Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 66: Coming Home

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 66: Coming Home · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. Saloni leaned against me in
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the doorway. Well, she said, very quietly, watching
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him sleep. He's home. And then, with the unsentimental
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honesty that is the truest thing about her, now
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we just have to spend about ten years making
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it true. He came home on a Thursday, which seems
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wrong, somehow, that the largest day of three
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lives should fall on so ordinary a weekday, but
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the largest days mostly do. They do not announce
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themselves with weather. There was paperwork,
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a last signature, a kind goodbye from the staff
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at the home who had cared for him and who would,
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I understood for the first time watching them,
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miss him. And then there was a car and a short
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drive across the city that had no idea anything
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was happening. And then there was Kabir, seven
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years old, standing in the doorway of our flat
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with one small bag and his folded map, looking
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at the place that was now, by the careful machinery
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of the state and a great deal of waiting his.
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Home. The staff at the home surprised me. I had
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carried, without examining it, a faint cartoon
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of such places and such people, and the reality
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rebuked it. These were women who had loved him.
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In the difficult, institutional way you love
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a child you know you will lose, who had kept
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him fed and safe and as cherished as a rotating
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staff and a tight budget allow, and who now hugged
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him goodbye with a grief they were professional
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enough to keep mostly off their faces. I understood,
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watching them. That Kabir had not come from nowhere
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into our keeping. He came from theirs, from years
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of imperfect but real care, by people whose whole
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vocation is to love children toward the day those
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children leave them. I was grateful to them in
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a way I had not expected, and a little humbled
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because they do the hardest version of the thing,
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the loving that is built to end. I had imagined
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this moment for months. And I want to record
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that the reality of it was nothing like the imagining,
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because the imagining had a swell of music in
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it, a rightness, a sense of arrival, and the
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reality had none of those things. The reality
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was a frightened small boy in a doorway, holding
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his bag too tightly, not crossing the threshold,
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looking at a room he did not trust, in the company
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of two adults who wanted desperately to make
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him feel welcome and could not, because feeling
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welcome is not a thing you can do to a person.
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It was, in fact, almost unbearably awkward. And
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I understood, standing there, that I had confused
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two things my whole life. as most people do,
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arrival and homecoming. He had arrived. The coming
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home had not even begun. I think this confusion
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is at the root of a great deal of human disappointment,
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this collapsing of arrival into homecoming, of
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the wedding into the marriage, of the keys into
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the home, of the birth into the raising. We are
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sold the thresholds and not the long interiors.
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The films and the songs end at the arrival, the
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doorway. The I do, the first sight of the long
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for thing, as though crossing the threshold were
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the accomplishment rather than the mere beginning
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of the actual work. And so we reach the things
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we wanted and feel, bewilderingly, that nothing
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has been completed, because nothing has, the
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threshold was never the destination, only the
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door to the real and unphotographed labor on
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the far side of it. I had reached a great many
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thresholds in my life believing each was an arrival.
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This time I knew better. This time I knew the
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door was only a door. He would not, at first,
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go into the room. We had made it perfect, or
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as close to perfect as we could guess at. The
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bed Saloni had bought on faith, made up. A few
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things a seven -year -old might want. chosen
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with agonized care, the room that had been an
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empty question for so long now furnished into
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an answer. And he stood at its door and looked
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at it with naked suspicion. this too good room
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being offered to him, and I realized that to
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a child who had been moved as many times as he
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had, a nice room is not a comfort but a warning,
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because nice rooms had been shown to him before,
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in the homes of families who then did not keep
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him, and so the niceness itself had become a
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thing associated with the disappointment that
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followed it. He trusted the room less for being
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lovely. Celonie saw it too, and did the right
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thing, which was to undersell it. It's just a
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room, she said, lightly, not making a production
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of it. It's yours. You can change it, or wreck
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it, or leave it exactly like this. Nobody's going
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to take it back. And something in the flatness
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of that, the deliberate refusal to perform generosity
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at him, let him take one step inside. I filed
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it away. the way she had handled it, as one more
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thing to learn from her about loving the guarded,
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that you must never aim your generosity at them
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like a spotlight, because generosity performed
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is a dead incurred, and a child who has been
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moved and moved again is exquisitely allergic
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to being placed in anyone's debt. Make the gift
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small. Make it casual. Make it sound revocable
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even when it is not, so that he does not feel
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the trap of obligation closing around him. The
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most loving thing Selene did that whole first
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day was to refuse to act as though she were doing
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something loving. To hand him an enormous thing
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in the tone you would use to hand someone a glass
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of water, so that he could take it without having
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to be grateful, which is the one thing a proud
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wounded child cannot yet afford to be. The first
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afternoon and evening were a long, careful, exhausting
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improvisation, and they taught me the difference
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between a visit and a life. A visit I had learned
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to do. A visit is two hours, warmly, on your
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best behavior, with a social worker to hand and
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an end time in sight. You can be your most patient
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self for two hours. But this was not a visit.
