Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 79: The Other Shoe

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 79: The Other Shoe · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. Where is she now? I don't know
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that either. Does she think about you? I can't
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promise you what's in a stranger's heart, but
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I would find it very hard to believe that a woman
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carries you for nine months and then never thinks.
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The other shoe dropped about a month after the
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court, and for a while I misread it completely.
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Kabir changed. Not dramatically, not all at once,
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but unmistakably. The boy who had been slowly
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unclenching all year began, in the settled weeks
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after the adoption, to clench again. He went
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quiet in a new way, a heavy way. He slept badly,
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was up in the night, came to breakfast gray and
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short -tempered. He was prickly over nothing,
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then flat, then prickly again. He cried once,
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hard. over a dropped biscuit, in a way that had
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nothing to do with the biscuit. And I felt, watching
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it, the cold clutch of a fear I had thought the
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courtroom had retired forever, that it was not
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working, that the adoption had somehow broken
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something, that we had made him permanent, and
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he was, in response, coming apart. I braced,
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in the old way, for the thing to fail at the
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very moment it had finally, legally, succeeded.
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It is a cruel trick the mind plays, this readiness
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to read every change as the beginning of disaster,
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and I do not think I will ever fully lose it.
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A man who has once had the floor removed keeps
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checking, ever after, for the next removal. So
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when Kabir darkened, some deep alarmed part of
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me leapt immediately to the worst interpretation
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available, which was that the good thing was
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about to be taken back. that happiness this large
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could not really be mine and was even now arranging
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to be revoked. It saddened me those weeks like
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a smoke alarm with a dying battery, chirping
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its false warning into the middle of the best
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thing that had ever happened to me, insisting,
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against all the evidence, that the faint smell
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of smoke meant the house was burning down. I
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had it exactly backwards, and it took me too
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long to see it. The turn, when I finally understood
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it, came one night when I found him at his shelf,
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in the dark, holding the framed photograph of
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the woman who had born him, the one Saloni had
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helped him set out in the open, months before.
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The birth mother he never named and rarely mentioned.
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He was not crying at first. He was just looking
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at her, in the dark, the way he used to look
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at her in secret before we made the secret unnecessary.
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And then, without turning, in a small flat voice
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that had a crack running through the middle of
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it, he asked me the questions. Why didn't she
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keep me? Where is she now? Does she ever think
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about me? Did she not want me? He asked them
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one after another, into the photograph, not really
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to me. the damned questions of a whole short
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life coming out at last, and I understood, standing
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in his doorway, that this was not the adoption
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failing. This was the adoption working at a depth
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I had not known to look for. He was grieving.
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He had never, in his whole life, been able to
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grieve, and now, finally, he could. I have thought
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since about how long the questions must have
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been waiting in him, sealed, unasked, because
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there had never been an adult stable enough to
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ask them of. You do not hand your deepest wound
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to someone who might leave next month. You do
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not ask where is my mother of a person who might
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themselves become another lost address. The questions
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require a permanent listener. He had never had
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one. So the questions had accumulated, year on
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year, home on home, a whole silent freight of
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them. waiting for a listener solid enough to
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bear the asking. That night, at the shelf, he
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had finally found one. The questions were not
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new. They were only, at last, sayable, because
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for the first time in his life there was someone
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in the doorway who was not going anywhere and
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could therefore safely be asked. Because grief,
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I came to understand that month, is a luxury
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of safety. A child in survival mode cannot mourn.
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When every ounce of you is bent on the daily
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work of not being abandoned, on reading the adults,
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on earning your place, on staying alert to the
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next upheaval, there is simply no capacity left
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over for the enormous, undefended, collapsing
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work of grief. Grief requires that you let go
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of your vigilance, and you cannot let go of your
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vigilance while you are still in your body. Fighting
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for your life. So the grief waits. It stores
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itself, uncried, behind the survival for years,
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for a whole childhood. The mourning for the mother
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who gave you up, for every home that did not
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keep you, for the childhood you did not get,
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for the ordinary safe love that other children
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were simply given, and you had to fight for,
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and mostly went without. It all waits. And it
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can only come out, finally. When the fighting
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stops, when some courtroom, some stamp, some
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man in a hallway saying you're not going anywhere,
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finally convinces the deep animal part of the
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child that the danger is over and the vigilance
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can be stood down. And the instant the vigilance
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stands down, the grief it was holding back comes
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up. That is what the other shoe was. Not the
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adoption failing. The adoption succeeding so
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completely that it finally made him safe enough
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to fall apart. This reframing changed everything
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about how I held those weeks, because it converted
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the thing I had been dreading into a thing I
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could almost be grateful for. As long as I read
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his collapse as the adoption failing, every gray
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morning was a small terror. The instant I understood
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it as the adoption succeeding, as the grief that
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only safety permits, the same gray mornings became
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bearable, even welcome. The visible evidence
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that we had done the one thing we set out to
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do, which was to make a boy safe enough to finally
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feel what a lifetime had cost him. The tears
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were not the problem. The tears were the proof.
