Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 85: The New Line

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 85: The New Line · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. It is the temptation to hold
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on far too tightly, to be so grimly determined
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never to under -attend my son the way I was under
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-attended that I over -attend him instead, that
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I make my love a weather he has to escape rather
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than a... Kabir is ten now. I have to say it
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plainly at the start of this new book, because
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the saying of it still catches me somewhere under
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the ribs. Ten double figures a whole hand of
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years on from the frightened seven -year -old
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who came to us not believing he would be allowed
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to stay. Two winters have turned since the Marigolds.
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He is longer in the leg and lower in the voice.
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He has opinions now, real and specific ones,
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about matters I had not known children held opinions
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about, and he no longer takes my hand to cross
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the road unless the road is genuinely bad, and
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I cannot tell you the exact day he stopped, which
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is how all the important stoppings go, not with
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an announcement, but with an absence you notice
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weeks later, and cannot date, and cannot undo.
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And this last week, they opened a new line on
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the Delhi Metro. I mentioned the two facts in
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the same breath, my son turning 10 and the new
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line opening because they turned out, that week,
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to be the same fact wearing two coats, though
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it took me the whole of the following Sunday
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to see it. A city grows the way a child grows,
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in precisely the direction of more reach. Another
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line. Another few kilometers of track flung out
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past where the map used to stop, another stretch
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of the world brought within a single morning's
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travel. Delhi had, that week, extended itself
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a little further into the scrub at its edge.
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And so, that very same week had Kabir. I had
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been carrying the two as unrelated pieces of
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news. They were, as I would learn out on the
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platform at the end of the line. The identical
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piece of news, which is that the things you love
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do not hold still. They keep laying new track
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toward horizons you never authorized. You will
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remember, if you have been with us a while, what
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the Metro was to Kabir when he first came to
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us. It was his one safe thing. A boy who could
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not yet trust a single soft... Unpredictable,
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human being could put his entire weight, without
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fear, on a system of colored lines that behaved
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exactly the same way every single day that had
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never once lied to him, that told him, in a city
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and a life where nothing and no one else would,
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precisely what was coming next. He had the cloth
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map tacked to his wall before he had learned
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to fully trust the two of us. He memorized the
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network the way frightened children memorize
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things, completely as armor, so that no part
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of it could ever ambush him. The Metro was how
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he made an ungovernable world hold still long
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enough to be survived. It was, for that first
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long while, the most dependable parent he had,
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legible, punctual, always there at the appointed
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minute, never raising its voice, and above all
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never. ever going away. I do not say any of this
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to diminish it, because it saved him, that map.
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In the months when Saloni and I were still strangers
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he had not yet decided whether to risk, the Metro
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asked nothing of him, and gave him the one thing
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a terrified child most needs, which is not love.
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He could not yet take love, but predictability,
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the plain, unglamorous mercy of a world that
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does the same thing twice. You cannot begin to
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heal inside chaos. He needed a single fixed thing
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to stand on while the rest of us proved, slowly,
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over months, that we too would keep coming back.
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And the Metro was that fixed thing, the first
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solid stone in the river, and every scrap of
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trust he later risked on us he had practiced
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first, I am certain of it, on those dependable
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colored lines. The map never competed with us.
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It was the trestle the whole of us was later
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built upon. And so I was not at all prepared
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for what the new line showed me, which was that
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the Metro had, at some point while I was not
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watching, quietly changed its job. We wrote it
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on the opening Sunday, the three of us, out along
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the fresh, unworn track toward a terminus none
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of us had ever stood at. the far raw edge of
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the city where the colonies give out into scrub
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and the rails run up on stilts above the fields.
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And I watched Kabir at the map by the doors,
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and he was not clinging to it. He was using it.
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He was not studying the lines the old way, for
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reassurance, to check that the world still made
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its promised sense. He was reading them the way
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you read a road you are about to travel, forward,
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outward, with appetite. He called the interchange
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before the recorded voice could, the way he always
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has, but the whole tone of it had changed. It
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was no longer an anxious child reciting his armor.
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It was a competent boy announcing a destination.
