Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 60: Room Enough

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 60: Room Enough · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. And the moment I understood
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that, the fear turned over in my hands and became
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its exact opposite, became the reason. Because
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I had been afraid that a former sleeper was the
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wrong man to give a child, that my proven capacity
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to stop. I went back to the empty room a great
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deal, in the days after Saloni said what she
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wanted. I would find myself standing in its doorway
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in the morning with my tea going cold, or last
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thing at night on my way to bed, drawn to it
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the way you are drawn to worry at a loose tooth,
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and I understood that the question she had set
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down and there was not going to close on its
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own, that I was going to have to answer it, and
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that the answer was going to be made of something
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harder than the easy yes a generous man gives
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to a generous idea. I distrust the easy yes,
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having given so many of them in my sleeping years.
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The sleeping man is generous with his agreements
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precisely because they cost him nothing. He says
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yes the way you nod at a stranger, pleasantly,
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without engagement, already moving on. I had
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said yes like that for decades, to plans, to
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opinions, to my own wife's quiet hopes, and met
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none of it with the part of me that would actually
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have to show up and do the thing. So I have learned
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to be suspicious of my own quick agreements.
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to treat a yes that comes too easily as a kind
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of sleep -talking. This yes, if it came at all,
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was going to have to come slowly and cost me
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something and be made by the awake man and not
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the agreeable sleeper he used to be. Because
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the flat had room. That part was not in question.
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There was, very plainly, room enough in square
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feet and rupees. The room itself stood there
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proving it. Eight feet by eight of bare swept
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floor. The phrase kept turning in me those days,
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room enough, room enough, and I kept discovering
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that it had more floors than the flat did. There
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was room enough in the house. The question was
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whether there was room enough in the marriage,
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which had spent six years learning to be exactly,
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and only the two of us. And underneath that,
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the real question. The one the bare floor kept
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asking me every time I stood in the doorway,
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whether there was room enough in me, in my attention,
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that scarce and ration thing, that I had only
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just late and barely learned to keep trained
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on one single face. So I did what I do, which
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is that I tried to reason it out privately, the
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way I reason everything out, turning it over
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for days before I said another word to her about
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it. The question I kept circling was the one
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I had written in the sixth notebook, whether
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tension is a fixed quantity, so that any I gave
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a child would be subtracted from what I gave
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Celonie, or whether it is the other kind of thing,
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the kind that multiplies in the spending. And
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I had, ready to hand, a piece of evidence I could
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not argue away, which was Celonie herself. I
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watched her, those days, more closely than usual.
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Watched her at the workshop with Tara and the
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other young ones, watched her on the phone to
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her brother, watched her with me, and what I
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saw was not a woman dividing a fixed ration of
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attention into ever smaller portions. I saw the
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opposite. I saw a woman whose looking seemed
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to generate more of itself the more of it she
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did, who came home from a day of pouring attention
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into her apprentices, not depleted, but somehow
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charged, more awake to me at dinner, not less.
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Her attention was loaves and fishes. There was
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no question about hers. She gave it away all
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day and came home with more than she left with.
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I have watched this in her for years without
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quite naming it, and naming it now, in the context
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of the room, frightened and moved me in equal
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measure. It is not that she does not tire. She
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tires like anyone, her feet hurt, she complains
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about the cutters. It is that the specific thing,
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the attention, the seeing, does not seem to obey
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the law of conservation that governs her energy
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and her patience and the hours in her day. Those
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are finite. She runs out of those. But the looking
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is not on that ledger at all. The more lives
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she lets herself properly see, the more capacity
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for seeing she appears to have, as though the
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faculty were a muscle the world had told her
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was a fuel tank, and she had simply never believed
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the world, and had been proven right across a
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whole lifetime of arriving home full. But mine,
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that was the thing I could not be sure of, and
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the doubt sent me... Those days, somewhere I
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had not been in a long time, which was back into
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my own childhood, into the question of where
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my 40 years of sleep had actually come from.
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Because I had always spoken of my sleeping as
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if it were a flaw, I had simply been born with
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a defect of character, a thing that was just
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regrettably me. But standing in the doorway of
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an empty room meant for an unwanted child, I
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found myself remembering, with a clarity I had
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spent decades avoiding, that I had been something
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close to an unwatched child myself. Not unloved,
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exactly. My parents were not cruel. We were fed
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and schooled and provided for. But there was
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a brother older, brighter, the one held up, the
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one whose marks were read aloud and whose future
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was discussed at the table, and I had been the
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other one, the second one, the one who learned
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very early and very thoroughly that the beam
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of attention in that house was pointed elsewhere
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and was not going to swing my way no matter what
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I did. So I had stopped trying to be seen. I
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had folded myself up small and learned not to
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need the looking because needing it and not getting
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it was unbearable and not needing it was survivable.
