Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 78: Son

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 78: Son · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. The court just agreed with us.
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She was mending something, her hands moving.
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This is what you wanted. You just don't recognize
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it because you spent so long fighting for it
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that you forgot the thing you were fighting for
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was ordinariness. Nothing changed the morning
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after, and that was the whole of the miracle.
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I had half expected to wake up into a different
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life, the way you expect the morning after a
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wedding or a death to have a changed quality
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of light, a new air. It did not. The morning
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after the adoption was exactly like the morning
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before it. The same gray kitchen, the same chai,
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the same boy who did not want to get up for school,
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the same metro map on the wall, the same ordinary
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friction of three people sharing a small flat.
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The court had said its enormous sentence and
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stamped its stamp, and then the world had simply
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gone on being the world, indifferent as ever,
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handing us another unremarkable Tuesday. And
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I understood, standing in the kitchen making
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chai while Kabir dawdled over his uniform, that
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this was not an anticlimax. This was the prize.
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The whole point of the long fight had been to
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arrive, precisely, here. at a morning so ordinary
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that the enormous thing underneath it did not
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even show. I have thought about this since, about
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how differently the two great categories of large
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day announce themselves. The catastrophic large
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day changes the light. The morning after a death
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or a disaster, the world is visibly altered,
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a wrongness in the very air, and you wake knowing
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instantly that something is broken. But the good
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large day... The one that fixes rather than breaks
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does the opposite. It hands you a mourning indistinguishable
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from the one before, because what it changed
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was not the surface of the days but the foundation
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under them, and foundations are invisible by
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design. You do not see a floor. You only feel,
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dimly, whether it holds. The adoption had reached
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down below the visible days and made the floor
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permanent. and left the visible days exactly
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as they were, which is how the largest good things
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always arrive, not with a changed sky, but with
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a changed and unseeable ground. The word came
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into my mouth for the first time about a week
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later, in public, and it undid me more than the
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courtroom had. We had to update his records at
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the school. The surname questioned the paperwork
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of a changed legal status, and I was standing
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at the counter of the school office, and the
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clerk, not looking up, going through her forms,
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asked me, in the flat way clerks ask things,
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my relationship to the child. And I said, I'm
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his father. Just that. I'm his father. It was
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the first time I had said it to a stranger. plainly,
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as a fact requiring no explanation, no qualifier,
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no foster, no we're adopting. Just the bare,
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unhedged word, deployed at a counter to a woman
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who wrote it down without a flicker, because
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to her it was the most ordinary thing in the
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world, a man being a boy's father, the kind of
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sentence she processed 40 times a day. She had
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no idea what she had just witnessed. She had
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no idea that a man had just, for the first time
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in his life, called himself somebody's father
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to a stranger and had to grip the edge of the
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counter for a second while the word went through
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him. I'm his father. I signed where she pointed.
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I walked out into the ordinary afternoon a man
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who had just said the largest word he owned as
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though it were nothing, which is exactly what
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it had wonderfully become. I had rehearsed over
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the years of not being a father. The imagined
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moment of first saying it, and had always pictured
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it as a declaration, waited, delivered to someone
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who would understand its magnitude. The reality
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was the opposite and better. The word arrived
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not as a declaration but as data, supplied to
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a board clerk who filed it without looking up,
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and the very ordinariness of its reception was
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the gift. Because a word only becomes fully yours
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when you can say it carelessly. As long as I
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would have said father with a catch in my throat,
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with ceremony, it would still have been a costume,
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a thing I was trying on. The clerk, by receiving
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it as nothing, let me own it. She made it ordinary,
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and the ordinary is the only place a thing is
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ever really true, and she did it in half a second,
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at a counter, without any idea that she had just,
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in passing, completed me. Because that is what
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permanence does. Once it is real, it turns the
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extraordinary into the baseline. For a year,
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everything about Kabir had been charged, provisional,
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held at the trembling edge of could still be
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lost. Every ordinary act of family life had carried,
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underneath, the faint high voltage of impermanence.
