Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 25: Still Here

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 25: Still Here · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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Kaveri handed me hers, Saloni said. Don't stop
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paying attention. Over a coffee. She didn't know
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I'd carry it for the rest of my life. Mira handed
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me mine, I said. On a dark lawn. The parts that
0:15
are only yours. My Playful Wife. Episode 25.
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Still here. Written by Mia. Still here. I want
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those two words to carry what they actually mean,
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which is not resignation and not mere persistence
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and not the grim endurance the phrase sometimes
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implies. Well, we're still here the way survivors
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of something say it, half surprised, half tired.
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I mean it the other way, as an achievement, as
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a daily, active, repeated thing. I am still here.
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We are still here. After everything the year
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did. after the kitchen and the fire and all the
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long work between them, we are still here, still
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waking up beside each other, still choosing it.
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This is not nothing. It is, when I stop to look
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at it directly, very close to everything. The
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spring came on, the brief good deli spring that
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lasts about 11 days between the cold and the
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killing heat, and we lived in it gratefully the
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way you live in anything you know to be temporary.
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The visits came, and went now without ceremony,
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Piyush and Mira up for weekend, the four of us
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folding together and apart with the ease of long
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practice, no one managing anything, the geometry
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so settled it had stopped being geometry and
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become just family. I filled the second notebook
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and started a third. The writing had become as
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much a part of my mornings as the chai. I no
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longer waited for a feeling large enough to require
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it. I wrote The Small Days Now, too, the grain
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of the ordinary, having learned that the ordinary
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was the thing actually worth recording, because
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the ordinary is what you lose first and miss
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most. And Saloni started teaching. It began with
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Kaveri, the way most good things in Saloni's
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professional life began with Kaveri. There was
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a studio above the boutique, underused, and a
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steady trickle of women who came to Cauvery asking
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to learn. Not girls, mostly, but women in their
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30s and 40s, the beginners and the returners,
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the ones who had felt something in fabric their
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whole lives and never been given permission to
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act on it, and the ones who had once known how
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and let it lapse in the long business of becoming
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somebody's wife and somebody's mother. Cauvery
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sent them to Saloni. You should teach them, she'd
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said, in her flat, declarative way. You explain
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things. I've watched you. You make people understand
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things they were afraid they couldn't. That's
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rarer than making the thing yourself. Teach them.
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So she taught them. Eight students. Two Saturday
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mornings a month. In the studio above the boutique,
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with the light coming in and the bolts of practice
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fabric and the eight women bent over their work
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and Saloni moving among them, and she came home
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from each one different. Opened up. There is
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a particular thing that happens to a person who
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gives something away to others and finds it does
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not diminish them but multiplies the way a candle
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lights another candle and loses nothing, and
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I watched it happen to my wife two Saturdays
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a month. She would come home lit. Talkative in
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a way she usually wasn't, full of her students,
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this one's breakthrough, and that one's stubborn
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block, carrying their progress home like a woman
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carrying warmth. I watched all of this with the
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attention I had spent the year learning to pay.
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You're a teacher, I said one Saturday evening,
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as she came in still glowing from it. Apparently,
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she said, setting down her bag, surprised by
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it every time. You knew you would be, I said.
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She looked at me. Did I? Yes, I said. You always
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explain things to people who wanted to understand.
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The whole time I've known you, you explained
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your work to me when I finally asked. You explained
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the collection to Kaveri, the fabric to Mira.
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The Order of the Diaz to me at Diwali. You've
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been teaching the entire time. I just wasn't
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paying attention to the fact that it was a gift,
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a specific one, that not everyone has. I shrugged.
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I thought it was just you talking. It was never
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just you talking. It was always teaching. I only
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see it now. She was quiet for a moment. You've
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said that before, she said. about not paying
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attention. You keep saying it. It keeps being
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true, I said. That's the thing nobody warns you
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about attention. It's not a thing you achieve
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once and own. It's a practice. You have to keep
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doing it, and you keep finding new things you've
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been failing to see the whole time, things that
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were right in front of you for years. The looking
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never finishes. Every month, I find another thing
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about you I'd been not seeing. It's slightly
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humbling. Three years of marriage, and I'm still
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discovering you were a teacher all along. She
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crossed the room to me. She reached up and tucked
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something back into place at my collar, a thing
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that didn't need tucking, the small proprietary
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gesture, the sentence she says with her hands
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when the words would be too much or too direct.
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I had come to understand that touch completely
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over the year. It meant, you are mine and I am
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attending to you, and this is how I say the thing
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I don't say. You pay attention now, she said.
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I try, I said. She looked at me with a full gaze.
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The one that holds nothing back. The one I had
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not known she had until this year, and now received
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almost daily, like weather. That's enough, she
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said. Trying and not stopping. That was always
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the whole of it. Not getting it right, nobody
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gets it right. Just trying and not stopping.
