Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 80: What Grows

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 80: What Grows · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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my playful wife but what happens inside it isn't
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mine to make and it isn't yours either you give
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it soil and water and light the same every day
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and then you let it do the part that nobody's
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hands can do that's the whole job the first real
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sign that kabir was going to be all right was
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not that he stopped grieving he did not stop
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grieving I understood by then that he never entirely
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would, that the loss would surface in waves for
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the rest of his life the way Salonis does, on
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some ordinary Tuesday out of nowhere. The sign
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was smaller than that and stranger, and I almost
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walked straight past it. The sign was that he
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started wanting things. It happened about three
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weeks after the night at the shelf, in the vegetable
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market in the smallest possible form. We were
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buying coriander and green chilies and the long
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white radishes Saloni likes, and Kabir was trailing
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along beside me the way he does, quiet, taking
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everything in, when he stopped at a rack near
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the till where the shopkeeper kept a few faded
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packets of seeds behind the loose ginger. He
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looked at them for a while, and then he said,
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in a careful voice that was trying very hard
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to sound like it did not matter, Can we get that
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one? Marigold. 20 rupees. The picture on the
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packet sunbleached almost to white. He wanted
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it, and he had said so out loud to me, and then
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he stood very still and waited to see what I
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would do with the wanting. And I understood,
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in the coriander smell, with the shopkeeper waiting
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for his money, that this was the thing I had
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been waiting a year and more to see without knowing
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I was waiting for it. Because in all that time,
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I had almost never heard Kabir want anything
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allowed. He accepted. He was grateful for whatever
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came to him. He ate what was put in front of
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him and wore what was bought for him and went
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where he was taken. And if you asked him what
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he wanted, he would study your face for the answer
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you were hoping for and give you that. He did
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not ask because asking is a risk. Asking hands
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the other person the power to refuse you, and
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a child who has been refused by the entire shape
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of his life learns very early not to ask, learns
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to want nothing at all, because wanting nothing
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is the only way to make sure nothing can be taken
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from you. And here he was, at a rack of dying
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seed packets, risking it. Can we get that one?
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We got that one. I paid the twenty rupees, and
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the shopkeeper dropped the packet into the bag
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with the coriander without the faintest idea
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that anything had happened, and by any measure
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the world keeps, nothing had, a man had bought
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his son a packet of seeds. But I carried it home
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the way you carry something that might spill
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if you hold it wrong, because it was the first
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thing my son had ever, in my hearing, dared to
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ask the world to hand him, and I did not want
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to be the one who dropped it. I've thought a
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great deal since about why the wanting mattered
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so much more to me than the flower ever could.
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And I think it is because wanting requires a
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future. And a future was the one thing Kabir
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had never before been able to afford. Survival
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is lived entirely in the present tense. When
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every hour is spent reading the adults and bracing
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for the next upheaval, there is no spare capacity
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to lean forward into a tomorrow because leaning
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forward assumes there will be a tomorrow and
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assuming a tomorrow is precisely the luxury a
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frightened child cannot permit himself. To want
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is to send a small part of yourself out ahead
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into a future and to trust that you will still
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be there to meet it. And a seed is the purest
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form of that trust there is. You cannot want
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a seed for now. A seed is worth nothing now.
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A seed is a bet placed entirely on a season you
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have to still be around to collect. When Kabir
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pointed at that packet and said, can we get that
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one? He was, without the faintest idea that he
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was doing it, betting for the first time in his
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life that he would still be here when the thing
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came up. That was the growth, not the marigold.
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The bet. Selene, when I told her, did not make
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a fuss of it, because making a fuss of it would
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have frightened him back into wanting nothing.
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She simply said that if he was going to grow
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something, he should grow it properly. And so
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it became, over the following week, a project.