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the awareness that we were doing this on borrowed
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standing, that it could all be unmade. The adoption
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cut that voltage. And the strange effect of cutting
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it was not that the days became more dramatic,
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but that they became less, that the same breakfast,
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the same metro ride, the same bedtime that had
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all been quietly momentous while they were provisional
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became, once they were permanent, simply breakfast,
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simply the metro, simply bedtime. We had lost
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the drama. We had lost it on purpose, at enormous
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cost, because the drama was only ever the symptom
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of the danger, and we had spent a year and a
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courtroom buying the boy a life with no danger
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in it, which is to say a boring one, which is
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to say the only kind worth wanting. The floor
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had stopped wobbling, and a floor that does not
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wobble is a floor you stop noticing, which is
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the entire luxury of a floor. He did not suddenly
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call me Papa every day, and I want to record
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that because the films would have him do it and
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the truth is better. The word he had handed the
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judge did not become, overnight, a habit. For
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days after the hearing, he went back to his old
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sideways grammar, the nameless address, the um,
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and the appearing in doorways, as though the
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naming in court had been a single formal act,
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testimony given once. And then filed. Not a door
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thrown permanently open. And then, one ordinary
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evening, it slipped out. Papa, where's my other
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shoe? Flat, unremarkable, tossed over a shoulder
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in the middle of a search for footwear, and was
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gone again before either of us could make it
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a thing. And then nothing for two days. And then
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again. The word came and went like that. Over
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those weeks, arriving unannounced in the middle
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of ordinary sentences and then absending itself,
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a boy trying on a name in private, in his own
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time, at his own pace, testing whether it fit,
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whether it was safe, whether the world stayed
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standing each time he used it. I never once acknowledged
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it. I never said, you called me Papa. Never let
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my face do anything when it came, because I understood
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that the surest way to drive the word back into
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hiding was to celebrate it, to turn a thing he
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was doing unselfconsciously into a thing he was
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aware of doing. So I just answered to it, plainly,
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as though I had always answered to it, and handed
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him his other shoe, and let the name come and
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go on its own schedule. Trusting that a word
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allowed to arrive unpressured would, eventually,
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decide to stay. It required a discipline I had
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not expected than not reacting because everything
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in me wanted to seize each papa and hold it up
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to the light and weep over it. But love, I have
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learned across all these notebooks, is largely
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a matter of what you have the discipline not
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to do. Not to watch when watching would pressure.
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Not to celebrate when celebrating would expose.
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not to grab the tender shy thing that has only
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ventured out because you are pretending not to
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see it. I had learned this with Celonie years
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ago, the unwatched moment, the averted eyes.
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I was learning it again now with my son. The
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deepest attention often has to disguise itself
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as inattention, has to look away on purpose,
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so that the fragile thing can come the rest of
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the way out believing itself unobserved. Saloni
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watched all of this with the particular contentment
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of a maker whose work is finished and holding.
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You keep waiting for it to feel different, she
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said to me one night, reading me the way she
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does. The adoption. You keep poking at the day
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like you're checking whether a tooth still hurts.
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It doesn't feel different because it wasn't a
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change. It was a ratification. We didn't become
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a family in that courtroom. We'd been a family
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for a year. The court just agreed with us. She
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was mending something, her hands moving. This
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is what you wanted. You just don't recognize
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it because you spent so long fighting for it
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that you forgot the thing you were fighting for
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was ordinariness. You wanted the boring version.
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Well. Here's the boring version. He called you
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pop about a shoe and you nearly cried and then
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didn't and that's the whole of it. That's what
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we won. Try to enjoy it instead of auditing it.
