Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 87: The Closed Door

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 87: The Closed Door · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. Saloni found me there. Of course
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she did. She looked at my raised hand and at
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the door and she said, very quietly, he knows
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where we are. The door to Kabir's room has been
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open for two years. It is closed now and has
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been most evenings for about a month and I have
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had to teach myself in that month not to knock.
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I want to explain what that open door used to
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mean, because otherwise the closed one is just
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a boy being moody, and this is not a story about
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a boy being moody. When Kabir first came to us,
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he did not close doors. He did not close the
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bathroom door properly. He did not close his
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bedroom door at night, would not have it closed,
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would call out if the wind moved it, because
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a closed door was a thing that happened between
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you and the adults, and behind it decisions were
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made about where you would be sent next. A door
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was not privacy to him. A door was the sound
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of your life being discussed without you. So
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we lived with everything open and I got used
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to it, and I see this now, I came to like it
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because an open door meant I could see him, could
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take the temperature of him a dozen times an
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evening without ever asking, could reassure myself,
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passing down the hall, that he was still there
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and still alright. The open door was his fear.
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It was also, and I did not notice this for two
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years, my comfort. And I have had to sit with
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the fact that when the door finally closed, some
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of what I felt was not concern for him at all.
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It was the loss of my own surveillance, dressed
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up in a father's worry. It is not a comfortable
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thing to discover, at my age, that some of what
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I had been calling attentiveness was appetite.
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I had told myself for two years that I kept half
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an eye on that open door, because he needed me
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to. It was true at the start. It stopped being
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true somewhere in the middle and I did not update
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because the habit was pleasant and it flattered
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me and because a man can go on doing a thing
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for a reason that expired years ago and never
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once check the date on it. The door closing was,
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among other things, an audit. And the audit found
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that a portion of my devotion had quietly become
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a portion of my convenience and that Kabir, by
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shutting his door, had done the accounting I
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had been carefully avoiding. It closed by degrees
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the way these things go. First it was ajar in
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the evenings. Then it was ajar with music behind
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it. Then one Tuesday it was shut, and there was
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a boy on the other side of it doing something
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entirely his own, and I stood in the corridor
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of my own flat like a man who has arrived at
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a border he did not know had been drawn. holding
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a cup of tea I had made as a pretext, and understood
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that I no longer had automatic entry to a room
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in my own house. I did not knock that first night.
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I went and stood in the kitchen instead and had
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the tea myself and told Celonie, in the tone
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of a man reporting a fact, that Kabir's door
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was shut. And she said, I know. and went on chopping
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and did not look up, and after a moment she added,
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without any particular emphasis, it's good. And
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that was the end of the conversation, and I went
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and sat down and did not feel that it was good
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at all. Here is what I had to work out over that
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month, and it took me the whole month. A child
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who has an inner life he can afford to keep as
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a child who is safe. That is the whole of it,
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and it took me weeks to be able to hold it. Kabir
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could not have secrets before. Not because he
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was more honest then, but because he could not
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afford them. Because every scrap of his interior
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had to be kept available for inspection. Because
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a boy in a provisional house learns to be legible,
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to be an open book, to have nothing in him that
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an adult might one day find an object to. Transparency
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was not his virtue. It was his insurance. And
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now, at 10, in a house that has proved itself,
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he has begun to build the one thing every healthy
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person requires and no frightened person can
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risk, which is an inside, a private room in himself
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with a door on it, where things can be kept that
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are nobody's business, not even mine. The closed
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door in my hallway is the physical manifestation
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of an interior he was not previously permitted
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to own. He has secrets now. He is fine. He is
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more than fine. He has secrets because he is
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finally safe enough to have them. I keep having
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to say it to myself in different words until
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one of them takes. He is not hiding from me.
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He is building himself, and the building requires
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walls, and a wall is what a door is made of.
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Every person I have ever admired for their depth
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has an inside I cannot see into and they were
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only ever able to grow one because somebody,
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at some point, let them shut a door. Depth is
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not a mood. Depth is architecture. It gets built
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in private. out of precisely the material a child
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declines to hand over for inspection. And if
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you insist on inspecting it, there is nothing
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left to build with, and what you get is a person
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who is all corridor and no rooms, pleasant, available,
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endlessly legible, and empty in a way that nobody
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can quite name. Knowing that did not make the
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corridor any easier to stand in. I have been
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for two years. A man whose entire vocation was
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access, who worked patiently over months to be
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let into the mind of a boy who had bolted every
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entrance for good reason. I earned that access.
