Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 65: Small Steps

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 65: Small Steps · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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my playful wife there is no breakthrough the
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films lie about this with their single magic
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afternoon when the guarded child melts real trust
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is not built in an afternoon the visits became
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the shape of our life that season twice a week
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Then more, the slow supervised architecture by
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which a child is moved, if all goes well, from
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a place that is not his home toward people who
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might become his. And I learned, across them,
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the single most important and least dramatic
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truth about loving a wounded child, which is
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that the progress does not look like progress.
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It looks like almost nothing. It looks like a
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great deal of effort spent on visits that an
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outside observer would call failures, small gray
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hours in which very little visibly happens, repeated
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and repeated and repeated until, so gradually
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you cannot point to the day it changed, then
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nothing becomes something. I found this almost
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unbearable at first, the sheer slowness of it,
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the way it asked me to spend real love on hours
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that returned, visibly nothing at all. We are
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trained, all of us, to expect effort to show
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results, to read a lack of visible progress as
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a sign that we are doing it wrong. But a wounded
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child runs on a different clock entirely, a geological
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one, in which trust accretes like rock, invisibly,
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one infinitesimal layer at a time, and the layer
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you lay down today will not look like anything
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for months, and must be laid down anyway. I had
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to unlearn my whole instinct for measurable return,
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to give without a scoreboard, to set down one
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invisible layer and go home not knowing whether
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it had held, and come back and set down another.
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There is no breakthrough. The films lie about
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this with their single magic afternoon when the
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guarded child melts. Real trust is not built
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in an afternoon. It is built in increments too
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small to feel, by the only force that builds
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it, which is showing up again and then again
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and then again, until the showing up itself becomes
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the thing the child can finally believe. There
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was a bad visit early in the sequence, and it
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taught me more than any of the good ones. We
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arrived one afternoon, and Kabir was simply gone.
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Not physically. He was there on the floor with
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his map, but the small openings of the previous
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visits had closed completely, and he met us with
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a flat hostility he had not shown before, refused
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to speak, refused the metro, refused me, turned
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his back with a deliberateness that was almost
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theatrical. And I understood, watching it, exactly
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what it was because I had done versions of it
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myself. It was a test. He had let us in a little
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across the previous weeks, and letting in is
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terrifying to a child who has been left, and
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so some part of him needed to find out, urgently,
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before he risked any more, whether we were the
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kind who would leave the moment he was difficult,
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whether our interest was conditional on his being
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charming, the way every prospective family's
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interest had implicitly been. He was being unlovable
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on purpose, to see if we would stop coming. It
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is the most important test such a child administers
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and the cruelest because he aims it precisely
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at the people beginning to matter and the only
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way to pass it is so simple and so hard. You
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do not leave. You come back the next time exactly
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as warm and exactly as present as if the bad
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visit had not happened because that not the good
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visits but the returning after the bad ones is
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the actual medicine the lived proof that this
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time the adults do not go away when you are hard
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to love. It is when you think about it the deepest
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test of love there is and the one most adults
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quietly fail without ever knowing they were being
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tested. Anyone can love a charming child. The
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whole machinery of wanting a child is built around
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the charming version, the one who runs into your
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arms. That is what the hopeful families came
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to the home picturing, and it is why they left
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when the real child turned out to be difficult.
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But a child who has been left does not need you
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to love his charming self, which was never in
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danger. He needs you to love the version of him
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that is testing you, the deliberately unlovable
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one. because that is the only version whose lovability
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he actually doubts. To pass, you must love him
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most precisely when he is working hardest to
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make you stop. It is the opposite of what instinct
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says, and almost no one manages it, and it is
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the whole of the thing. The thing that cracked
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it open in the end was the Metro itself made
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real. They allowed us, after enough visits, to
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take him out a supervised outing, the social
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worker a few steps behind, and I asked Kabir,
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sidelong as always, not looking at him, whether
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he would show me how to get somewhere complicated
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on the metro, because I always got lost and he
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plainly would not. And something happened in
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him that I had not yet seen. On the actual platform,
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with the actual trains, the boy who guarded every
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flicker of feeling became... abruptly, a competent
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and confident commander, because here was his
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system made solid, the map he carried folded
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in his pocket risen up into steel and tile around
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him, and here he was the expert and I the helpless
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adult who needed him. He navigated. He told me
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where to stand, which carriage, how many stops.
