Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 69: School

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 69: School · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. The lines are always running.
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You can always get back to the flat, with me
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or without me, because you know the way, and
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the way is always there. The terror of school
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took me by surprise, because I had not understood,
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until it was upon us, that everything we had
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done so far had been done inside walls we controlled.
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The flat, the visits, the metro outings, even
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the storm, all of it had happened in a space
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we could shape, where we could decide how Kabir
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was treated, where no one would look at him with
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the casual cruelty children are capable of, where
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we could hold the line and hold the boy, and
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keep the whole fragile thing safe inside our
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own four rooms. School was the end of that. School
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was the first place we had to send him where
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we could not go, into a building full of other
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seven -year -olds with ordinary, uninterrupted
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histories, and teachers who had thirty other
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children to attend to, and a thousand small social
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brutalities, we would not be there to soften.
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And the night before the first day I lay awake
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with a fear I had not felt even during the storm.
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The specific, helpless fear of the parent at
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the edge of his own protection. who must now
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hand the child he has barely begun to keep safe
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to a world that has not promised to keep him
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safe at all. I recognized the fear, eventually,
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as a version of the one every parent feels, the
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universal lurch of watching a small back recede
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through a gate into a life you can no longer
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fully see. But ours had an extra floor beneath
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it, the way everything with Kabir has an extra
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floor. An ordinary parent fears the world will
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be unkind to a child who has known only kindness.
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We feared the world would be unkind to a child
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who had known little else, who had no reservoir
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of early safety to draw on when the playground
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turned cruel, whose every social wound would
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land not on healthy skin but on a place already
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raw. The same gate, the same morning, the same
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receding back. But for him the stakes of its
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going wrong were not mere disappointment but
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confirmation, one more proof of the thing he
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already half believed, that the world is a place
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that does not want him. Saloni did the thing
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she does, which was to put her hands on the problem.
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She could not control the school, so she controlled
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what she could, which was the uniform. She took
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the stiff new school clothes. bought a size too
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big the way they always are, and she sat up the
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night before altering them, taking in the seams
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so they would fit in properly, so that he would
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not walk in on the first morning swamped in fabric
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and marked, instantly, as the boy whose clothes
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did not fit, the boy nobody had bothered to tailor.
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It seems a small thing. It was not a small thing.
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She was sending him out armored in the one language
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she commands absolutely, the language of cloth,
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making sure that whatever else happened in that
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building, he would at least stand among the other
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children wearing something that had been made
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to fit him exactly, by hands that loved him,
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so that the uniform itself would be a thing he
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carried from home, a small wearable proof, against
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his skin all day, that someone had stayed up
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in the night to take his measure. I have come
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to understand that this is how Saloni loves always,
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and that it is not lesser than the spoken kind,
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but in some ways greater. She loves by making
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the thing fit. Where I reach for words and the
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notebook, the precise sentence that names the
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feeling, she reaches for her hands and the cloth,
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and produces an object that carries the love
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silently into the world to do its work where
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no word could follow. A sentence of reassurance
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stays at the gate. An altered uniform goes all
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the way into the classroom. Is there on his body
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at the exact moment some other child might have
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made him feel he did not belong? She could not
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follow him into the school, but she found a way
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to send a piece of herself in with him anyway,
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sewn into the seams, and I do not think there
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is a more practical or more powerful form of
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love than that. The metro saved the first morning,
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as the metro keeps saving things. Because the
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school was three stops and one change away, and
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that fact transformed the whole terrifying business
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for Kabir from an abandonment into a navigation,
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and navigation is the one thing in the world
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he is sure of. He did not have to be delivered,
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passively, to a frightening place by adults who
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might then leave him there. He had to get himself.
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Confidently, along a route he had memorized before
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he had memorized our faces, to a station near
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the school, and he could therefore approach the
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most frightening morning of his new life not
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as a small helpless thing being dropped off,
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but as a commander running a line he knew cold.
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I rode with him. Of course, that first morning,
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but I rode as the passenger and let him be the
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navigator and watched him stand a little taller
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with each correct interchange, the familiar steel
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and tile of the metro holding him steady on his
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way toward the unfamiliar so that he arrived
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at the school gate not shaking but competent,
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having spent the journey being the one thing
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that always makes him feel safe, which is the
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boy who knows the way. The gate itself was the
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hard part. The part one had been dreading, because
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a school gate is, for a child who has been abandoned,
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not a neutral threshold, but the exact shape
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of his deepest fear. To leave a once -left child
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at a gate and walk away is to reenact, in miniature,
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the precise thing that broke him, and I knew
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that whatever I said, some animal part of him
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would read my departure through the gate as one
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more adult leaving him in an institution, the
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way adults always had. So I did not pretend it
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was nothing, and I did not do the falsely cheerful
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thing of waving brightly and vanishing. I crouched
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at the gate, and I gave him the only reassurance
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I knew would actually hold, which was, again,
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the metro. the language he trusts. I did not
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say don't worry or you'll be fine, words that
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mean nothing to a child braced for the worst.
