Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 86: The First Time Alone

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 86: The First Time Alone · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. And it was in there, somewhere
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around minute 11, that I understood the thing
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I had got backwards my whole life. I had always
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thought of trust as a feeling, as a warm, settled
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certainty that arrives unbidden, and then permits
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you to act. The Sunday came, as Sundays do, whether
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or not you have finished being ready for them.
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I had spent the week doing what I imagine every
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parent does in the days before a thing like this,
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which is to conduct a long, silent negotiation
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with myself and lose it repeatedly. I had rehearsed
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the route in my head more times than Kabir had.
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I had thought... More than once about quietly
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withdrawing the permission, about manufacturing
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some reasonable sounding reason, a cold coming
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on, a change in the weather, the vague and unfalsifiable,
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it just doesn't feel like the right week. And
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I knew every time that I would not do it because
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to give a boy that particular yes and then take
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it back on a pretext would teach him something
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about me and about the reliability of adults
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that I have spent two years teaching him the
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opposite of. The yes was given. The yes would
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stand. That is the whole of what integrity means
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with a child. Not that you are never afraid,
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but that your fear is not permitted a vote it
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did not earn. So on Sunday at four, he put on
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his shoes and I put on mine and we walked together
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to the station for the last time as a pair. It
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is a nine minute walk and I have done it perhaps
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400 times and I have never once done it the way
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I did it that afternoon. Kabir was fizzing, talking
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too much, mostly about nothing, the way he does
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when he is managing something large, and I was
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doing the thing I have become very skilled at
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over the years, which is being completely present
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on the outside, while something in my chest quietly
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comes apart. I had his card. He had his card.
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We had been over the plan four times. Two stops,
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yellow to Green Park side, out the north exit.
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three minutes on foot, ring once from Tara's
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landline the moment he is through her door. He
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recited it back to me at the ticket gate with
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the patient, long -suffering air of a boy who
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considers the whole recitation an insult to his
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competence, which it was, and which was also,
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I understood, entirely the point of my asking.
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And then there was nothing left to plan and he
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tapped in and the gate opened and he went through
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and just like that there was a piece of metal
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and glass between my son and me that only he
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had the card to open. It is an absurd thing to
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be undone by a ticket gate. But I had spent two
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years making myself the person who opens things
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for him, doors, forms, conversations, the entire
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administrative and emotional machinery of a childhood.
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And here was a small waist -high barrier that
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I had deliberately given him the means to pass,
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and kept no means for myself. That was the design.
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That was what the yes had meant, translated out
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of language and into steel. And the gate did
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not care about any of it. It simply read his
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card and let him through, the way it lets four
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million people through in a day, with no idea
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whatsoever that it was doing anything at all.
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He did not look back. I want to record that plainly
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because I had not expected the size of it. He
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did not turn at the top of the escalator, did
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not give me the wave I had privately, humiliatingly
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been waiting for. He simply went down and out
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of sight with his shoulders square and his head
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already at the far end of the journey, gone into
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his own afternoon. And I stood at the gate in
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the cold light of the concourse and understood
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that I had been given exactly what I asked for.
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A boy who turns back at the top of the escalator
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is a boy who is not sure. A boy who does not
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turn back is a boy who is entirely certain the
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person behind him will still be there, has never
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had a moment's doubt of it, and therefore has
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no need to check. His not looking back was the
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whole two years, handed to me in a single gesture,
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in the exact form of an absence. I had made him
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so sure of me that he could afford to forget
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me on a staircase. I do not think I have ever
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been prouder of anything, and I have never in
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my life felt more thoroughly left. Both of those
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were true at the same moment, and neither one
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cancelled the other, and I am beginning to suspect
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that this doubleness is simply what parenting
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a growing child is going to feel like from here
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on. Two contradictory feelings at full strength,
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occupying the same chest, refusing to resolve
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into one another. I kept waiting, standing there
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at the gate, for one of them to win, for the
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pride to console me, or for the loss to sour
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the pride, and neither obliged. They simply sat
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there together, both entirely real, like two
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people who dislike each other sharing a bench.
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I had assumed, before I had a child, that feelings
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arrived one at a time and could be dealt with
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in an orderly queue. They arrive in pairs now.
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The pairs are almost always at war, and you do
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not get to choose the winner. Then I did the
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hardest small thing I have done in years, which
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was to walk away, not down. Not to the platform,
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not to the top of the escalator where I could
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have stood quite innocently and watched his train
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pull out and known, known with my own eyes, factually,
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that he was on it and it had gone. Every cell
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in me wanted that. It would have cost nothing.