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Somewhere in two years, the Metro had stopped
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being the thing that kept Kabir safe at home
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and had become the thing that was going to carry
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him out into the world. The refuge had turned
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into a vehicle. The map on the wall had become,
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without my noticing, a map you leave by. It is
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a strange thing to watch a beloved object change
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its entire meaning in your child's hands without
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the object itself changing at all. The map on
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his wall was the identical map. The lines ran
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exactly where they had always run. Not a single
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station had moved. What had moved was Kabir,
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and because he had moved, the same cloth square
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that had once said to him you are safe, the world
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is orderly, nothing here can ambush you now said
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something altogether different, something closer
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to you can go, look how far, look how much of
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it is already within your reach. The object is
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only ever a mirror held up to the stage the child
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is standing on. I had bought him that map to
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study a frightened seven -year -old. The very
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same map was now quietly recruiting a confident
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ten -year -old to leave. I had armed, without
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the faintest idea I was doing it, the instrument
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of my own gentle obsolescence. He made the request
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to the new terminus, out on the windy platform
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at the very end of the line with the field spread
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grey below us. He asked it casually, much too
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casually, in the way children ask the things
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they have actually thought very hard about. Whether,
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now that he was ten, now that he genuinely knew
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the network better than I did, which was by this
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point simply a fact, he might start taking the
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Metro to Tara's by himself. Not with me. Not
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with me trailing three careful steps behind,
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pretending to read something on my phone. On
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his own. Tapping his own card. riding his own
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two stops, walking out into the afternoon at
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the far end, and arriving somewhere entirely
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under his own steam. It is such a small thing,
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objectively. Two stops on a wide, safe daytime
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line between his home and his oldest friends.
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It did not feel small. It felt like the first
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click of a ratchet I had always known in the
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abstract was installed in the machinery of this,
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and was nonetheless nowhere near ready to feel
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turn. The mechanism by which a child you have
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spent everything you have to draw close begins,
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correctly and healthily and devastatingly, to
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move away. What made it hard was not that I begrudged
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him the going. I want to be honest about that,
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because it would be a simpler and more flattering
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story if my ache had been mere possessiveness,
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a father who wanted to keep his boy small and
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near. It was not that. I wanted him to go. I
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had spent two whole years wanting precisely this
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for him, a Kabir bold enough to want range, to
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strike out, to trust the world enough to move
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through it unescorted. The difficulty was subtler
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than possessiveness, and more shaming. It was
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that his readiness to go had arrived so much
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sooner than my readiness to be left, and there
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was no way to synchronize the two, no way to
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ask time to hold his growing still until my letting
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go had caught up to it. He was ready. I was not.
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And the whole discipline of the years ahead I
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could see already, was going to consist of pretending,
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convincingly and entirely for his sake, to be
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ready some long while before I truly was. Because
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here's the joke at the very center of the whole
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enterprise, the one nobody thinks to tell you
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when you set out, terrified, to make a frightened
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child feel safe. You pour everything into the
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first years, into making him feel secure enough
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to stay, to trust you, to attach, to believe
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the floor will hold and the people will not vanish
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in the night. And then if you succeed, if you
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actually manage the thing, the reward for your
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success is that he turns and uses the very security
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you built to leave. A securely attached child
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is not a child who clings. He is a child who
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ventures, precisely and only because he knows
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the base is solid and will still be there when
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he comes back. It is the frightened ones who
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cling. Kabir wanting to ride out alone was not
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the failure of everything we had done for him.
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It was the proof of it. The whole return on it.
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Arriving in a shape I had somehow never once
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pictured across all those years of picturing.
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A boy at a windy terminus, asking to be let go.
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I had worked to make the map feel safe, so that
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he could feel safe. And now he was safe, and
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the safe boy wanted to ride the map away from
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me. I had, without ever framing it to myself
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in these terms, spent two years successfully
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working myself out of a job. There is no other
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work quite like it when you stop to think about
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it. No other undertaking a person pours his whole
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heart into for the express purpose of not being
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needed at the end of it. Every other kind of
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devotion wants, on some level, to perpetuate
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itself. The good teacher, the good doctor, even
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the good friend, all in some measure want to
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go on being the teacher, the doctor, the friend.
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Only a parent labors if he is doing the thing
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rightly, toward his own dismissal, toward the
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day the child can do without him the very thing
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he was most needed for. To father well is to
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spend years making yourself steadily less essential
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to the one person you would, without a second's
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hesitation, die for. It is the most counter -instinctive
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work I know of, and nobody thinks to warn you
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that succeeding at it will feel, from the inside,
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so very much like being slowly, lovingly, and
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entirely correctly discarded. And I felt, standing
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there on the platform, the particular tug of
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my own history, which is always where my danger
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lies. A man raised underwatched the way I was
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carries a specific temptation into his own fathering,
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and it is not, as you might reasonably assume,
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the temptation to neglect. It is the exact opposite.