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I said, I will be standing right here at this
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gate, at this exact spot, when the last bell
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goes. And if anything happens and I am somehow
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not here, you know the route home. You know it
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better than I do. The lines are always running.
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You can always get back to the flat with me or
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without me. because you know the way and the
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way is always there. And I watched that land
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in him with a weight that Don't Worry never could
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have, because I had not asked him to trust my
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presence, which he could not yet do. I had reminded
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him of his own competence and the reliability
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of the lines, which he could. He had a way home
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that, for Kabir, was worth more than any promise.
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School did not go well, and I will not pretend
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it did, because the sentimental version where
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the wounded child blossoms on the first day is
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a lie that makes real parents despair. He was
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behind. Of course he was behind. A child moved
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through that many placements does not arrive
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with neat unbroken schooling, and he sat in a
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class of children who could already do things
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he could not, and he felt it, and he dealt with
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it the way he deals with everything. by going
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flat and guarded and giving nothing away so that
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the teacher's first report to us was of a closed,
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difficult, possibly slow child who would not
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engage. It took everything in me not to march
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in and explain him, to hand the teacher the whole
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file, to say you do not understand. He is not
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slow. He is a brilliant, frightened boy who has
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memorized the entire metro and can find the bias
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of a cloth and is behind in your sums only because
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no one kept him still long enough to teach him.
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But I did not, because you cannot explain a child
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into being seen, and because his teacher, however
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kind, had 30 children and could not give him
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the sidelong years it had taken us to reach him.
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School was going to be hard. He was going to
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be, for a while, the difficult boy at the back.
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There was no version of this that was easy, and
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I had to let it be hard, which is its own brutal
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discipline. Letting it be hard was, I think,
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the single most counterintuitive act of love
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the whole arrangement asked of me. Every cell
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in me wanted to intervene, to smooth, to explain
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him to the teacher, to make the hardness simply
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go away. And I had to learn that a parent who
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removes all the hardness does not produce a strong
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child but a fragile one. That struggle survived
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is how a person becomes able, and that my job
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was not to spare Kabir the difficulty of being
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behind, but to be the safe place he came home
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to while he did the hard work of catching up
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himself. You cannot do a child's climbing for
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him. You can only make base camp warm enough
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that he is willing to go back up the mountain
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in the morning. But here is the thing I learned
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in those first school weeks, the thing that reframed
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the whole terror of the gate. I had thought,
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instinctively, that the way to keep Kabir safe
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was to keep him close, that every hour he was
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out in the uncontrollable world was an hour of
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exposure I should want to minimize, that love
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meant the cage that keeps the small things safe
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by keeping it in. And it is exactly wrong. What
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I watched happen, slowly, was that the more absolutely
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reliable we made the home, the more certain he
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became that we would be there at three, that
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the flat would be exactly where he left it, that
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the back door stayed bricked up no matter what
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the day had held. The braver he became out in
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the world, he could not control. The security
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was not the opposite of the exploring. The security
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was what made the exploring possible. A child
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does not venture out from a shaky base. He clings
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to it. He ventures out, further and further,
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precisely to the degree that the base behind
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him is solid, because he knows he has somewhere
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to fall back to. We were not making him brave
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by pushing him out the door. We were making him
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brave by being, without fail, there when he came
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back through it, by being so utterly returnable
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to that he could afford to risk the world. Knowing
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the world could not cost him his home. The psychologists
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have a tidy phrase for this, the secure base,
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and like most tidy phrases, it names a thing
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without conveying what it costs to provide. To
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be a secure base is not a state of mind. It is
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a discipline of unfailing reliability, day after
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day, that is far harder than it sounds, because
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children do not test the base when it is convenient.
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They test it when you are tired or late, and
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the base only works if it holds then too, on
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the bad days as much as the good. We were learning
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that you do not get to be a secure base on the
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days you feel like it. You are one on every day,
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or you are not really one at all, and a child
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can tell the difference instantly because his
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whole survival is tuned to detecting exactly
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how conditional your reliability is. I thought,
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standing at that gate at three o 'clock on the
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first day, waiting at the exact spot I had promised
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about my own school years and what I had not
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had. I had been sent to school, too, as a boy
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and collected and fed and none of it neglected
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in the visible ways, but I had gone out each
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morning from a house where the beam of attention
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was pointed at my brother and come back each
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afternoon to the same, and so I had had no secure
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base to venture from. Only a place I slept, and
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I had dealt with it the way Kabir deals with
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it, by going flat, by needing nothing, by becoming
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the quiet boy at the back of my own life. No
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one had stood at my gate at the exact promised
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spot. And so I stood at Kabir's, early, absurdly
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early. 20 minutes early, because I could not
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bear the thought of his coming out and scanning
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the crowd and not finding me for even a heartbeat.