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I am not telling this as a complaint against
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my parents, who did the best that tired and ordinary
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people do, and who I do not think ever knew there
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was a second child quietly going dark at the
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edge of their attention while they poured it
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all toward the bright one. That is the thing
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about an unwatched child. He is, by definition,
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not watched, and so his going unwatched is itself
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unwitnessed. Nobody sees the not seeing. It leaves
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no mark anyone notices at the time. It is the
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most invisible of all childhood injuries, precisely
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because the injury is invisibility itself. I
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did not even know it had happened to me until
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I was 50 and standing in an empty room. You can
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carry a wound for half a century without once
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being able to name it if the wound is simply
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that no one ever looked. And there it was, the
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root of the whole thing, the thing I had somehow
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never connected until an empty room forced the
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two facts side by side. A child who has not looked
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and does not learn to look. How could he? Attention
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was not modeled for me as something abundant
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that flows naturally between people who love
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each other. It was modeled as something scarce,
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rationed, given to the deserving brother and
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withheld from me. a prize I had failed to win.
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So, of course, I grew into a man who could not
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give it, who married a woman and then slept beside
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her for years without truly seeing her, not out
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of malice, but because no one had ever shown
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me that seeing was a thing you did freely for
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the people in your house. I had not learned to
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look because I had never been looked at. My 40
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-year sleep was not a flaw I was born with. It
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was a thing that had been done to me. or rather
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not done, a looking I had needed as a child and
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never received, and had then been unable, as
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a man, to give. There is an odd relief in understanding
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this, even this late. For most of my life, I
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had carried a low private conviction that there
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was something wrong with me, some coldness in
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my making, a factory defect in the part of a
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person that is meant to attend to others. To
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discover instead that there was nothing wrong
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with the equipment, only with the instruction
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that I had been a normal child, simply never
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taught the thing because no one ever did it to
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me first, is a strange mercy. It means the coldness
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was learned. And what is learned can, with enough
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work and enough years and the right patient woman,
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be unlearned. I am the proof of that. The notebooks
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are the record of the unlearning. And the moment
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I understood that, the fear turned over in my
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hands and became its exact opposite, became the
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reason. Because I had been afraid that a former
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sleeper was the wrong man to give a child, that
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my proven capacity to stop looking made me a
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danger to a small person who would need looking
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more than anything. But it was precisely backwards.
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I was not a man who happened to be a sleeper
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and might therefore fail a child. I was a man
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who had been the unwatched child, who knew from
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the absolute inside what it does to a person
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to grow up outside the beam of someone's attention,
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who carried in his own body the 40 -year cost
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of it. There are children in the world right
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now folding themselves up small the way I did,
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learning not to need the looking because needing
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it hurts too much, and I am not despite my history
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but because of it one of the few people alive
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who knows exactly what they are doing and exactly
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what it will cost them and exactly, precisely,
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what it would mean to be the one who finally
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swung the beam their way. I did not want to foster
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in spite of having been a sleeper. I wanted to
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foster because I had been the child the sleep
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was made from, and I knew the one thing that
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child had needed, and I had, at last, learned
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how to give it. I sat with that turn for a long
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time before I let myself trust it, because a
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turn that convenient, the fear becoming the very
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reason, the wound becoming the qualification,
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is exactly the kind of thing a man tells himself
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when he has already privately decided what he
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wants to believe. So I made myself test it. I
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asked whether I was simply dressing up a yes
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I wanted in flattering clothes. And I do not
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think I was, because the conclusion did not flatter
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me. It did not say I was special or good. It
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said only that I had been hurt in a particular
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way that had, by the long accident of my life,
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made me fluent in exactly the injury a foster
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child arrives carrying. That is not a flattering
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thing to know about yourself. It is only a useful
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one, and usefulness, not virtue, seemed the right
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thing to bring to the door of that room. I told
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Celonie all of it that night. The brother, the
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table, the beam pointed elsewhere, the folding
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up small, the whole buried architecture of it,
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and I realized as I spoke that I had never told
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her, not in twenty years. Not in six years of
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being awake, the actual origin of the sleep she
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had waited out. She listened the way she listens
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with her whole self and when I was done she was
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quiet for a while and then she said, I always
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knew it was something like that. You can't sleep
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that deeply for that long unless someone taught
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you to when you were too small to refuse the
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lesson. She took my hand. I'm not going to pretend
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I'm not glad you've got here. I've wanted this
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for longer than I said. But I want you to know
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I can't hear the difference between a man being
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talked into a thing and a man arriving at it
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himself. And this is the second one. You didn't
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come to it because I pushed. You came to it because
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you followed your own life all the way back to
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the room it started in. That's the only kind
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of yes I'd have wanted from you anyway. And she
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leaned into me. And we sat a long while in the
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lamplight, and I felt the particular closeness
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of having handed her, this late, a piece of myself
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I had kept folded up small for fifty years. It
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astonished me a little that there had been anything
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left to tell her. Six years of notebooks, six
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years of the most deliberate -looking a man has
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ever trained on a woman, and still, folded away
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in a corner I had never opened even to myself.
