Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 67: The Name

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 67: The Name · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. Saloni, characteristically,
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was at peace with the thing in a way I could
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not manage, and when I finally confessed the
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hunger to her one night, she said it gently right.
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In the early weeks, I became aware of an absence
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at the very center of the house, a small hole
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in the language where a word should have been,
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and the word was the one Kabir. did not have
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for us. He had moved in. He ate at our table
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and slept, eventually in the bed, and rode the
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metro on the weekends with me and learned the
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grain of cloth from Saloni. He was, by every
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practical measure, living with his parents. But
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he had no name for us, and the not having was
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a live thing in the flat, present at every meal.
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because a child who cannot name the adults he
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lives with must address them somehow, and Kabir
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had become a small genius of the workaround.
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I recognized the choreography, of course, because
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I had my own milder version of it, and so does
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almost everyone if they look. We are all, in
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some relation or other, managing the absence
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of a comfortable word. The in -laws we cannot
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quite call by a first name and cannot quite call
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anything else. The stepfather addressed by elaborate
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avoidance for 30 years. The ex -spouse who becomes,
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in conversation, a careful pronoun. The unnamed
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relation is one of the quiet commonplaces of
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human life, and we are all more fluent in the
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grammar of getting around a missing word than
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we like to admit. But I had never seen it practiced
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with the total, exhausting vigilance of a child
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who has been moved through too many houses to
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have a settled word for anyone, and watching
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Kabir do it all day was like watching a small
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expert at a craft I had only ever dabbled in.
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He did not call us anything. He had developed,
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in the institutional years, an entire grammar
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of nameless address. The well -timed appearance
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in a doorway so that no calling out was needed.
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The, um, deployed as a substitute for a name.
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The touch on a sleeve. The question launched
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into the air of a room so that whoever answered,
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answered, without his having had to direct it
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at a person by a word he did not possess. I watched
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him do it a hundred times in those first weeks.
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This elaborate daily choreography of getting
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our attention without... ever once naming us,
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and I understood that the empty space where the
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word should be was not an oversight. It was the
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most honest thing in the house. He did not call
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us anything because he did not yet know what
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we were to him, and he was too truthful a creature,
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under all the guardedness, to use a word he had
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not yet earned the right to mean. I found I respected
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him for it, even as it ached. There is a kind
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of integrity in refusing the easy word, and most
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adults do not have it. We throw around love and
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family and home with very little regard for whether
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we have earned the right to mean them, devaluing
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the words by using them long before they are
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true. Kabir would not do that. He would not say
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a word he did not yet mean, even a word that
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would have pleased us. Even a word that might
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have bought him our approval, because to him
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a word was not social lubricant, but a load -bearing
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thing that had to be true before it could be
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spoken. It is, when you think about it, exactly
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the discipline I had spent six notebooks trying
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to learn as a writer, never to use the word until
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the thing behind it is real. The seven -year
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-old had it by instinct. I had needed 40 years
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and a near -divorce. And I wanted the word. I
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will be honest in the notebook, even when it
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does not flatter me. I wanted, with an intensity
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that frightened me, to be called something. Specifically,
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though I could barely admit it to myself, I wanted
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to be called Papa. It is a strange hunger to
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discover in yourself at my age, the hunger to
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be named by a child, and I examined it with some
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suspicion, because I knew where it could lead.
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It could lead to the one thing I must never do,
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which was to ask for it, to suggest, to hint,
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to coax, to leave the word lying about hopefully,
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to do any of the thousand small pressures by
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which a wanting adult tries to extract from a
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child a name the adult needs more than the child
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is ready to give. I knew, from everything the
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last months had taught me, that the name was
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exactly like the looking, exactly like the trust.
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It could not be demanded. Only earned and then
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freely given, if it ever came at all. To ask
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Kabir to call me Papa would be to make the word
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about my need instead of his readiness, and a
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name given to relieve an adult's hunger is not
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a name. It is a performance, and he had performed
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enough wanting for enough auditioning adults
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already. So I wanted it. badly, in secret, and
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I told no one but the notebook, and I made absolutely
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certain that nothing of the wanting ever reached
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him. This is one of the heaviest disciplines
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of loving anyone from a position of greater need
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than theirs, the hiding of your own hunger so
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that it does not become a weight they have to
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carry. A child should never be made responsible
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for an adult's emotional wants. It is precisely
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the inversion that wrecks people, the parent
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who needs to be loved by the child more than
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the child can afford, who extracts reassurance
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and calls it affection. I had been, in my own
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childhood, on the wrong end of the more ordinary
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version of this, and I knew its cost, and I was
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determined that Kabir would never feel, in our
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house, that he owed us a feeling. He would owe
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us nothing. The wanting would be mine to manage,
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in private, in the notebook, and he would be
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left free to arrive at whatever he arrived at
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without ever once feeling the pull of my need
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on him. Because I had finally understood what
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the name would cost him, which was everything,
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which was the whole risk. To call me Papa would
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not be... For Kabir, the small natural thing
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it is for a child who has always had one, it
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would be an enormous and dangerous act. The word
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is a claim. To say it is to confess that you
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want the person to be that to you, that you have
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decided to need them, that you have let yourself
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believe they will stay, and a child who has been
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handed back as many times as Kabir has, who has
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bricked up his own heart precisely against this.