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He was crying at last because he could afford
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to. And here is the hard part, the part one got
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wrong before I got it right. There was nothing
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to fix. Every instinct in me, faced with my son's
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grief, wanted to solve it, to answer the unanswerable
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questions, to make the sadness stop, to reassure
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him out of it, to produce some fact or comfort
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that would close the wound and let us all go
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back to the settled ordinary I had only just
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learned to enjoy. And all of that was wrong was
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worse than useless because grief is not a problem
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to be solved. It is a weather to be moved through,
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and a person moving through it does not need
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you to stop the weather. They need you to stay
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outside with them in it, to not go in where it
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is dry, and leave them alone in the rain. My
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job was not to fix his grief. My job was to be
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the thing that made the grief survivable, which
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is not an answer but a presence. To sit with
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him in it, to not flinch from it, to not rush
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it toward a resolution it did not have. to let
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it be as large and as long and as unanswerable
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as it actually was, and simply to be there, undefended,
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for all of it. I had learned this with the storm,
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a version of it, that you hold the child, you
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do not fix the child. The grief was the same
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lesson in a lower, sadder key. You cannot mend
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a loss. You can only refuse to let the grieving
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be done alone. The questions had no answers,
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and I did not pretend they did, because he had
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had enough people manage him with comfortable
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eyes. Why didn't she keep you? I don't know,
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I told him, and it's the truth. I don't know
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her story, and neither do you, and we may never
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fully know it, but I know that people give up
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children they love, sometimes. for reasons that
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are about their own impossible situations and
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not about the child being unwanted, and that
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a woman keeping your photograph would not be
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the act of a woman who did not want you. Where
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is she now? I don't know that either. Does she
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think about you? I can't promise you what's in
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a stranger's heart, but I would find it very
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hard to believe that a woman carries you for
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nine months and then never thinks of you again.
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That is not how mothers are built, as far as
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I have ever seen. Did she not want you? I don't
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believe that's what her not keeping you means,
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though I understand why it feels that way, and
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I am not going to tell you it doesn't feel that
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way, because it does, and the feeling is allowed.
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I gave him what honesty I had, which was mostly
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the honesty of the unknown, of not filling the
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terrible gaps with reassuring inventions. And
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I think the not lying was itself a kind of comfort.
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the only real kind. He had been lied to and managed
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his whole life, and here at last was an adult
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who would sit in the dark with him and say I
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don't know to the hardest questions rather than
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paper them over. The truth, even the unbearable
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open -ended truth, was steadier ground than the
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kind lies had ever been. I understood, giving
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him those honest non -answers, that I was doing
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for him the thing I had spent this whole marriage
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learning to do for Saloni and for myself. Refusing
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the comfortable lie in favor of the harder true
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thing, even when the harder true thing was only
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I don't know. A child raised on management learns
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to distrust every soothing word because the soothing
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words had always been covers, ways of moving
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him along. And the only way to earn the trust
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of such a child is to be the one adult who will
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not soothe him with a story, who will sit in
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the actual unbearable truth with him and call
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it by its name. It was the only currency he had
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never once been paid in, and therefore the only
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one he could finally believe was real. It was
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Saloni, of course, who could meet him in it most
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fully, because she had her own. She came... The
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way she comes, and she did not try to cheer him,
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and she did not try to explain, and she sat down
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on the floor of his room with him and the photograph,
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and she told him, plainly, one grieving person
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to another, about her own mother, dead since
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Saloni was 19, carried every day of the 20 -odd
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years since. I lost my mother, she said. You
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know that. And I want to tell you something true
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about it. because you're old enough now and you're
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grieving now, and you should hear it from someone
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who knows. It doesn't stop. The people who tell
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you grief ends, that you'll get over it, that
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time heals, they're wrong or they're being kind,
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which is a way of being wrong. You don't get
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over it. You carry it. I still cry about my mother
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at 40 -odd all these years on, some Tuesday out
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of nowhere. There are things about her I'll never
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know, questions I'll never get answered, just
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like you. And I have stopped waiting for it to
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be finished, because it's never going to be finished,
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and that's not the tragedy. The tragedy would
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be to stop feeling it, because the feeling is
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where she still lives. So no, I'm not going to
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fix this for you. I can't. Nobody can. But I
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can tell you that you're not broken for still
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feeling it, and you won't be broken in 20 years
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when you still feel it, and you don't have to
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carry it alone, because I'm carrying mine right
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here beside you, and we can be two people who
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carry our lost mothers together for as long as
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we both need to, which is going to be forever.