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This was the beginning of the unending thing,
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the forever of it, the dinner that had to be
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cooked and the bath that had to be negotiated
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and the thousand small frictions of an actual
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shared life with a wary stranger who happened
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to be seven. And there was no end time and no
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social worker and no best behavior that could
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be sustained because a life cannot be performed,
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only lived. I felt the enormity of it settle
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over the evening. that we had not taken on an
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afternoon with Kabir but a permanence, that this
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small, suspicious person was now, in the deepest
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legal and moral sense, simply ours, to feed and
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frighten and fail and love every single day for
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the rest of our lives, exactly as if he had been
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born to us, which the looking, I kept reminding
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myself, made as good as true. And the permanence
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was the part my body had not understood until
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that first evening, however much my mind had
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agreed to it on paper. Through all the visits,
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some animal part of me had kept a door open behind
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us, an unspoken, if this doesn't work, a way
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back to the simpler life. That door closed on
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the Thursday, quietly, completely. There was
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no longer an if. Whatever happened now, however
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hard it got, however little we slept or how badly
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we failed on a given day, we were not going to
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hand him back. We had crossed out of the conditional
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and into the permanent, and the permanence was
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at once the most frightening thing I had ever
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agreed to and the only ground on which a child
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like Kabir could ever begin to heal, because
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conditional love is no use to him at all. He
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had had conditional. What he needed was the kind
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with the back door bricked up. We had just bricked
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it up. The first night was the hardest, and I
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will not pretend otherwise, because the truth
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of it matters more than a prettier version would.
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He could not sleep. We had not expected him to.
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A child does not sleep easily in his fourth or
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fifth strange room. in a silence that is not
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the institutional silence his body has learned,
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in a flat whose night sounds are all unfamiliar.
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He did not cry, which I think would almost have
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been easier. He simply lay rigid in the lovely
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bed with his eyes open, and then, when he thought
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we could not see, got out of it and sat on the
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floor in the corner with his back to the wall
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and his folded map in his hands, watching the
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door. The bed bought on faith held no one. The
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boy sat on the floor and guarded the door against
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whatever his short life had taught him comes
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in the night. And Saloni's instinct was to go
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to him, to gather him up and mine. The unwatched
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boy's instinct, which was right here, was to
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do the harder and more counterintuitive thing,
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which was to let him guard his door and not force
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a comfort he could not yet receive and only make
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sure, without crowding him, that he was not alone
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in the dark with it. This is the hardest thing
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to explain to people who have not loved a wounded
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child, and the thing they most often get wrong,
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because every instinct and every film says the
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opposite, that there are moments when the loving
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thing is to not embrace, to not soothe, to not
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close the distance, but to hold a respectful
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station nearby and let the frightened one keep
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the autonomy of their fear. To rush a child like
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Kabir into comfort is to overrule him. To insist
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that your need to soothe outranks his need to
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manage his own terror in his own way, which is
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one of the few forms of control a powerless child
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still has. Celonie wanted to gather him up because
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it would have comforted her. Staying back, hands
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empty, near but not reaching, was the harder
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love and the truer one. So I did the sidelong
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thing. The only thing that works on a child like
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him, the only thing that would have worked on
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me. I did not gather him up. I sat down in the
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hallway outside his open door, not too close,
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my own back against the wall, near enough that
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he could see me if he looked, far enough that
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I was asking nothing of him, and I left a light
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on and I stayed. And after a long time... From
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the dark of his corner, his small, flat voice
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asked me a question, and the question was not
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are you going to leave me, and it was not I'm
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scared. It was, does the metro run at night?
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Because he was checking, you see, whether the
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one system that had never failed him still existed
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in this strange new dark, whether the lines were
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still there under the sleeping city, whether
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the world still had in it the orderly, reliable
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thing he trusted when he could trust nothing
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else. And I told him the truth, because the truth
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was the comfort, that the last trains run a little
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after eleven, and the first ones a little after
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six, and that in between the trains rest in the
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depots, and the lines wait, empty and exactly
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where they were for the morning. And in the dark
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I heard him let out a breath, because the lines
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were still there, and would be there at six,
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and so, by some logic only a wounded child would
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follow, perhaps the rest of it might hold too.
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I have thought a great deal since about that
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question. Does the metro run at night, and how
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much it contained, and how badly a less careful
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adult might have answered it. The wrong answer,
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the loving -sounding wrong answer, would have
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been reassurance. Don't worry about the trains,
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go to sleep, you're safe now. It would have missed
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everything. He had not asked to be reassured.