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Knows in his body that the moment you say Papa
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you have given a hostage to fortune, you have
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admitted the wanting that makes the losing unsurvivable.
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To withhold the name was not coldness. It was
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self -protection of the most rational kind. He
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was declining to make the claim until he was
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sure the claim was safe, until the permanence
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we kept promising had been proven across enough
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ordinary days that he could risk the word that
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would cost him everything if we turned out, like
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all the others. to be temporary. The empty space
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where Papa would go was not a lack of feeling.
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It was the measure of how much the feeling, if
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he ever let himself have it, would have the power
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to destroy him. I sat with that realization for
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a long time because it reframed every guarded
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thing about him at once. The flatness, the metro
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map, the refusal of the name, the sleeping on
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the floor that first night. I had been reading
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them as damage, as symptoms of what had been
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done to him. And they were that. But they were
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also intelligence. They were the entirely rational
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defenses of a small person who had correctly
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understood that attachment is dangerous and had
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built, with the only materials available to a
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child, a system to survive it. He was not broken.
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He was, if anything, brilliantly adapted to a
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world that had repeatedly betrayed him, and the
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work ahead of us was not to repair a broken thing
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but to slowly, patiently make the betrayal stop
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until the adaptations were no longer needed and
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could be, one at a time, laid down. Characteristically,
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was at peace with the thing in a way I could
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not manage, and when I finally confessed the
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hunger to her one night, she said it gently right.
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You're hungry for the label, she said, and I
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understand it, but the label was never the thing.
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He doesn't call me anything either. And I don't
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care because I'm not raising a word, I'm raising
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a boy, and the boy is here, and the boy let me
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teach him the bias yesterday and laughed once,
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actually laughed, and you want to trade that
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for a syllable? She was mending something, not
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looking up. Names are labels on jars. You're
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standing here desperate for the label while the
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jar is already full of the jam. What does it
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matter what the label says? or whether there's
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a label at all, if the jam is there. The jam
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is there. I can taste it. He's ours, and we're
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his, and not one of the three of us has the right
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word for it yet, and the not having the word
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changes precisely nothing about the jam. And
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then, more gently, because she had seen how much
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it was costing me, he'll name us when naming
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us is safe, or he never will, and either way
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we will have done the thing. Don't make him pay
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with a word he's not ready for, for your need
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to hear it. You of all people know the difference
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between the name of a thing and the thing. The
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nearest it came in those early weeks was not
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a thing he said to me, but a thing I overheard
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him say about me, which is, I have come to think
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how the wounded always claim you first. The social
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worker came for a routine visit, the kind they
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do after a placement, and she sat with Kabir
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alone for a while in the front room, and I was
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in the passage not meaning to listen but unable
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not to, and I heard her ask him, in her kind
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professional way, how he was finding it here
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with the family, and I heard him reject the word
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family. They're not my family, he said, flatly,
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and something in me dropped, and then, after
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a pause, in the same flat voice, he finished
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the thought, and the finish was this. But it's
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the last one. They don't send you back from here.