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I remember precisely what it cost, and what it
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felt like the first time he volunteered a thought
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to me without being asked, and I would be lying
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if I said I had ever imagined that the end of
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the road was a door in my face. But of course
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it was. Of course it was always going to be.
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I was not building a permanent right of entry.
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Nobody gets one of those, not even from the people
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who love us most, and any parent who thinks he
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is one has simply not been told yet. I was building
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his capacity to trust, and a person with a real
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capacity to trust is precisely a person who chooses
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freely what to share and what to keep, which
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necessarily includes the keeping. The access
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I earned was never a key to the house. It was
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a place on the guest list, revocable, at his
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discretion, forever. I think a great deal of
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parental grief comes from mistaking the one for
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the other. You do the work, you earn the trust,
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you are finally admitted. And somewhere in there
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you begin to feel that the admission is now yours,
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a possession, a thing you own outright on account
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of what it cost you to get. It is not. Nothing
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about another person is ever yours outright,
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whatever you paid for it. The bill I settled
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over two years bought Kabir a father he could
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trust. It did not buy me a permanent visa into
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his head. And the fact that I want one, that
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I feel some low ache of entitlement when the
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door shuts, is not evidence of how much I love
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him. It is only evidence that I am a person and
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that people are like this, and that the loving
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thing is to notice the entitlement and then decline.
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every single evening to act on it. The worst
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night was the one when I heard him crying behind
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it. Not hard, not the way he cried at the shelf
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that year, just a boy on his bed with his face
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in something, ten minutes of it, and the door
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shut. And I stood in the hall with my hand actually
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raised to knock, my whole body one long argument
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for going in, and I did not go in. That was,
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I think, harder than the ticket gate. Because
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everything I am, every instinct the last two
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years have built into me, is organized around
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the proposition that this boy does not cry alone,
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that the entire achievement of our family, the
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thing I would put on the stone, is that he never
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again has to grieve without company. And here
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he was grieving, or something like it, with company
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available 18 inches away, and choosing the door.
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And I made myself understand, in that corridor,
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that he was not crying alone, because no one
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would come. He was crying alone because he had
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chosen to, which is a completely different act
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performed with an identical shape, and the difference
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between them is the whole of his freedom. I stood
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in that corridor for the length of it, which
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was about ten minutes and felt considerably longer,
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and I did the only thing I could think of that
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was not going in, which was to stay. I did not
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tiptoe off to give him space, either, because
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that is the other failure and it comes dressed
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as respect. The parent who hears the crying and
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withdraws to the far end of the flat, so as not
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to intrude, and thereby communicates, with perfect
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clarity, I have gone. So I stayed in the hall
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where the floorboards creak, and I made no particular
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effort to be silent about it, and I let him hear
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that his father was standing 18 inches away doing
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absolutely nothing. That was the entire message,
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and it was the only one worth sending. I am here,
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and I am not coming in, and both of those are
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permanent. Saloni found me there. Of course she
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did. She looked at my raised hand and at the
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door, and she said, very quietly, he knows where
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we are. And I said, and my voice did not come
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out right, what if he needs me? And she said,
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then he'll open it. And then she said the thing
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that took the wind out of me, which she delivered
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with no drama at all, the way she says the true
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things. You've spent two years making sure that
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when he needs you, he can get you. That's done.
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That worked. Now the job is to be gettable and
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not go in. Gettable and not go in. That is the
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whole of my life now, in four words from a woman
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chopping vegetables in a hallway. He does not
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need me to come through the door. He needs to
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know, with total certainty, that the door opens
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from his side and that I will be there the instant
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it does, and my going through it uninvited would
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not prove my love. it would prove that his side
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of the door does not count. She has a way of
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doing that, my wife, of taking the enormous inarticulate
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thing I have been failing to say for a month
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and handing it back to me in a sentence I can
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carry around in a pocket. I have come to understand
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that this is what she actually does with her
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seeing. She does not merely look, she compresses.