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There had been this, the whole origin of me,
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the table and the brother, and the unswung beam.
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It taught me something about the awake years
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I had not quite grasped before, that they do
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not have an end, not because the practice is
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endless in some abstract way, but because there
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is always, even after all of it, one more folded
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thing, one more unlit room in the self that the
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looking has not yet reached. You are never done
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being known. You only get further into it, year
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by year, one buried room at a time. We agreed,
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before we slept, to take the first step, only
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the first. Not to foster, not yet. Only to find
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out how a person begins. to make the call, to
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learn what the long road actually involves, to
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let the wish put on its working clothes and become
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a process with forms and waiting and strangers
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asking hard questions in our front room. It is
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a long yes, fostering. I understand that now.
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It is not one decision, but a hundred of them,
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strung out over months, any of which could still
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end it. We had taken none of them yet, but the
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first. But the first is the one that turns a
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thing you talk about in an empty room into a
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thing you have actually begun. And we took it,
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that night, in principle, in the dark, two people
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not young, deciding to find out whether there
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was room enough after all. It is a particular
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kind of decision, that first one, and I want
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to describe it precisely because it is so easily
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mistaken for a small thing. We did not decide
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to foster a child that night. We decided only
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to find out how. But I have come to believe the
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find -out -how decision is the real one, the
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hinge, the place where most lives quietly turn
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away from the larger thing without ever admitting
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they have chosen, because you can want a thing
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sincerely for years and protect yourself perfectly
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from it simply by never once finding out how
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it is actually done. The wish costs nothing.
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The inquiry costs everything, because the inquiry
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is the end of the wish's safety, the moment it
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stops being a beautiful idea you hold and becomes
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a real road you are standing at the foot of.
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We stood at the foot of it. That was the whole
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of what we had done, and it was not small. I
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wrote in the sixth notebook, late, the empty
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room no longer quite so empty, because a room
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you have begun to imagine a child into is not
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empty in the same way. That the question had
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been room enough, and that I had found the answer
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was yes, though not the easy yes I had feared
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the idea wanted for me. There was room in the
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flat, there had always been room in Saloni, whose
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attention is the multiplying kind. And there
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was, I had discovered by following my sleep back
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to its source. Room in me. Not despite the unwatched
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child I had been, but because of him. Because
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the one thing I am now genuinely expert in is
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the precise shape of the hole that goes unwatched
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in a person. Having carried that exact hole for
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50 years before someone troubled to fill it.
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The fear had been that I was too much the sleeper
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to be trusted. The truth was that I had been
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the unseen child and had woken. and was therefore
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the very man who knew what waking was worth and
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could not, having learned it so late and so dearly,
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refuse it to a child who had not yet been given
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the chance. Then the working line, the sixth
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notebook open, Saloni asleep, the empty room
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down the hall beginning, faintly, to have a future.
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Ask whether there is room enough and then look
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for the answer in three places, not one. There
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is the room in the house, which is the easy question
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and the one that matters least. There is the
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room in the marriage, which is realer and is
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answered not by space, but by whether the love
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between you is the kind that multiplies when
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it is shared or the kind that divides. And there
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is the room in you, in your own scarce attention,
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and that one you can only answer by going back,
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all the way back, to wherever your own capacity
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to look was either built or broken, and seeing
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honestly what you were given and what you were
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not. The thing you are most afraid you cannot
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give is very often the thing you needed most
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and never got. And the man who needed it most
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and never got it, if he has done the work to
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wake, is not the worst person to give it. He
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may be the best. He, at least, knows exactly
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what it is worth. I capped the pen and walked
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down the hall one more time to the room and stood
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in its doorway in the dark, and it did not look
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back at me as a question anymore, or not the
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same question. It looked back as a beginning,
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a held space with the first faint shape of a
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person in it. A room that had been swept clean
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by strangers and was waiting, with what I could
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now only call hope, for us to find out together
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who it was for. There was a great deal still
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to be decided, and a long road of forms and waiting
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and hard questions ahead, and no guarantee at
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the end of any of it. But there was, I had settled
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at last, room enough. I went to bed beside my
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wife, in a new flat. The sixth book begun. And
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slept the good kind of sleep, the kind you'd
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choose, beside the woman who had waited for me
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to wake and was now waiting with me, to see who
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else we might be awake enough to take in. To
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be continued in episode 61, The Long Yes. All
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rights reserved. That was episode 60 of My Playful
18:50
Wife. If this story is staying with you, the
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next episode is already waiting. Subscribe so
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Mia. Thank you for listening.