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It is the temptation to hold on far too tightly,
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to be so grimly determined never to underattend
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my son the way I was underattended that I overattend
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him instead, that I make my love a weather he
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has to escape rather than a house he can leave
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and come back to. My father erred by never once
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looking up from his paper. I am forever one bad
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instinct away from erring in the other direction
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entirely by never once looking away. And the
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loving thing, the genuinely maddening loving
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thing, is neither of those. It is the narrow
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calibrated middle. The attention that also releases,
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the hand that holds a child firmly for exactly
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as long as he needs it held, and then, at the
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right and terrible moment, against everything
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in you, opens. It was Celonie, of course, who
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saw the whole of this cross my face out there
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on the platform, because she reads me the way
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our son reads the map. She did not say anything
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large. She came and stood beside me while Kabir
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looked out over the fields already halfway to
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Terra's and his mind, and she said, simply, you're
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going to say yes. Not a question. And I said
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that I knew that I was, that I only needed a
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minute first. And she said, take the minute,
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then say yes. And then she said the thing I have
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been turning over ever since, the thing I suspect
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is going to be the whole quiet work of this next
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stretch of our lives together. We didn't teach
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him to feel safe so that he would stay. We taught
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him so that he could go. This is what it looks
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like when it works. It's meant to hurt exactly
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like this. She has always been able to see the
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true shape of a thing of full season before I
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can. She had already made her peace. Or had at
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least begun to with the fact I was only just
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meeting on that cold platform. That we had never
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actually been building a wall around a child.
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We had been building a launch pad. And a launch
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pad is, by its entire design and purpose, a thing
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that ends up empty. I looked at her when she
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said it. My wife, who had lost her own mother
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at 19 and knew a great deal more than I did about
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the far end of these departures, and I understood
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that she was speaking to me from a country I
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had not yet had to enter. She had been, herself,
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the one who left once. She had ridden out on
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her own line, away from a mother she would then
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lose before she could ever ride back with anything
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to show for the leaving. She knew both ends of
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it. The child's going and the parent's staying.
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In a way I still only knew the one end of, and
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her steadiness on that platform was not indifference.
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It was the hard -won calm of a person who has
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grieved a departure from the inside and come
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out the other side of it still able to say, and
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mean. And yet you must let them go. It is the
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only thing you can do for the growing that is
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not, in the end, a quiet betrayal of it. I wrote
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it that night in the sixth notebook. The boy
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asleep down the hall with the map on his wall
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that was no longer armor, but itinerary. The
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new line freshly inked onto it that evening in
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his own careful hand. That the cruelest and the
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kindest fact of raising a child turns out to
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be one and the same fact that the whole enormous
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labor of it is aimed from the very first day
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at your own redundancy. You work. knowingly or
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not, to make yourself unnecessary. You pour years
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into becoming the safe base that a child can
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one day leave, and the truest measure of whether
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you did the work well is precisely how far and
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how confidently and how soon he eventually rides
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away from it. I had believed, all through the
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making of Kabir safe, that I was binding him
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to us forever. I had been doing very nearly the
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opposite, and rightly so. I had been building
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into him the exact security that would let him
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need me less, and then less again, and then one
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day only on Sundays, and then in the end only
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in the way a grown man still needs the city that
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raised him, not as a place to live, but as a
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place to have come from, and to return to, and
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to know is still there. The map had changed its
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meaning while I wasn't looking. So I was beginning
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to understand, had I... You spend a child's first
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years making him feel safe enough to stay, and
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then you spend all the rest making him safe enough
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to leave. And it is the same work, the identical
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work, only the direction of it quietly reverses
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under you. The very map you gave him to still
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his fear becomes the map he rides away on. Do
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not read his going as you're failing. His going
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is the whole thing succeeding, arriving in the
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one disguise you were never braced for, which
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is loss. Hold on and let go in the same motion
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because a hand that only grips is a cage and
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a hand that only opens is a desertion and a child
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needs the third and hardest thing, the hand that
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holds him steadily enough that he comes to believe
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he is safe to let go of it. Build the launch
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pad. Ink the new line onto his map with your
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own hand, and when he asks you at the windy end
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of it to ride out alone, take your minute and
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then say yes. I capped the pen. I had told him
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yes out on the platform after my minute that
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next Sunday he could ride the two stops to Tara's
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on his own, his own card, his own two feet at
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the other end. He had not hooped or thanked me
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or made anything of it. He had only nodded, in
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the particular way he nods when a thing he has
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carefully calculated comes out exactly the way
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he calculated it would, and turned back to the
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fields, already, in his mind, gone. And I had
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stood beside my wife at the far end of the new
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line with the wind coming up off the scrub, and
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felt the whole ground of the coming year shift,
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quietly and permanently, beneath us. Down the
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hall he slept now with the new line inked onto
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his map in his own hand, running clean off the
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edge of everything I had ever navigated for him,
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out toward a terminus I had never seen. Next
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Sunday, he would ride to the first of them without
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me, and I would stay home and not follow. And
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begin to learn the thing this whole book is going
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to be about, the hardest thing a hand is ever
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asked to do, which is to hold on to a child by,
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at precisely the right moment, and against the
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whole screaming grain of yourself, letting go.
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To be continued in episode 86, The First Time
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85 of My Playful Wife. If this story is staying
19:22
with you, the next episode is already waiting.
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Subscribe so you don't miss it. The complete
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chapters are on my Patreon. Links are in the
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description. I'm Mia. Thank you for listening.