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Gettable and don't go in. I have thought of it
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perhaps 40 times since. standing outside that
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door, sitting in the car at a school gate, waiting
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on a pavement for a boy to come out of somewhere
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I was not invited into. It is going to be the
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whole of my fathering from here to the end of
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me. And she arrived at it in a hallway, with
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a knife still in her hand, in rather less time
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than it took me to fail to knock. There is a
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version of this I have watched go wrong, and
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I think it is the commonest way a good parent
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turns into a wall. It is the parent who cannot
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bear the closed door, and so keeps opening it,
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with tea, with a question, with a knock that
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is not really a request, with I'm not prying
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but, and who, in the process, teaches the child
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a lesson he will keep for 40 years, which is,
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your interior is not sovereign. There is no room
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in you I cannot enter. anything you close i will
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open and the child being adaptive does the only
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thing available to him which is to stop building
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rooms with doors and start building rooms with
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no entrances at all push at a closed door and
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you do not get access you get concealment you
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trade a boy who keeps some things from you for
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a boy who keeps everything from you and you will
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never know the moment the trade was made and
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you will spend his adolescence wondering why
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he tells you nothing I have met those fathers.
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I have sat across from them at the long table
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and heard them complain, in the injured voice,
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that their sons tell them nothing now, that they
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used to be so close, that something happened
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around 13 and the shutters came down. And what
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I understand at last, and would never say to
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them, is that nothing happened around 13. It
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happened at 9 or at 10 at the first closed door
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in a corridor with a cup of tea used as a paski,
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and it happened so quietly that neither of them
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noticed it happening. The shutters did not come
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down. They were installed, one small loving intrusion
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at a time, by a man who could not tolerate a
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door and called his intolerance caring, and who
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is now, a decade on, Genuinely bewildered to
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find himself living with a stranger, he built
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himself. I wrote it that night in the sixth notebook,
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the corridor dark, the light still on under his
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door, the tea I had made as a pretext long cold
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on the counter. That the reward for making a
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child safe is that he stops needing to show you
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everything and that this will feel exactly like
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being shut out and is in fact the opposite. His
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transparency was never intimacy. It was inventory,
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the openness of a boy who could not afford to
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own anything privately, who kept his whole self
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on the counter where the adults could see it
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because that is how you survive a provisional
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life. Now he has an inside. Now there are rooms
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in him with doors, and some of those doors will
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be shut to me for the rest of my life. And that
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is not the failure of our closeness, but it's
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proof, because you cannot choose to let someone
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in until you have somewhere they are not. I do
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not get to be in every room of my son. I get
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to be the man in the corridor, reliably there,
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close enough to hear, patient, uninvasive, awake,
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the fixed point he can come out to whenever he
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decides, and crucially, The man who did not open
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the door the night he cried behind it and did
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not want me. Then the working line, the sixth
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notebook open, the light under his door finally
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going off. When the child you fought your way
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into finally shuts a door on you, do not read
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it as the end of your closeness. Read it as the
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arrival of his sovereignty. He could not afford
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secrets before. Transparency was not his honesty.
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It was his insurance. The openness of a boy who
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kept his whole self on the counter so no adult
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would find anything to object to. An inside is
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what safety buys. So let the door be shut. Do
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not knock with tea or with a question that is
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really a search warrant. Or, with I'm not prying
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but, because pushing at a closed door does not
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buy you access, it buys you concealment, and
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a child who learns that nothing in him is sovereign
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will simply stop building rooms with doors at
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all. Be gettable and do not go in. Stand in the
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corridor. Be the fixed point he can come out
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to. And on the night you hear him crying behind
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it, and he does not call you, understand that
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he is not alone because nobody would come, he
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is alone because he chose it. And that choice,
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which costs you everything to permit, is the
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exact freedom you have spent two years buying
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him. I kept the pen. In the morning he came out
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and ate three parathas and told me a long, structurally
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chaotic story about something Tara's brother
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had done and was entirely himself and mentioned
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nothing about the night before. And I did not
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ask. That is the discipline. Not the not knowing.
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I can live with not knowing. I have made my peace
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with the fact that there is now weather inside
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my son I will never get a forecast for. The discipline
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is the not asking. The daily refusal to buy my
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own comfort with his privacy, to convert my anxiety
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into a question he then has to manage. He will
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tell me things. He tells me a great deal, still
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unprompted, in the car and at the table and at
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11 at night when he cannot sleep, and every one
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of those is a gift and not a tax because it comes
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through a door he opened himself, and the ones
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he keeps are his. He has an inside now. I built
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it, and my reward for building it is that I am
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not allowed in, and I would not undo a single
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hour of the work. To be continued in episode
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That was episode 87 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.