is the plainest
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sentence in this entire account, and I have circled
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it for two years, afraid of how plain it is,
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how close to the kind of thing that goes on a
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greeting card. But plainness is not the enemy
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of truth. Sometimes it is the whole of it. We
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had kept each other. That is the thing that happened.
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Out of the wreckage, against the odds, with no
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instruction manual and every reason to do otherwise,
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two people had decided, and kept deciding, to
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keep each other. It does not sound like much,
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written down. It did not feel like much in the
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doing. Most days, the doing was just chai and
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collars and the held hand and the look, the small
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daily unspectacular acts of keeping. But set
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it against the alternative, against the easy
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and available thing, against the millions of
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marriages that do not survive far less than ours
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survived, against Kaveri's marriage that died
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of nothing more dramatic than two people stopping
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paying attention, set it against all that. And
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the plain sentence turns out to be enormous.
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We had kept each other through the thing that
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ends most people. We were still, after all of
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it, each other's. It had not been obvious that
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this was possible on the October morning in the
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kitchen when I first understood what I understood.
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It had not been obvious on the bathroom drum
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in the dark, listening through the grill. It
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had not been obvious on the plastic stool, trying
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to work out which road a man takes when both
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roads look like ruin. Nothing about keeping each
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other had been obvious or given or guaranteed
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at any point. We had built it plank by plank.
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choice by choice, out of the only materials available,
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which were our own flawed actual selves. And
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we had kept it, and in the keeping we had become
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different people, not unrecognizable, not better
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or worse than any simple accounting, but more
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completely ourselves than we had been when we
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started, as though the pressure of it had squeezed
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each of us down to what we actually were, and
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burned off everything we'd only been pretending
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to be. I made a kind of inventory, sometimes,
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of what each of us had become, the way you take
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stock of what's in the house. Saloni had the
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collections and the workshop with its eight blooming
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women, and the singing returned to her on Tuesday
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mornings and the other mornings now, too, her
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mother's songs coming up through her after 15
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years of silence. She had become, fully and at
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last, the maker she had always privately been,
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and added to it a teacher and a singer, the lapsed
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parts of her recovered one by one. She was more
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herself than I had ever seen her. I had the four
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notebooks and the gym and Samir's hard -won indifference
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and the calibrated attention I had spent two
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years learning to pay, the muscle that had not
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existed in me at all before the fire and was
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now the central organ of how I lived. I had become
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a man who could be leaned on, who tied his brother's
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turban and gave back his wife's voice and stood
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in doorways knowing when to speak. I was more
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myself, too. The fire had not added anything
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to me that wasn't already there in potential.
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It had only burned off the comfortable, sleepwalking
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man who had been sitting on top of the real one
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for 35 years, keeping him down. Piyush had Mira
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and Bengaluru. and the expanding firm and the
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expanding life, the whole real thing he had built
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from nothing in a strange city. He had become
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a man who stood in his own kitchen with the authority
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of a life he had chosen. Mira had her work and
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her city and the family she was building, and
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her noticing eyes, which missed nothing and judged
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little, and which had read our whole household
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in four days and chosen, with full information,
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to marry into it. And the connections between
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the four of us, the web of it, the lines running
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Delhi to Bengaluru and back, the letters in two
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boxes in two cities, the phone held across a
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kitchen, the Diwali's and the weddings and the
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openings still to come. The connections were
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more real and more various than anything I could
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have imagined standing at my own wedding altar
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years before. When I thought I knew what a marriage
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was, or sitting across from Saloni on the night,
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she first asked me if I was okay, and I did not
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yet have the better -than -okay to give her.
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I want to set down one ordinary instance of the
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web because the web is not an abstraction. It
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is made of specific small contacts. And one Sunday
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that spring holds the shape of it. It was nothing.
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It was a Sunday. Piyush called in the morning,
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the usual call, and somewhere in it put Mira
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on, and Mira and Saloni talked for 40 minutes
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about the third collection, and a problem Mira
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had at work, and a recipe, and a hundred things,
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the two women who anchored us deep in their own
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private channel. Then in the afternoon a letter
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came, from Mira, the neat engineered hand, addressed
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to me, full of her noticing, a thing she'd seen
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she thought I'd want. Then in the evening, Saloni
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wrote back to Piyush at the kitchen table, a
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real letter, the kind they wrote now. The door
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long since closed and the writing become just
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family. For people, one Sunday, a call, a letter
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in, a letter out, threads running deli to Bengaluru
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and back. The web maintained the way you maintain
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anything alive, by small constant attention,
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by reaching for each other across the distance.
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I tried to write the web in the small notebook
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that evening and found I couldn't quite. It was
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too distributed, too made of small things to
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fit in a line. So I wrote instead. Couldn't get
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the whole web into a sentence. Maybe that's right.
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Maybe a web isn't a thing you write. It's a thing
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you maintain. That is the actual shape of what
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we built out of the wreckage. Not a tidy repaired
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marriage standing alone, but a whole connected
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structure for people and the living lines between
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them more durable than any of us alone. Holding.
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What we kept, in the end, was not only each other.
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This is the thing I most want to get down because
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it is the least obvious and the truest. We had
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kept the complications. The unanswered questions.
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The things that do not resolve cleanly, and were
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never going to. There was no version of our story
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where it all came out tidy, where the year became
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a simple lesson with a moral you could embroider
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on a cushion. The year stayed complicated. Saloni
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still felt, sometimes, the several things at
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once that the December wedding had brought up.
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I still had pages in the first notebook I could
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barely read. There were rooms in both of us that
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the light reached differently on different days.
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We had not resolved any of that. We had done
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something better than resolve it. We had learned
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to keep it, to live alongside the unresolved,
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to make a home that had room in it for the questions
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that would never have answers, to stop demanding
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that love be simple as the price of letting it
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be real. I had believed, before the year, that
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the complications were the failures of the story,
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the parts that meant we'd done it wrong, the
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loose threads that a properly lived life would
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have tied off. I understood now that I'd had
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it exactly backwards. The complications were
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not the failures of the story. They were the
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story. The tidy parts, the wedding photographs,
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the anniversaries, the version you'd tell a stranger.
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Those were just the cover. The actual book was
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the complications, the grief that rode alongside
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the gladness, the love that had no clean name,
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the brother who is also the wound, the wife who
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is also the question, the whole magnificent,
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unresolvable tangle of having loved real people
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through a real catastrophe and come out the other
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side still loving them more, differently, with
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the complications fully intact and fully kept.
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That is what we kept. Each other, yes. But also,
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deliberately, the mess. The beautiful, unfixable
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human mess of it, which I would not trade now
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for anyone's tidy story, because the mess is
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where we actually live, and it turns out to be,
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against all my old expectations, a very good
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place to live. I wrote in the small notebook
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that night what we keep. The notebooks, the rose
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remnant, each other, and the complications, especially
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the complications. I used to think the loose
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threads meant we'd failed. They're not loose
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threads. They're the weave. S keeps the cloth
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to remember the wound and the choosing both.
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I keep the first page for the same reason. We
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keep the mess on purpose. It's the realest thing
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we own. And the letting go is the other half
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of the keeping. You can't hold the right things
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until your hands are empty of the wrong ones.
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The stool went down to the rubbish. The cloth
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stayed on the shelf. That's the whole of the
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wisdom, if it is wisdom, knowing your stool from
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your cloth. To be continued in episode 30, Full
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29 of My Playful Wife. If this story is staying
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