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And she was right, as she is nearly always right
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about the shape of what we are living while I
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am still turning it over trying to name it. I
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audit, she inhabits. I had won the ordinary life
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and was still, out of long habit, standing guard
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over it as though it might be taken, when the
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whole point was that it could not be taken anymore,
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and the guarding could finally stop. She had
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named the exact shape of my strangeness, as she
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does, the poking at the day to see if it still
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hurt. And I recognized, hearing her, that I had
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a kind of phantom vigilance, the way an amputee
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feels the missing limb. The danger was gone,
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but the readiness for it remained, still firing
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in a body that had not yet been told it could
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stand down. Saloni did not have it. She had never
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armored herself the way I had. She had grieved
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and feared as hard as I did, but had not built
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the permanent watchtower, and so, when the danger
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passed, she simply put it down and walked into
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the ordinary, while I stood on the wall a while
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longer, scanning a horizon that no longer held
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anything to skin for. She inhabits the peace
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the moment it arrives. I have to be persuaded
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over weeks. that it is safe to. I put the guarding
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down slowly. Over those weeks, the way you set
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down a weight you have carried so long the carrying
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has become posture. There is a particular exhaustion
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that comes only after a long danger has passed.
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The delayed collapse, the way the body holds
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itself together through the emergency, and then
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once safety is certain, finally lets itself feel
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how tired it has been the whole time. I felt
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that, those weeks after the court, not unhappiness,
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the opposite, but a kind of vast tiredness surfacing
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now that it was finally safe to be tired, the
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accumulated fatigue of a year of vigilance rising
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to be felt now that the vigilance was no longer
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required. I had been braced for so long. Every
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parent of a wounded child is braced, is scanning,
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is ready, and I had been braced additionally
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against the loss of him, against the machinery,
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against the back door that might still open.
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The back door was bricked up now, legally, permanently.
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And my body, understanding this before my mind
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had finished believing it, began at last to unbrace,
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muscle by muscle, into the enormous unfamiliar
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comfort of a danger that was actually... verifiably
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over. I had not known it was possible to be this
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tired and this content at once, but that turned
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out to be the exact texture of the aftermath,
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a bone -deep exhaustion with no unhappiness anywhere
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in it, the tiredness of a runner who has crossed
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the line and can finally stop, whose legs give
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out not from despair but from the permission
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to give out at last. For a year my body had been
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a clenched fist. Now, slowly, over those weeks,
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it was learning to be a hand again, an open thing,
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capable of rest. I slept differently. I woke
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without the small dawn dread I had carried so
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long I had stopped noticing it. The vigilance
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drained out of me by degrees, and what it left
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behind was not emptiness, but room, a great deal
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of newly unoccupied room, the space of fear vacates
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when it finally... permanently, leaves. I wrote
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it in the sixth notebook, an ordinary Tuesday
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behind us, a boy asleep who had called me papa
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about a shoe and meant nothing by it and everything.
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That the prize was never the courtroom, and I
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had known that going in, and still had to learn
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it again coming out. The court day had felt,
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in prospect, like the summit, the thing everything
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climbed toward. It was not the summit. It was
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a doorway, and on the far side of the doorway
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was not a view but a plane, the long, flat, ordinary
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plane of an ordinary, permanent life, the boring
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forever, the ten thousand unremarkable mornings
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that were the actual thing the whole fight had
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been for. I had spent a year wanting the extraordinary
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act of making him ours. The extraordinary act
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was done now, and what it had purchased was the
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right to be ordinary with him, endlessly, without
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fear, to make his chai and lose his shoes and
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be called Papa in passing, and sit in the plain,
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unmomentous forever of a family that no longer
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had to prove it was one. The drama was the price.