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He would never have seen me. There was no rule
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against it. And it would have been a lie, a small
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and poisonous one. because the entire substance
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of what I had given him was the belief that he
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was doing this alone, and a boy is not doing
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a thing alone if his father is standing at the
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top of the stairs with his eyes on him the whole
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way. The watching would have been for me, not
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for him. So I turned around and went back up
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into the daylight with my heart going like a
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bird in a box, and walked the nine minutes home,
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and did not once look at my phone, which is a
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lie, I looked at it eleven times. The interval
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is a thing nobody prepares you for. It is 19
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minutes door to door at the outside. I had timed
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it, God help me, twice on two separate previous
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journeys in the manner of a man conducting reconnaissance
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on his own child's independence. 19 minutes is
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nothing. 19 minutes is the length of a bad cue.
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And it is also when your 10 -year -old is somewhere
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inside it and you are not a geological era. An
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epoch, a vast and echoing chamber of time in
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which the mind is free to do the thing minds
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do, which is to manufacture, at high resolution
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and in the correct order, every catastrophe that
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has never happened. He would miss the stop. He
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would take the wrong exit and not know it, and
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walk confidently in the wrong direction for an
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hour. Someone would speak to him. He would freeze,
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revert, become again for one terrible moment
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the guarded boy who could not ask an adult for
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help because adults were weather. I stood in
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my own kitchen and drank tea I did not want and
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performed, in my imagination, a series of small
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vivid disasters, each one of which I would have
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sworn, under oath, was a reasonable concern.
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This is the specific madness of a vigil, that
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anxiety, wears the costume of diligence. Every
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catastrophe I invented felt, in the instant of
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inventing it, like responsible fathering, like
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precisely the sort of thing a good parent would
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of course be considering, would be negligent
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not to consider. That is the whole trick of it.
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Fear never introduces itself as fear. It introduces
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itself as care. as foresight, as due attention
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to risk, and it does this so that you will not
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notice that it is quietly asking you to do something
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that would harm the child in order to soothe
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the adult. Every one of my imagined disasters
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was a lawyer arguing the same single case, which
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was, go and get him, and not one of them had
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produced a shred of evidence. And it was in there,
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somewhere around minute 11, that I understood
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the thing I had got backwards my whole life.
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I had always thought of trust as a feeling, as
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a warm, settled certainty that arrives, unbidden,
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and then permits you to act. Wait until you feel
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ready, and then let him go. But that is not how
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any of it works. And if I had waited for the
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feeling, I would have waited forever. Because
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the feeling does not come first, and it may not
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come at all. Trust is not a feeling. Trust is
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an action. It is a thing you do, deliberately
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while frightened, in the total absence of the
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reassurance you would very much prefer to have
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first. I had not let Kabir go because I trusted
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him. I had let Kabir go and the letting was the
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trust, the whole of it, enacted at the ticket
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gate by a man whose hands were not steady. You
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do not feel your way into trusting someone. You
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act your way into it. and the feeling, if it
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ever arrives, arrives long afterward, limping
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as a kind of receipt. Saloni was on the sofa
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through all of this with a book she was not reading.
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That is the detail I noticed, eventually, through
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the fog of my own vigil. She had not turned a
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page in a quarter of an hour. I had been telling
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myself a story all week in which she was the
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calm one, and I was the fool, and standing in
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that doorway I saw that it had never been true
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and that I had been, as usual, reading the surface
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of my wife and calling it the depth. She was
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not calm because she was unafraid. She was as
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afraid as I was. She was calm because she had
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decided to be. Because she had made a judgment
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about what this boy needed, and then had the
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discipline to hold her face still around her
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own terror, so that the terror did not become
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one more thing Kabir had to carry. That is not
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the absence of fear. That is fear mastered, in
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the service of somebody else's growing. It is
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the harder of the two things, and it is invisible,
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and I have lived beside it for years and mostly
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failed to see it. I have written a great deal
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in these books about Celonie's seeing, about
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the way she looks at a person until she has them
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whole. It had never once properly occurred to
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me to ask what the seeing costs her. To see clearly
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is not a comfortable gift. The woman on that
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sofa could make out the entire shape of the afternoon.
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Ours and Kabir's, the necessity and the risk
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and my panic and her own. All of it at once,
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in high definition, and she chose to sit still
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inside it and turn no pages. I have spent this
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marriage admiring her steadiness as though it
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were a temperament, some lucky trick of her nature.
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It is not a temperament. It is a decision she
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makes over and over, at cost and private, and
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it has been quietly making this family possible
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for years while I stood next to it and called
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it calm. At minute 21, the phone had not rung.