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That's enough. It's more than enough. It's the
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only thing that was ever being asked. She let
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me come to a class once. This was not a small
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thing. The workshop was hers, her ground. The
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way the boutique was Caveri's and the office
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was mine, and an invitation onto someone's ground
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is always a kind of trust. But she'd been telling
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me about the eight women for months, and one
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Saturday she said almost shyly, You could come.
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Sit at the back. They won't mind. They're curious
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about you. I talk about you. You talk about me?
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I quote you, she said, a little embarrassed.
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The attention thing. The takeaway thing. They
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think you're some sort of sage. I haven't told
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them you can't boil rice. So I went and sat at
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the back and watched my wife teach. I had watched
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her work alone for over a year. the witnessing
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that had become one of the central pleasures
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of my life. But I had never watched her work
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on people, and it was a different thing entirely,
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and it undid me a little. She moved among the
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eight of them with a quality of attention I recognized,
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because it was the quality she had turned on
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me this year, the full, undivided seeing, but
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multiplied, distributed, given to each of them
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in turn without losing its completeness. She
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would crouch beside a chair and look at the work
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and not say what was wrong with it, but ask a
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question that let the woman find what was wrong
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herself, the way she had let me find the meaning
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of the second collection by looking rather than
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telling. She praised exactly, never generally.
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She corrected without wounding. She had a way
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of saying, try, the same word she had handed
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me with a wooden spoon a year before, in our
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kitchen, that held no judgment in it. Only invitation.
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And I watched the eight women bloom under it.
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That is the only word for it. They had come,
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most of them, with the slight apology that women
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of a certain age carry into rooms where they
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mean to take something for themselves. The sorry,
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is this allowed? Am I being selfish? And across
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two hours, I watched the apology burn off them
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under the warmth of being properly attended to,
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until they were just makers, bent over their
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work, unapologetic, absorbed. My wife did that.
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With attention. She gave each of them, for two
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hours, the experience of being completely seen
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by a competent, loving eye, and it turned out
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that was the thing they had all been starving
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for, the same thing I had been starving for,
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without knowing it, through three years of comfortable,
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invisible marriage. Attention. The rarest food.
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She served it out by the playful. two Saturdays
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a month, and they came back hungry every time.
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On the drive home, she was lit the way she always
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was after, and quiet too, the two together. Now
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you've seen it, she said. You're better at it
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than I'll ever be at anything, I said. I watched
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you give eight people the thing it took me 35
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years and a catastrophe to learn how to give
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one person, and... You do it on a Saturday. Casually.
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I came to watch you teach fabric. You weren't
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teaching fabric. You were teaching attention.
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The fabric's just the excuse. She drove a while
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in silence. That's what you were really writing
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about, she said. All those notebooks. Not the
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year. Attention. How to give it how you'd failed
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to and learned to. That's the actual subject
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under the story. She glanced at me. We have the
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same subject, you and I. We always have. I teach
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it with cloth, you write it in notebooks, and
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we both learned it the same terrible way. It's
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the only thing either of us is really about.
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I thought she was right. I think she is still
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right. If there is a single thread running under
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all of it, the year... the notebooks, the collections,
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the workshop, the slow remaking of two people,
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it is that one word, the rarest food, the thing
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Kaveri lost her marriage for lack of, and that
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we had nearly lost ours for the same lack and
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had been driven, by the nearly losing, to learn
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at last how to pay. I started the third notebook
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that spring. The first had been the year, the
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wound and the recovery written hot. The second
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had been the aftermath, the wedding, the letters,
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the settling, written warmer. The third eye began
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differently. I wrote, on its first page, subject,
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finally identified, only took three notebooks,
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attention. How to pay it? Everything else is
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just the places I practiced. And then I went
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on recording the ordinary days, but with that
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named purpose now, watching myself watch, paying
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attention to paying attention, which sounds absurd
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and was, in fact, the most useful thing I ever
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did. Because attention is not a thing you achieve
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once and then own. It is a muscle that atrophies
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the instant you stop using it. Kaveri's husband
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had let his atrophy. I was determined not to.
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The third notebook was my training log. Two Saturdays
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a month, my wife trained eight women without
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calling it that, and every morning I trained
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myself, and we were, the two of us, a small private
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academy of one subject, the only subject, the
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thing that keeps a marriage from sealing itself
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room by room into the silence people mistake
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for peace. There is a question I get asked, not
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often because the people who know us don't ask
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and the people who would ask don't know, but
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I have been asked once or twice by someone who
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has glimpsed the shape of things. But how do
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you stay? After a thing like that, how do you
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choose to stay every day, knowing what you know?
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As though staying were a single heroic act, performed
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once, and then completed. It isn't. That is the
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thing I would want to say. Staying is not an
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act. It is a practice, like the attention, like
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the writing, like Celony's hands at the workshop.
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You don't stay once. You stay this morning, and
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then the staying expires the way a day expires,
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and tomorrow you stay again, freshly, with no
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credit carried forward from yesterday's choosing.