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And when the bell went and the children poured
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out and he appeared, guarded and tired and not
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visibly pleased, and his eyes went to the spot
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where I had said I would be and found me exactly
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there, I saw the smallest thing happen in his
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face. The tiniest release. The registering of
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a promise kept. And I. understood that I was,
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in that moment, giving the unwatched boy I had
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been the thing he had stood at a hundred gates
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and never once received, the sight of someone
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who said they would be there, being there, it
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undid me more than I had expected, that small
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release in his face, because I felt it in two
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times at once, as the man standing at the gate,
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and as the boy who had stood at gates like it
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forty years before, scanning and not finding.
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The two of us, the boy and the man, met for a
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moment at that gate, and I gave to the child
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in front of me what I could not go back and give
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to the child I had been, and there was a strange
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healing in it that ran in both directions, forward
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into Kabir and backward into me. I had read somewhere
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that we parent in part to re -raise ourselves.
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Standing at that gate, having been, for one boy,
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the kept promise no one had been for me, I understood
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it was not an idea at all, but a plain description
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of what was happening in my chest. I wrote it
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that night in the sixth notebook, a school bag
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by the door. A uniform altered to fit hung ready
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for the morning. That I had had the geometry
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of safety exactly backwards, and that a child
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taught me the truth of it. That you do not protect
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a wounded child by keeping him in, but by making
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the place he returns to so reliable that he can
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dare to go out. The secure base and the brave
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exploration are not opposites to be balanced.
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They are cause and effect. Every reliable three
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o 'clock makes the next morning's gate a little
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less terrifying. Every promise kept at the exact
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promised spot buys a little more courage for
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the uncontrollable world. We could not make school
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safe for him. We could not follow him in and
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soften the brutalities or do his sums or make
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the other children kind. But we could make home
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so certain, so unfailingly there, that he could
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survive school not being safe. Because a child
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can bear an unsafe world astonishingly well if
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he is sure of a safe home to carry it back to.
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The holding had not stopped at the front door,
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I understood. It had only changed its shape.
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Inside the walls, it looked like presence. At
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the school gate, it looked like letting go and
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being without fail there at three. And I saw,
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writing it, that this would be the through line
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of all the years ahead, this rhythm of release
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and return, and that I had better make my peace
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with it now because it was only going to intensify.
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The gates would get bigger. School would become
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the world. Three o 'clock would become whenever
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he needed me. The distances he ventured would
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lengthen until one day he ventured out and did
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not come back to live, and the whole of my job
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across all those years would be the same job
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it had been at that first gate, only stretched,
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to be reliably there at the end of the line he
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was running, so that he could run it bravely,
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and to let the line get longer and longer without
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ever once letting him doubt that I was still
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standing at the end of it. Then the working line,
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the sixth notebook open, a small altered uniform
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ready in the dark, a boy asleep who had survived
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his first day at the back of a class. You do
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not make a child brave by holding him in. You
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make him brave by being the place he can always
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come back to. The instinct when you love a small
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thing in a dangerous world is the cage. Keep
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him close. Minimize the exposure. Protect by
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confinement. It is exactly wrong. A child ventures
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out into the uncontrollable world only to the
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precise degree that the base behind him is solid.
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The security is not the enemy of the courage,
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but its source. So when you must send the one
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you love out through a gate into a world you
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cannot follow him into or soften for him, do
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not cling, and do not pretend the world is safe.
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Make the home unfailingly safe instead. Be there
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at three, at the exact promised spot, every single
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time, until the reliability of your returning
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becomes the floor he stands on to be brave. Letting
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go, done right, is not the opposite of holding
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on. It is the highest form of it. I capped the
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pen and laid out his things for the morning,
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the metro card on top of the bag where he would
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see it first, the route home it represented more
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reassuring to him than any words of mine, and
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I thought about the gate again, the two of us
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at it, one going in and one promising to be there
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when he came out, and I understood that this
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was simply the shape parenting was going to take
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from here, an endless series of gates, each one
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a small letting go backed by a large promise
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to be there at. The end of it. He would go further
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out each year, and the world would handle him
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with less and less care, and there would be nothing
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I could do about most of it. But I could be there
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at three. I could be there at the exact promised
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spot, for as many three o 'clocks as I was given,
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until the boy who had been left at a hundred
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gates finally, fully in his bones, believed in
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the one who kept coming back. To be continued
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That was episode 69 of My Playful Wife. If this
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story is staying with you, the next episode is
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Links are in the description. Thank you for listening.