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And a project meant an outing, and an outing,
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for Kabir, meant the Metro, which is his, which
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he trusts, which he can read when he can read
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nothing else. We took the yellow line and then
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changed, and he stood at the map by the doors
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and navigated us the whole way with a quiet confidence
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he is only there, calling the interchange before
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the recorded voice did, and I watched my son
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move through the one system in the world he has
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never once been failed by, and understood that
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it was carrying him, today, toward a growing
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thing. There is a strip of nurseries down past
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the river, a long green mile of them, and we
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walked it slowly, and Kabir took the choosing
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with a seriousness that undid me a little. He
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did not grab. He deliberated. He went up and
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down the rows and crouched at things and asked
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the prices and thought, for the better part of
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an hour, and the deliberation itself was the
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tell, because deliberation assumes stakes, and
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stakes assume a future, and here was a boy who
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six months ago could not spend the currency of
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wanting at all, standing in the wet green smell
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weighing one small life against another as though
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he had all the tomorrows in the world to spend
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it in. He did not choose the showy thing. There
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were flowering plants already in bloom, instant
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and easy, color you could carry home and set
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on a sill and own that same afternoon. And he
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walked past all of them. What he wanted, in the
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end, was a packet of seeds and a fistful of bare
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-looking bulbs, the slow way, the uncertain way,
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the way where you have to do the growing yourself
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and are not guaranteed anything at the end of
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it. I asked him in the auto on the way to the
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station, why not one of the ones already flowering,
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and he thought about it and said, because then
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I didn't do it. It was already done. And I had
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to look out of the window for a moment. I have
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come to see that the metro and the seed sit at
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opposite ends of something for him. The metro
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he loves because it cannot change. The lines
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are the lines, fixed and colored and dependable,
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and a child who has been failed by every soft,
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unpredictable human thing can put his whole weight
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on a system that will run the same tomorrow as
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today. But the seed is the exact opposite of
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the metro. The seed is an outcome you cannot
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control. You cannot make a seed come up by wanting
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it or by watching it or by getting everything
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right. You can only put it in the soil and keep
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it watered and in the light and then wait, exposed
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on a result that is not up to you. And I think
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some part of Kabir needed, now that he was finally
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safe enough, to practice the other thing, not
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the fixed line you can depend on, but the living
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outcome you can only tend and then trust. The
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Metro had kept him alive. The seed was going
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to teach him the thing the Metro never could.
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Saloni made him a pot. Of course she did. Her
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hands cannot leave a need alone. She did not
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buy one. She shaped one. Out of the terracotta
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clay she keeps for the rougher work, a small,
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plain, uneven pot with his initial pressed into
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the base with her thumb, and she fired it and
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gave it to him still faintly warm, and I watched
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her hand it across the table to him with the
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particular gravity she brings to the things she
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makes. I made you the outside, she told him.
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The pot. That part one can do with my hands,
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and it will hold whatever you put in it. But
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what happens inside it isn't mine to make, and
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it isn't yours either. You give it soil and water
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and light, the same every day, and then you let
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it do the part that nobody's hands can do. That's
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the whole job. You make the container as good
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as you can, and then you trust what grows. She
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was talking about a pot. She is always, when
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she talks about the things her hands make, Also
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talking about something larger, and I do not
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think Kabir caught all of it, but I did, sitting
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across the table from the two of them, because
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she had just described, without seeming to, exactly
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what she and I had spent a year trying to be
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for him. The container we could make with our
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hands, the safe, warm, holding shape, around
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a growing we could not do for him, and could
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only, in the end, keep watered and in the light
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and trust. So he planted it on the balcony in
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the pot with his initial in the base, and then
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he began to tend it, and the tending was the
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thing I had not known to hope for. Because here,
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for the first time in Kabir's whole life, was
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something that depended on him. He had spent
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every one of his years being the one who was
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dependent upon no one and depended on everyone,
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the fragile item other people had to remember
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to feed and shelter and keep the object of care.
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And now, In a small clay pot on our balcony,
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there was a life that needed him, that would
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not survive his forgetting, that he and only
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he had signed up to keep alive. He watered it
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in the morning before school and checked it again
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the moment he was home. He moved it to follow
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the sun. He worried at it, some evenings, when
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nothing seemed to be happening, and I had to
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sit with him in the not knowing and not promise
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him it would come up, because I had learned by
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then not to hand him comfortable eyes. And I
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saw what it was doing for him, this being trusted
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with a life, even a plant's. A child who has
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only ever been the one in need of rescue is quietly
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remade by being, for once, the rescuer of something.
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He taped a chart to the wall of his room, a little
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hand -rolled grid where he meant to mark the
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growth, and he taped it up right beside the cloth
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metro map, and I stood in his doorway one evening
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and looked at the two of them side by side, the
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map of the lines that never change and the chart
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for the living thing that might not come up at
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all, and understood that his control system was
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quietly, safely learning to hold both. The chart
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stayed empty for 11 days, and on the 11th day
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it was still empty and he was discouraged, and
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then it turned outward, which is the part one
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had least expected and have thought the most
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about since. Because on the 12th morning, he
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did not just want the plant for himself. He asked,
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over his breakfast, whether he could grow a second
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one from the same packet to give to Tara, his
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friend from school, whether there were enough
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seeds for two, one to keep and one to give. And
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I said yes, there were plenty, and he nodded
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and went back to his toast as though he had asked
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something ordinary and did not see me have to
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put my chai down. Because to want a thing for
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yourself is the first growth, the return of the
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future tense, but to want to grow a thing in
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order to give it away is a different and later
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and larger growth altogether. It is the moment
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that cared for turns, at last, all the way around
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into a carer. Not just the keeper of his own
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small life on the balcony, but someone with enough
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surplus, enough safety, enough tomorrow banked
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up, to start spending it outward on somebody
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else. A survivor hoards. A survivor cannot afford
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to give, because giving assumes there will be
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more where that came from. Kabir wanting to grow
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a marigold for Tara was Kabir believing, without
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any idea that he believed it, that there would
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be more where that came from, more seeds, more
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seasons, more of everything, enough to keep some
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and give some away. He had gone, in one packet
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of 20 rupee seeds, from a boy who could not ask
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for anything to a boy who wanted to give something.