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I will not dress it up. I had my shoes in my
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hand at minute 22. I had constructed, by then,
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a fully reasoned case that it was better to be
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safe, that no harm could come of driving past,
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that he need never know, and I was at the door
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with the keys and the whole architecture of my
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own panic when Saloni said, without looking up
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from the page, she was not reading. Give him
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one more minute. Nah, don't go. Not you're overreacting.
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Just one more minute. And the phone rang at minute
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23. One ring, as agreed, cut off the signal we
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had arranged. I am here. He rang back 30 seconds
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later because I had not. In fact, ever managed
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to explain that one ring meant we would not speak,
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and I heard my son's voice, entirely unbothered,
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entirely his own, and I said, with an evenness
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I am still proud of, oh good, well done, have
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a nice time, and he said yeah, bye, and hung
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up on me in under four seconds. He had been late,
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because he had stopped on the way to look at
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a dog. A dog. Two minutes of my life that I will
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never get back spent constructing an elaborate
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cathedral of disaster, and the answer at the
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bottom of it was a dog. I have thought about
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that dog a great deal since. It is, I think...
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The most exact possible summary of the gap between
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a parent's inner weather and a child's actual
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afternoon. While I stood in my kitchen rehearsing
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my son's abduction in vivid detail, he was crouched
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on a pavement somewhere between two stations,
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entirely safe and entirely happy, looking at
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a dog. That is what was inside the interval,
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not one of my catastrophes. A dog. And the lesson,
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which I will certainly have forgotten by the
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next time. and we'll have to learn again from
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the beginning, is that the interval is almost
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always full of dogs. I wrote it that night in
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the sixth notebook, the boy home and asleep and
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utterly unmarked by the whole enormous event,
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the phone face down on the desk where I had left
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it after not calling it back, that I had been
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holding him. All this time, by a thread I imagined
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ran from my hand to his, and that today the thread
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had been paid out further than ever before and
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had held, and that this, the paying out, the
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letting the line run, is the entire remaining
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work of my life as this boy's father. Not the
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reeling in. Anyone can reel in. Reeling in is
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what fear does with a rope. The art is in the
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paying out. In letting the line run further each
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time, In resisting with your whole body the urge
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to feel the weight of him on the end of it every
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10 seconds. In trusting a knot you tied years
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ago at a distance where you can no longer see
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it hold. And in knowing that the direction of
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travel is one way only. The line only ever goes
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out. It will go out to two stops, and then to
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the far end of the new line, and then to a hostel
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in another city, and then to a life I will hear
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about on the telephone. And my entire job, from
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here to the end of me, is to keep hold of my
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end without ever once pulling, and to be, always,
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still standing exactly where he left me, whenever
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he chooses to follow the line back. Then the
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working line, the sixth notebook open. The flat
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quiet, my son asleep with a whole afternoon in
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him that I know nothing about. Trust is not a
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feeling you wait to arrive before you let them
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go. If you wait for the feeling you will wait
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forever and call your waiting love. Trust is
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an action performed while frightened in the total
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absence of the reassurance you would rather have
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first. You do not feel your way into it. You
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act your way into it and the feeling comes limping
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along afterward, if at all, like a receipt. So
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walk him to the gate and let him tap in and then
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turn around and go. And do not stand at the top
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of the escalator watching the train pull out
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because that watching is for you and not for
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him. And a boy is not doing a thing alone if
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his father's eyes are on him the whole way. Pay
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the line out. Never reel it in. And when he does
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not look back at you from the staircase, understand
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what you are being shown. Not that he has stopped
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needing you, but that you have made him so certain
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of you that he no longer has to check. I capped
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the pen. He had come home at seven, delivered
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by nothing but his own two feet and the yellow
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line, full of Tara's news and a long, unbroken
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account of the dog, and had eaten enormously
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and told me nothing whatever about the journey
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itself, because the journey had not been an event
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to him. It had been a Sunday. That is the last
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strange gift of it, and the one I am still turning
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over. The thing that had rearranged the furniture
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of my entire chested bin. To him, simply Sunday,
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a boy going to his friend's house, unremarkable,
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ordinary, forgettable. He will not remember it.
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I will remember it until I die. And I understand
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now that this asymmetry is not a cruelty, but
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the actual shape of the thing. that a good childhood
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is precisely one the child does not have to notice,
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that all our labor is meant to be invisible to
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the person it is for, and that the highest form
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of the work is to have your greatest days be,
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to your son, a Sunday he does not think to mention.
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To be continued in episode 87, The Closed Door.
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Playful Wife. If this story is staying with you,
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the next episode is already waiting. Subscribe
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I'm Mia. Thank you for listening.