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People imagine the hard part is the dramatic
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decision, the night on the plastic stool, the
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choosing of the road. It isn't. The dramatic
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decision is almost easy. It has adrenaline in
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it. The dignity of crisis. The hard part is the
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Tuesday. The ordinary, unremarkable Tuesday eight
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months later, when nothing is at stake and no
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one is watching and you simply, quietly, without
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credit, choose your life again. That is where
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marriages are actually saved or lost. Not in
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the crisis, but in the 10 ,000 Tuesdays after
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it. in whether you keep paying the attention
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once there's no longer any emergency forcing
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you to. Let me give you a Tuesday, then, since
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the Tuesdays are the point. A Tuesday that spring,
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I woke before her. The light was the ordinary
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light. Nothing was wrong and nothing was at stake.
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I lay there a moment and looked at her sleeping,
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really looked, the deliberate act. The practice,
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at the particular way she slept with one hand
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tucked under the pillow and her face gone young
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and undefended the way faces only go in sleep,
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and I felt the thing I had trained myself to
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feel, which is not passion exactly, and not even
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tenderness exactly, but a kind of astonished
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attention. Look at this. Look who I get to look
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at. Look what nearly didn't survive. Then I got
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up, quietly, and made the chai, and set a cup
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at her right hand for when she woke. the right
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temperature, the way she had done for me for
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three years before I ever thought to do it back.
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She woke and found the chai and caught my hand
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as I turned to go. That Tuesday, or some Tuesday,
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they blur, which is their mercy, and held it
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a second against her cheek, the chai steaming
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on the table, and said nothing, and let go. That
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was the Tuesday. That was the whole heroic act.
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A man who once could not see his wife at all,
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choosing, on an ordinary morning with nothing
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at stake, to see her and to put the chai where
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her hand would find it. Nobody would make a story
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of it. It is the realest thing I know how to
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do. The big things announce themselves. The small
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things are where you actually live, and I had
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spent half my life waiting for the big things
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and missing the small ones, and the year had
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cured me. Now I lived in the small ones, the
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chai, the held hand, the collar, the look, and
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they turned out not to be small at all. They
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turned out to be the whole size of love, only
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distributed differently than I had been told.
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She told me, that spring, about one of her students.
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I think it matters, so I'll set it down. There
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was a woman in the workshop, 50, perhaps. Older
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than the rest, who had come because her children
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had grown and gone, and she had found herself,
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after 30 years, with a sudden surplus of hours
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and no idea who the hours belonged to. She had
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sown her whole life, the woman said, but only
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useful things. only mending and hemming and the
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practical invisible labor that holds a household's
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clothes together, and she had never once made
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a thing that was only beautiful, that had no
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use at all except to be itself. She did not know
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if she was allowed. She kept asking Celonie,
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in different words, the same question. Am I allowed?
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Is it not too late? Is it not selfish at my age
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to make a useless beautiful thing? What did you
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tell her? I asked. Saloni was quiet for a moment
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in the lamplight. I told her that a beautiful
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thing isn't useless, she said. That being beautiful
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is the use. That she'd spent 30 years making
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useful things for other people, and she was allowed.
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Now, to make one true thing for herself and that
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it wasn't too late because it's never too late
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to start paying attention to your own life. She
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looked at me and then I heard myself saying it
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and I thought, I'm saying your sentence, the
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one you keep saying, the attention one. I've
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started saying it to my students without realizing.
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It's gotten into me, the way Mira's sentence
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got into me, the parts that are only yours. I'm
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full of other people's true sentences now. I
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hand them out in the workshop like they're mine.
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They are yours, I said. That's how it works.
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A true thing gets handed to you, and you keep
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it, and it becomes yours, and you hand it on.
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That's the whole. That's the whole transmission.
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That's how anybody learns anything that matters.
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Somebody hands you the sentence at the moment
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you can finally hear it. Kaveri handed me hers,
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Saloni said. Don't stop paying attention. Over
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a coffee. She didn't know I'd carry it for the
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rest of my life. Mira handed me mine, I said.
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On a dark lawn. The parts that are only yours.
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And you handed me yours, she said. In a kitchen.
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Recently, the whole year folded into one word.
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She smiled. We're just passing sentences down
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a line. All of us. The whole time. The true ones
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survive and get handed on, and the rest fall
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away. We sat with that for a while in the lamplight
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in the spring, in the flat that was the right
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size for two, and occasionally the right size
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for four. Outside, the eleven good days of the
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season doing their brief work. Inside, our life.
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The only one we had, the one we had made out
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of what we actually were rather than what we'd
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once imagined we'd be. The one that had broken
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and been rebuilt, and was now, daily, proving
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that it held. Still here. Still passing the true
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sentences down the line. Still, both of us, every
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morning, again. Choosing it. To be continued
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That was episode 25 of My Playful Wife. If this
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story is staying with you, the next episode is
20:27
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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Links are in the description. Thank you for listening.