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where to change his small voice losing its flatness
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and taking on the fluency of someone speaking,
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at last, his native language out loud. He was,
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for the length of that journey, not a guarded
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boy being assessed, but a person being useful,
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in command, safe inside the one structure in
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his life that had never once let him down. I
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followed where he led and asked nothing and let
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him be the one who knew, and somewhere around
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the third interchange I looked over. And he had,
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without noticing he was doing it, moved to stand
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close to me in the crowd, the way a child stands
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near the adult he has provisionally decided is
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his. I did not point it out, of course. That
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is the other half of the discipline, perhaps
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the harder half. When the small step finally
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comes, you must not seize it. Not exclaim, not
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reward it, not let the child see that you have
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noticed, because to notice it aloud is to make
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him self -conscious of the very letting go that
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the noticing would reverse. A guarded child who
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catches you celebrating his unguardedness will
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rearm at once, mortified, and you will have spent
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a month's progress on a single greedy moment
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of acknowledgement. So I felt him move closer,
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and I felt my whole chest fill with it, and I
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did absolutely nothing, said nothing, kept my
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eyes on the route map above the doors as though
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I had noticed nothing at all, and let him stand
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close to me unobserved, which is the only way,
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with such a child, you are permitted to be given
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anything. Saloni, meanwhile, found her own door,
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and it was not the one she had tried first. She
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had learned from the failed warmth of the first
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meeting, and she did not try it again. She is
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too good a reader of people to keep knocking
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on a door that does not open. Instead, she did
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the thing she has done her whole life, the thing
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that reaches people warmth cannot. She offered
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him not affection, but a craft. She brought cloth
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to a visit, and thread, and sat working with
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her hands not at him but beside him, and when
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his systems hungry I drifted to what she was
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doing, she showed him the secret she had once
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shown me. That cloth has lines in it, hidden
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ones, a grain and a bias, a diagonal true line
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you cannot see until you are taught to, exactly
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like the colored lines of his metro. I watched
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his face change when she said it. A fabric with
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hidden lines, an orderly system underneath the
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surface that you could learn and master and rely
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on. This was a language he already spoke, arriving
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from an unexpected direction. He let her teach
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him to find the grain of a scrap of cloth, his
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fingers serious and careful, and Celonie, who
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had been so uncharacteristically helpless at
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the first meeting, was herself again. Reaching
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a guarded child the only way she has ever reached
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anyone, not by loving at them, but by handing
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them a thing to master. She had found her sidelong
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route. It ran, of course, through her hands.
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And I felt, watching her find it, a relief that
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surprised me with its size, because some part
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of me had been quietly frightened by the first
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meeting in a way I had not admitted even to the
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notebook. If her warmth could not reach him and
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only my damage could, then the whole labor of
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him would have fallen on me, and the widening
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I had feared in the empty room would have come
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true in its worst form. The marriage split into
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the one who could reach the child and the one
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who could not. Her finding her own door undid
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that fear completely. We would not be divided
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into the parent who could and the parent who
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could not. We would be two people reaching the
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same guarded boy by two different side -long
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routes, mine through the lines of a map, hers
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through the lines of a cloth, both of us declining
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the front door, both of us arriving anyway. The
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looking had not thinned. It had doubled and come
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at him from two directions at once. The small
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winds, when they came, were so undramatic that
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you could miss them. and most people would. He
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began to save things to tell me, a metro fact
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hoarded between visits, produced with studied
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carelessness the moment we arrived, as if it
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had just occurred to him, and he had not been
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keeping it for me at all. He began, once, to
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ask Celonie whether the cloth she was working
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would be finished by the next time we came, which
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was, if you knew how to hear it, an enormous
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sentence. It assumed a next time, assumed our
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return, it was a guarded child betraying that
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he had begun, against his every defense, to count
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on us. And once, near the end of a visit, as
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we were leaving, he asked, not looking at us,
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looking hard at his map, whether we were coming
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back. Just that, are you coming back? And I understood
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that the whole of it was contained in that small,
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flat question, the entire wound and the entire
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hope, a boy who had been left enough times to
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need to ask, asking anyway, which meant he had
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begun to want the answer to be yes. We said yes.
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We would always, from now on, say yes and mean
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it and prove it by returning, because the only
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answer to are you coming back that a left child
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can eventually believe is not the word but the
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reappearance, again and again, until the question
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stops needing to be asked. It was slow, and it
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cost us, and there were nights I doubted the
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whole enterprise. I will not pretend the season
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was only tender increments. It was also exhausting
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and frightening, and full of the particular ache
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of pouring yourself toward a child who might
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still, the process being what it is, not finally
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come to us at all. There were evenings I came
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home wrung out and asked Celonie whether we were
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fooling ourselves, whether the small steps were
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real, or whether I was reading meaning into a
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boy's politeness the way the lonely do. And she,
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who had found her own footing now, studied me
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as I had once studied her. By refusing to inflate
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it or deflate it, by saying only that we were
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doing the one thing that was ours to do, which
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was to keep showing up, and that the outcome
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was not in our hands, but the showing up was,
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and that a child was learning, slowly, in the
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only way such a thing can be learned, that there
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existed in the world two adults who did not leave.