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I checked. And the social worker asked how he
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had checked, and he said, with a seven -year
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-old certainty, I just know, this is the last
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house. And I stood in the passage with my heart
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going over because he had refused the word family
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and given me, instead, something so much larger
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and more load -bearing than the word. The news
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that he had privately concluded we were permanent,
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that the back door really was bricked up, that
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whatever we were called, we were the people who
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did not send you back. He could not yet say Papa,
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but he had decided we were the last house. And
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the last house is a claim no smaller than the
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name, made in the only vocabulary a child that
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careful can yet afford. I went away and sat with
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that for a long time and made my peace with the
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missing word, and the peace was real and not
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resignation. Because I understood, turning it
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over, that I had been making the writer's oldest
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error, the one all six notebooks should have
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cured me of, mistaking the name of a thing for
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the thing. I had spent years learning to see
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Celonie without needing to narrate her, learning
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that the looking precedes and exceeds the words
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for it, that love is what you do and not what
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you call it, and here I was. Hungry for a label,
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as though the bond between me and that guarded
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boy did not fully exist until it had been christened,
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as though the last house were somehow less than
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Papa when it was, if anything more, being the
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thing the child had reasoned his own way to rather
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than the thing he had been taught to say. The
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relationship was real. It was real at every shared
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breakfast, on every weekend metro, in the bias
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of every scrap of cloth Saloni handed him. It
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was real and growing whether or not it ever found
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its name. And to make my contentment conditional
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on the word was to value the label over the jam
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exactly as Saloni had accused. And there was
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a freedom in finally seeing it that way, a lightness
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I had not felt since the hunger first took hold
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of me. To stop meeting the word was to stop measuring
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the relationship against a milestone it had not
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reached, and to start simply living inside the
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one we actually had. So much of human unhappiness,
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I have come to think, is exactly this. The refusal
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to enjoy the real thing in front of you, because
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it has not yet been stamped with the official
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mark you were taught to wait for. The couple
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who cannot be happy until they are married. The
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worker until promoted. the parent until called
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by the name. The mark, when it finally comes,
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changes nothing that was not already there. I
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set the hunger down, that night, and felt how
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heavy it had been only by the lightness of having
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put it on the floor. The name, if it came, would
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be a lovely thing, but it would only be describing,
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late and approximately, a bond that had been
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doing perfectly well without it. I wrote it that
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night in the sixth notebook, the house quiet,
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a boy asleep down the hall who did not call me
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anything and had decided I was the last house.
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That a name is a label and not the thing, and
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that I, who fill notebooks, who love the true
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word past all reason, had to learn again with
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a child what I had learned once with a wife.
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that the realist bonds often go longest unnamed,
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and that the naming, when it comes, adds nothing
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to the reality, but only at last points at it.
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The word Papa would not make Kabir more mine
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than the last house had already made him. It
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would only be the official seal on a document
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long since in force. And so the discipline of
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the name turned out to be the same discipline
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as all the rest. You do not demand to be named
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any more than you demand to be loved or to be
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met. You do the thing faithfully in the dark,
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without the word, for as long as it takes, and
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you let the child arrive at the vocabulary on
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his own schedule or not at all, secure in the
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knowledge that the thing is real regardless,
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that the jam is in the jar whatever the label
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says, and that a man who needs the word more
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than he trusts the bond has understood neither.
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He had decided I was the last house. I could
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wait a very long time for Papa on the strength
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of that. I could, if I had to, wait forever.
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That, I understood, was the final proof that
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the hunger had really lifted. Not that I had
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talked myself out of wanting the name, but that
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I had become able to imagine never getting it
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and finding the life complete anyway. The wanting
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that can only be satisfied is a hunger. The wanting
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that can be at peace whether or not it is ever
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fed is something closer to love. I had crossed,
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somewhere in that quiet evening, from the first
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to the second, from needing Kabir to call me
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Papa to simply wanting his life to go well, with
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me in it under any name or none. And the strange
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thing, the thing the notebooks keep teaching
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me in every new form, is that it is only after
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you stop needing the name that you become, at
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last, the kind of person a frightened child might
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one day feel safe enough to give it to. Then
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the working line, the sixth notebook open, a
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nameless tenderness filling the quiet flat. Do
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not demand the name. Do the thing. and let the
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name find its own way to you if it ever does
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the deepest bonds are often the slowest to be
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named because the people in them a guarded child
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a half -woken spouse know in their bodies that
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to name a thing is to confess you need it and
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need is the most dangerous admission the frightened
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can make so they withhold the word long after
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the bond is real not from coldness, but from
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self -protection, and the loving response is
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not to coax the word out of them for your own
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comfort, but to keep doing the unnamed thing
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until the day they feel safe enough to christen
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it, or until you both grow old in a love that
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never needed christening. The label is not the
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jam. Do not starve, standing beside a full jar,
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for want of a word painted on the glass. Feed
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the child. Earn the house. The name will come
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when it is safe, or it will never come and not
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be missed, and either way you will have done
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the only thing that was ever actually the point.
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I capped the pen and looked down the dark hall
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toward the room of the boy who had no word for
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me and had ruled me, in the social worker's hearing,
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the last house he would ever be sent to. It was
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enough. It was, I was surprised to find, more
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than enough. I had wanted to be called Papa,
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and I might be, one day, or might not, and I
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discovered as I sat there that I had stopped
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minding which, because somewhere in the careful
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machinery of that guarded seven -year -old's
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heart, a decision had been quietly handed down
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that outweighed any word. The decision that this
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house, this one, with these two unnamed people
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in it, was the one that did not send you back.
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You can build a whole life on being the last
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house. The name, if it ever comes, will only
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be the boy catching up in language to a thing
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he already knows. To be continued in episode
18:54
was episode 67 of My Playful Wife. If this story
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is staying with you, The next episode is already
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waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss it. The
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complete book is on Amazon and early episodes
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plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon. Links
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are in the description. I'm Mia. Thank you for
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listening.