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The boredom was the prize. And a man who has
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understood that, who can stand in a gray kitchen
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on a nothing morning and feel the enormous safety
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humming underneath the nothing, has learned the
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one thing the whole long emergency was trying
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to teach him, that the ordinary, once secured,
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is not the absence of the miracle. It is the
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miracle, finally holding still long enough to
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be lived in. And I saw, writing it, Why I had
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needed the whole long emergency to teach me a
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thing so simple. You cannot value the ordinary
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from inside a comfortable ordinary life. The
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ordinary makes itself invisible precisely by
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being safe, and a man who has never been without
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it will look straight through it his whole life,
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waiting for the real thing to start. I had been
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that man once, years ago, sleepwalking through
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a comfortable marriage, seeing none of it. It
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had taken a catastrophe to make me see a wife,
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and it had taken a second, quieter ordeal, the
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year of nearly losing a son, to make me see the
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ordinary itself, the plain, unmomentous days,
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as the treasure they are. I would not have chosen
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the ordeals, but I could not have reached the
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seeing any other way. The ordinary only becomes
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visible to the one who has nearly lost it. Then
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the working line, the sixth notebook open, the
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guarding at last set down, a son asleep down
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a hall that no longer needs watching. The prize
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was never the great dramatic act. It was the
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ordinary life the great act buys. You will spend
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the fight imagining that the summit is the courtroom,
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the wedding, the yes, the finish line, and it
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is not, it is only a doorway, and beyond the
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doorway is not a view but a plane, the long,
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flat, ordinary, forever you were actually fighting
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for the whole time. Do not be disappointed by
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the plainness on the far side. The plainness
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is the point. The drama was only ever the symptom
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of the danger, and you spent everything to buy
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a life with the danger taken out, which is to
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say a boring one, which is the only kind worth
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wanting. So when the great thing is finally done,
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and the days go quiet and nothing happens, and
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the person you fought for calls you by your name
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in passing and means nothing by it, do not go
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looking for the drama back. Put the guarding
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down. Let the floor stop wobbling. Learn. At
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last, to live in the ordinary you bled to secure,
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because a secured ordinary is not the absence
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of the miracle. It is the miracle holding still.
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I capped the pen and did the thing I do, walked
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to his doorway, and he was asleep beneath his
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cloth metro map, one arm flung out, wholly unguarded.
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a boy who is now, in every language there is,
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my son, a word I had said to a school clerk that
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weak as though it were nothing, and that was,
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in fact, the largest and most permanent thing
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I would ever be. There was nothing to watch for
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anymore. I watched anyway, out of love now rather
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than fear, the two of them at last distinguishable,
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and I understood that this would be the rest
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of it, not the dramatic rescue. which was done,
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but the long ordinary tending, the endless unmomentous
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forever of raising a boy who is mine and would
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stay mine through all the ordinary trouble still
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to come. And there would be trouble. I did not
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imagine we were finished. A child who has been
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through what Kabir has been through does not
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simply heal in a courtroom and live smooth ever
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after. But whatever came now would come to a
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family that was permanent, that could not be
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dissolved, That would meet it together and stay
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together no matter how it went. The floor would
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hold. We had made sure of that. That certainty
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was the whole of what we had bought. And it was
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enough. It was more than enough. It was everything.
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Not a guarantee that the years would be easy.
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No one gets that. And a child like Kabir guarantees
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the opposite. But a guarantee of the one thing
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that had never, in his whole life before us,
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been guaranteed. that whatever the years held,
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he would hold them here, with us, in a family
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that could not come apart. He would face the
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trouble of a life. He would not ever again face
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it alone or provisionally, or with one eye on
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the door. That was the gift the courtroom had
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made permanent, and it was the only gift that
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had ever really mattered to him, and we had,
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against every reasonable prediction, managed
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to give it. Everything else was just the ordinary
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weather of a life, and I intended, at last, to
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stop bracing against it and simply live in it,
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with my wife and my son, in the boring miraculous
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forever we had paid so much to make dull. To
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be continued in Episode 79, The Other Shoe. All
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rights reserved. That was episode 78 of My Playful
20:22
Wife. If this story is staying with you, the
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next episode is already waiting. Subscribe so
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Mia. Thank you for listening.