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Whether or not it ended in his coming home, she
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said, he would carry that. We were already, visit
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by visit, becoming the evidence that the world
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was not only the kind of place that had passed
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him over, that, she said, was worth doing even
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if we failed at the rest of it. We were not,
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as it turned out, going to fail at the rest of
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it. But I did not know that, in the doubting
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nights, and I want to set it down honestly that
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the doubt was real, and not merely a literary
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darkness before a known dawn. There was a genuine
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possibility, the whole way through, that it would
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not work, that some part of the careful machinery
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would decide against us, and that we would have
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poured a season of love into a child and then
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had to watch him go to strangers and carry the
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particular grief of having attached to a child
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the system then took away. People do not talk
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much about that risk, the foster carer's specific
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terror, but it is real, and we lived inside it
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for months, loving a boy we might still lose.
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with no way to protect ourselves except the one
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Saloni had named, by deciding that the loving
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was worth doing even if we lost him. Because
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the social worker took me aside after a visit
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that had gone particularly easily and said the
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words that turned the whole season toward its
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next door, that it was going well, better than
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they had hoped, that the attachment was forming.
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that it might be time soon to begin talking about
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transition about moving him in the careful staged
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way it is done from the home that was not his
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home into the one with the bed bought on faith
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and the empty room that was no longer quite empty
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and i stood in the corridor and felt the ground
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shift the way it had shifted the first evening
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in the new flat except that the thing on the
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other side of the shift now had a face and a
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name and a folded metro map and a serious, careful
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way of finding the grain of a piece of cloth.
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I wrote it that night in the sixth notebook,
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the season of small steps behind us, a larger
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door swinging slowly open ahead. That nothing
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true with a wounded person is ever built in an
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afternoon, and that the whole of love with such
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a person is the willingness to do the small,
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unglamorous, repeated thing long past the point
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where it feels like it is working. The Metro
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was not one in a single ride, nor the cloth in
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a single lesson, nor Kabir in a single good visit.
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They were won the way everything real is won,
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by increments too small to see, accumulated by
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the one reliable force in the universe, which
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is showing up again. And I understood that this
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was simply the looking, the discipline of all
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six notebooks, in its most demanding form yet.
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Attention paid not to a wife who could attend
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me back, nor even to a child who would not, but
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to the tiny daily increments of a trust being
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built so slowly that faith was required to believe
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it was being built at all. The awake do not need
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the breakthrough. They have learned to see the
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small steps, which are the only steps there are,
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and to keep taking them, on faith, across the
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long flat stretch where nothing seems to be happening,
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until one day they look up and the child is standing
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close to them in a crowd, having decided, without
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announcement, that they are his. That moment
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on the train was the closest thing to a reward
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the whole long season gave me, and it is telling
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that it was a reward only because I knew how
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to read it. To anyone else on that carriage,
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it was nothing. A boy standing near a man. No
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melting, no embrace, none of the things the films
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would demand as proof. Just a small repositioning
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of a body in a crowd. But I had learned, across
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the notebooks and now across the visits, that
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the realest things announce themselves smallest,
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that a guarded child moving six inches closer
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is a larger event than a charming one flinging
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his arms wide, and that the whole skill of loving
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the wounded is the skill of seeing the enormous
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in the apparently negligible. The awake are simply
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the ones who can read the small step as the mountain
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it actually is. Then the working line, the sixth
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notebook open, a transition beginning to be planned,
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a boy across the city perhaps daring, at last,
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to expect us. Distrust the breakthrough. Trust
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the small steps. The films lie, the wounded are
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not one in a single magic afternoon, and anyone
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waiting for the breakthrough will give up long
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before it would have come, because it never comes.
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Real trust is built only in increments too small
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to feel like progress by the single force that
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builds it, which is showing up, again after the
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good days, and again, crucially, after the bad
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ones, when the one you are trying to reach has
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been deliberately unlovable precisely, to find
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out whether you will leave. Do not leave. Come
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back exactly as warm as before, as though the
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bad day had not happened, because the returning
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is the medicine and the only proof a left person
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can finally believe. Take the small step. Take
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it again tomorrow. Take it on the days it feels
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like nothing. The whole of love, in the end,
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is just the refusal to stop showing up. I kept
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the pen and did not, that night. Walked down
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the hall to the empty room, because it was not
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going to be empty much longer, and standing in
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it had begun to feel less like waiting and more
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like the last quiet held breath before a house
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changes forever. Somewhere across the city, a
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seven -year -old slept with a folded map under
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his pillow and, perhaps for the first time, a
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cautious expectation that the people who had
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been coming would come again, would keep coming,
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would not stop. would in fact soon stop merely
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visiting and start, in the staged and careful
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way these things are done, taking him home. We
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had not melted him in an afternoon. We had done
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the slower and realer thing, and the small steps,
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taken on faith across a long gray season, had
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carried us, without our quite being able to point
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to the day, all the way to the edge of the largest
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step of all. To be continued in episode 66, Coming
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of My Playful Wife. If this story is staying
19:41
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.