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That is the whole arc of a life, and he ran it
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on a balcony in a month. I wrote it that night
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in the sixth notebook. The boy asleep down the
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hall, the pot on the balcony holding its dark,
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unbroken soil, the empty growth chart taped up
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beside the map of the lines that never fail him.
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That the truest measure of whether a rescue is
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taken is not whether the rescued one is calm,
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because calm can be the deepest hiding of all,
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and it is not even whether he has stopped grieving,
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because he is not and will not, and should not.
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Grief being the long price of having loved. The
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truest measure is whether he has begun, again,
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to want. Whether the future, tense, has come
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back into him. Whether he can risk asking for
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a small thing out loud, and risk deliberating
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over it as though the outcome matters, and risk
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planting a seed whose flowering he will have
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to still be here to see, and, the furthest reach
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of all, risk wanting to grow a second one to
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give away. Because all of that is the same single
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thing wearing different clothes. It is a child
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betting, at last, on his own tomorrow. He grieves
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and he grows in the same week, at the same shelf
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and the same balcony, and both are true, and
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the growing does not cancel the grief, and the
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grief does not forbid the growing. They run side
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by side in him now, the loss and the life, the
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way they run in all of us who have lost something
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and stayed alive anyway. We did not fix his loss.
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There was never any fixing it. What we did, without
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quite knowing that this was the thing we were
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doing, was make him safe enough to want a future,
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and then hand him a packet of seeds, and get
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out of the way of what grows. Then the working
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line. The sixth notebook open. The balcony dark
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beyond the glass. One clay pot waiting on the
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soil to decide. Do not measure a rescued child's
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healing by how calm he has become because a frightened
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child can perform calm for years. Measure it
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by his wanting. The one who is only surviving
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does not want because to want is to risk the
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no and to assume a tomorrow and he can afford
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neither. So when the one you saved begins to
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want things again out loud, to ask for the small
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thing, to deliberate as though the outcome matters,
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to plant a seed, he'll have to still be here
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to see flower, and at the very last to want to
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grow a second one to give away. Do not wait for
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it to look like more than it is. That is the
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whole of it. That is the future tense coming
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back into a person. He has not stopped grieving,
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and he never will, but alongside the grief, in
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the same small chest, he has started again. To
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grow. Make the container. Keep it in the light.
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Then trust what grows. I capped the pen and went
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a -looking on him, and he was asleep with one
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arm flung off the bed, and on the balcony past
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his window the pot sat in the dark with nothing
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showing yet, and I went to bed beside my wife
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who had made the container with her own two hands.
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And four mornings after that... On the sixteenth
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day, when the chart had been empty so long that
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even I had stopped believing in it, I heard him
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call out. Not the frightened call I had spent
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a year learning the sound of, but a new one,
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high and undone with something I had almost never
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heard in him, which was uncomplicated joy, and
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I came out onto the balcony and there it was,
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one green thread of a thing, bent double under
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the weight of its own beginning. pushing up out
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of the dark soil in the pot with his initial
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in the base. Kabir was crouched over it, not
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touching it, the way you don't touch something
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you can't believe in yet. It came up, he kept
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saying. Ma, Papa, look, it came up. Ancelone
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came and crouched on one side of him, and I crouched
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on the other. The three of us folded around a
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single green thread on a deli balcony in the
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early light, and my son looked at the smallest
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possible living thing as though it had told him
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something he had needed his whole short life
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to hear, and then he said the sentence, I will
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keep until I die, the most ordinary sentence
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in the world, and the one I had waited longest
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for, the future tense whole, and unafraid at
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last in his mouth. When it flowers, he said,
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I'm going to give the other one to Tara. To be
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continued in episode 81, The Boy I Was. All rights
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reserved. That was episode 80 of My Playful Wife.
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If this story is staying with you, the next episode
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is already waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss
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it. The complete book is on Amazon and early
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Links are in the description. I'm Mia. Thank
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you for listening.