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He had asked for information about the one structure
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he trusted, and to wave the question away as
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a child's bedtime worry would have been to refuse
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him the only comfort he could actually use, which
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was not my warmth but the confirmed reliability
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of the lines. The wounded do not always want
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to be soothed. Sometimes they want to be told,
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accurately, that the thing they depend on is
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still there. Answer the question they actually
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asked. He fell asleep, eventually, on the floor,
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and I carried him to the bed he did not yet trust,
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and Saloni and I stood in the doorway of the
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room that was finally not empty and looked at
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the sleeping shape of our enormous new reality.
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We did not say much. There was not much to say
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that the weight of the evening had not already
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said. But I felt, standing there with my wife
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in the small hours, the strange double thing
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of it. The grief, faint and real, for the long
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simple two -ness that was now over forever, the
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marriage of just us that we had spent six years
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learning to see, which had this Thursday become
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permanently a marriage of three, and underneath
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the grief, vastly larger, the thing the grief
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was the price of, which was that there was a
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child asleep in our home who had not had one,
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and that we had done it, the impossible. Widening,
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we had led a third person into the rare closed
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circle of an awake marriage and the circle had
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not broken, only grown larger and more frightening
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and more alive. Saloni leaned against me in the
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doorway. Well, she said, very quietly, watching
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him sleep. He's home. And then, with the unsentimental
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honesty that is the truest thing about her, Now
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we just have to spend about ten years making
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it true. I wrote it that night, very late, the
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sixth notebook on my knee in the hall outside
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his door, where I had decided to stay until morning.
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That I had learned in a single Thursday that
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coming home is not an event but a verb, not a
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threshold you cross but a thing you do, slowly,
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together, for years. We had given Kabir a house,
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a room, a bed, a legal place. We had not yet
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given him a home, because a home is not a thing
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that can be given at all. It is a thing that
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is built, between people, out of ten thousand
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ordinary repeated proofs that this time the adults
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stay, that this room is not taken back, that
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the lines are still there at six in the morning,
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the house we had handed him in an afternoon.
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The home would take us years, and would be made
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not of the lovely bed but of every night I sat
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in the hallway asking nothing, every breath he
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let out in the dark when the world turned out
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to be holding, every small, reliable thing accumulated
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past the point where he expected it to be taken
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away. He had arrived. Now, at last, after all
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the waiting and the forms and the small steps,
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the actual work could begin. the work i was apparently
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built for having needed it so badly myself and
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never had it the slow daily manufacture of a
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home around a child who had stopped believing
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in them there was a symmetry in it that did not
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escape me sitting in that hallway i had spent
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the first half of my life as a child no one quite
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made a home for and the second half learning
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late and painfully to make one for a wife and
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now in what i suppose is the third part of it
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I was to make one for a child as unhoused in
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his heart as I had once been in mine, to give,
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deliberately and daily, the exact thing whose
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absence had shaped me, to someone shaped by the
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same absence. It is not nothing to be handed
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the chance to give a child the thing you most
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needed and never got. It is, I think, as close
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as a life ever comes to repairing itself backward,
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to reaching down the years and tending the unwatched
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boy you were by tending the unwatched boy in
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front of you. I could not house the child I had
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been. I could house this one. Then the working
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line, the sixth notebook open, a light left on,
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a boy asleep at last in a bed he did not yet
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trust. A marriage three people large now and
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holding. Do not confuse arrival with homecoming.
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You can give a child a house in an afternoon.
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A room. A bed. A key. A legal place to stand
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and feel. Handing it over. The swell of having
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done a great thing. You have done a great thing.
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But you have not given him a home. Because a
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home is not a possession that transfers. It is
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a trust that accretes. built only over years
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out of the smallest reliable proofs, repeated
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past all doubt, that the door is not locked against
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him, that the room is not taken back, that the
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people are still there in the morning. The lovely
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bed is not the home. The home is every ordinary
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night you stay, asking nothing, until the staying
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itself becomes a thing he can finally believe.
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He has arrived. Now do the long, slow work of
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his coming home. which is not a day but a decade,
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and which begins, tonight, with a light left
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on and a door left open and a man in the hallway,
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going nowhere. I capped the pen and did not go
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to bed. I stayed in the hallway, on the floor,
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my own back against the wall a few feet from
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his open door, the way I would stay, in one form
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or another, for years. And somewhere before dawn
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I heard him turn over in the bed he had not trusted
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and not wake and sleep on. And I understood that
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this small thing, a frightened boy sleeping through
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till morning in a strange room because a light
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was on and a man was near, was the first brick
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of the home. Laid in the dark, the first of the
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ten thousand it would take. The trains were resting
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in their depots. The lines were waiting under
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the sleeping city. And at six, when the first
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one ran, a seven -year -old who had been passed
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over his whole life was going to wake up for
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the first morning of the rest of it in a house
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where two people had decided, permanently and
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against all his expectations, to stay. To be
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continued in episode 67, The Name. All rights
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reserved. That was episode 66 of My Playful Wife.
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