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And Kabir, who had let almost no one all the
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way in, leaned against her. against the one adult
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in his life who had a lost mother of her own,
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and they sat together on the floor in the dark
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with their two griefs and the one photograph,
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and neither of them tried to make it better,
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and that was the most loving thing I have ever
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watched two people do. I stood in the doorway
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and did not join them because it was not mine
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to join. There was a communion happening on that
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floor that I could witness but not enter, the
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particular fellowship of two people who have
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each lost a mother, a country whose passport
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I do not hold. My own childhood wound is a different
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shape, the unwatched, not the bereaved. I was
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underloved, not taken from. And I felt... Watching
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my wife hold my son inside the one grief they
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truly share, a strange and cleansing smallness,
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the good kind, the kind that comes from seeing
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plainly that you are not the answer to everything,
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that some rooms in the people you love can only
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be entered by someone else, and that love is
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sometimes the willingness to stand in the doorway
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and be glad that the person who can reach them
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is here and is yours and is doing it. I wrote
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it that night in the sixth notebook, a boy finally
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grieving down the hall, the framed photograph
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of a stranger keeping its watch. That the other
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shoe was not the adoption failing, but the adoption
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working at last all the way down, that we had
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made him safe enough, finally, to feel the thing
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he had been too busy surviving to feel, and that
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this, the grief, The collapse, the terrible,
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unanswerable questions in the dark, was not a
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setback but the deepest proof yet that it had
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worked, because a child only dares to fall apart
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in the arms he is certain will not drop him.
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He was grieving in front of us. He was handing
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us his worst. oldest, most undefended pain, the
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pain he had hidden from every adult who had ever
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held him provisionally. And he was handing it
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to us precisely because we were no longer provisional,
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because the court had told his body it was safe.
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And the safe body had finally opened the room
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where the grief had been stored his whole life
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and let it out. I had wanted to fix it and learned
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I could not. There is no fixing a loss like his.
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There is no answer to why didn't she keep me.
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There is only the choice to sit in the dark with
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the question rather than leave the child alone
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with it. We chose the sitting. We will keep choosing
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it for years because the grief will come back,
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as Solonese does, on some Tuesday out of nowhere
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for the rest of his life. And every time it comes,
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We will do the only thing that was ever going
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to help, which is not to make it stop, but to
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be there, undefended, while it moves through,
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so that he never again has to grieve the way
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he grieved for his whole childhood, which was
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alone. Then the working line, the sixth notebook
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open, two lost mothers being carried on a bedroom
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floor down the hall. Do not mistake the grief
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that comes after the rescue for the rescue failing.
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It is the rescue finally working. The wounded
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cannot mourn while they are still fighting to
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survive. Grief is a luxury of safety, and it
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waits, sometimes for a whole childhood, behind
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the vigilance until some real permanence at last
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convinces the body that the danger is over and
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the guard can come down. And the instant the
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guard comes down, the stored grief rises. When
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it does, do not read it as regression or failure
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or proof you have done something wrong. Read
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it as trust. The one you love is falling apart
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in front of you because you have finally made
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them safe enough to. And then do the hard thing,
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which is nothing. Do not fix it. Do not answer
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the unanswerable. Do not rush the weather to
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a resolution it does not have. You cannot mend
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a loss. You can only refuse to let it be grieved
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alone. Sit in the dark. Stay in the rain. Be
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the arms that do not drop them while the oldest
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pain finally, safely, comes out. I capped the
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pen and went to looking on him, and he was asleep
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at last, worn out with the crying, the photograph
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on the shelf and Celony's cloth map on the wall
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and his face, in sleep, no longer holding the
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gray -held tension of the settled weeks. The
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grief, having been let out, having left him lighter,
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the way grief does once it is finally allowed
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to move rather than made to sit. He would grieve
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again. I knew that now. The other shoe does not
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drop once. It drops for years, in waves, on ordinary
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Tuesdays, the loss resurfacing as long as the
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love does, because they are the same thing seen
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from different sides. But he would not grieve
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alone again. Not ever, and that was the whole
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of what we had to give him. Not an answer to
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his loss, which does not exist, but a permanent,
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undefended, unfixing company in it. We had made
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him safe enough to fall apart. It was the highest
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thing the safety was for. I have come to think
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that this is the truest measure of whether you
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have actually made someone safe. not whether
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they seem happy in your presence, which even
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the frightened can perform, but whether they
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can at last fall apart in it. The child who stays
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composed, agreeable, easy, is very often the
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child who does not yet trust you enough to be
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anything else. The collapse, when it finally
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comes, is the compliment, the sign that the long
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performance can be set down. Kabir had performed
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his own okayness for a lifetime. because his
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safety had always depended on it. That he could
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now, in our house, simply be a mess, grey, prickly,
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weeping over a biscuit, coming apart at a shelf
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in the dark, was not the withdrawal of his trust,
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but the fullest arrival of it. He trusted us
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enough, finally, to stop being fine. And I went
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to bed beside my wife, who carries her own lost
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mother, and had just taught my son how to carry
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his, and I lay in the dark grateful, past any
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saying, that the boy down the hall had finally,
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in the arms of a family that could not be taken
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from him, begun the long safe work of grieving
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everything he had never before been safe enough
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to mourn. To be continued in Episode 80, What
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That was episode 79 of My Playful Wife. If this
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story is staying with you, the next episode is
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already waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss
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it. The complete book is on Amazon and early
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episodes plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon.
19:57
Links are in the description. I'm Mia. Thank
20:01
you for listening.