Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 62: The Waiting

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 62: The Waiting · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My playful wife. Tara, when we told her, did
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the thing that I will not forget, which was to
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cry, briefly, and then be furious at herself
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for crying, and then explain. The waiting had
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a texture I had not anticipated, a grain to it,
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and I spent those weeks learning the feel of
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it the way you learn the feel of a new cloth.
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It was not empty time. That is the thing no one
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tells you about waiting for a large thing. You
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imagine it as a blank interval, a held breath,
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a nothing to be got through until the something
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arrives. It is not. It is a substance. It has
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weight and presence. It sits in the flat with
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you. It gets into the food and the conversations
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and the space between us in bed at night. The
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way a house guest you cannot see is nonetheless
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always faintly there. We were three in the flat
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already, in a sense, myself, Celonie, and the
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waiting, and the waiting was the loudest of us,
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for all that it never said a word. I had imagined
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waiting as a passive thing, something that happens
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to you while you stand still. It is not passive
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at all. Waiting well is an activity, strenuous
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in its own quiet way, requiring a constant low
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effort not to do the easy things, not to despair.
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Not to hurry. Not to keep ringing the office.
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Not to let the not -knowing curdle into resentment
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or the hope sour into demand. A badly weighted
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weight poisons everything around it. I have watched
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people made permanently bitter by weights they
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handled wrong. To weight well is a discipline
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as real as any other. And like the others, it
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is mostly the discipline of not doing the destructive
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thing your impatience keeps urging on you. I
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was, that season, an apprentice at it. Saloni,
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I would learn, was a master. And the question
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the waiting kept asking, in its silent, insistent
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way, was the one I did not know how to answer.
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What do you do with a present that is mostly
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made of a future? I had spent six years and six
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notebooks training myself to live in the now,
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in the actual room, in what is here. But the
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now is now half empty, defined by the child -shaped
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space at the center of it, and to attend the
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present honestly meant attending an absence,
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which is a thing the eye does not naturally know
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how to do. You can look at what is there, looking
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at what is not yet there and not going mad with
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it, and not sleeping through the meantime, that
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was the new discipline, and I did not have it
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yet. What made it stranger still was that I could
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not even rehearse it. With most hard things,
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you can at least picture the shape of what is
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coming and prepare yourself for it. But we did
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not know whether the child would be two or ten,
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a boy or a girl, easy or wounded, arriving in
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a month or in a year. The waiting was not the
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anticipation of a known thing. It was the anticipation
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of an unknown one, a held readiness for a person
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whose face and age and griefs were all still
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blank. You cannot brace for a blank. You can
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only stay loosely, generally ready, open in every
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direction at once, which is exhausting in a way
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that bracing for a known blow is not. We were
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not waiting for an event. We were waiting for
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a stranger we had already promised to love. The
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first real argument we had in months was about
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a bed. It sounds absurd, set down plainly, but
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it was not absurd at the time. It was the whole
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question wearing small clothes. Selene wanted
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to begin furnishing the room. Nothing elaborate,
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a bed, she said, just a bed to start so that
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the room would stop being a void and start being
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a place that was expecting someone. And I found,
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to my own surprise, that I did not want to. I
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wanted to leave it bare. Buying a bed for a child
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who did not yet exist, who might not come for
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a year, who might, the social worker's gentle
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warning still in my ears, not come in the shape
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we pictured at all, felt to me like a tempting
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of fate, like laying a place at the table for
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a guest who had not said yes, the kind of presumption
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the universe punishes. Leave it empty, I said.
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Don't furnish a hope. Don't hang the future on
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the wall before it's real. That's the careful
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man talking, Selenese said, not unkindly, but
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not backing down either. The man who learned,
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somewhere small, that if you don't expect anything
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you can't be disappointed. I know that man. I
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was married to him for years. She stood in the
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empty room with her arms folded. But I don't
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want to wait that way. I don't want to protect
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myself from this by refusing to believe in it
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until it's safe. A bed isn't tempting fate. A
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bed is just saying out loud, with furniture,
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that we mean it. That there's a real place here,
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getting ready for a real child who's coming,
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even if we don't know their name yet. I'd rather
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buy the bed and risk the grief than keep the
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room empty to keep myself safe. I've done the
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keeping myself safe version of a life. It's not
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actually safer. It's just emptier. And she looked
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at me, and I understood that the bed was not
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about the bed. It was about which of us was right
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about how to hold a hope during a wait, whether
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you protect it by withholding belief, the way
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I had protected everything for 40 years, or whether
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you commit to it out loud and unprotected, the
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way she had committed once to a sleeping husband
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with no guarantee he would ever wake. We bought
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the bed. We began, too, in those weeks, to tell
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people, and telling people turned out to be its
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own education in what the world thinks a family
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is. The reactions sorted themselves quickly into
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kinds. There were the openly delighted, who were
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a gift. And there were the others, well -meaning,
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almost all of them, not unkind, but carrying
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a set of small, wounding assumptions they did
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not even know they held. But you don't know what
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you'll get, said one, as though a child were
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a parcel of uncertain contents. At your age,
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said another, with a tilt of the head, and more
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than once, gently, the question that revealed
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the whole hidden architecture of how people rank
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these things. Why not have your own? As though
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the child we were waiting for would be a substitute
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for some realer child, a second prize, the thing
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you settle for when the proper route is closed.
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I had not anticipated how much these would sting,
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or how often I would have to decide, in the half
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second after, whether to educate the speaker
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or simply let it pass. I came to understand that
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the wounding questions were not, mostly, cruelty.
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They were the ordinary, unexamined furniture
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of how people think about children, repeated
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without inspection because nobody had ever made
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them inspect it. The ranking was so deep it was
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invisible to the rankers. The quiet universal
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assumption that a child of your own blood is
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the real thing, and any other child a substitute,
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a kindness, a charity case taken on by the generous.
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It is a stupid assumption, and a cruel one to
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the millions of children it quietly files as
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second best. But the people voicing it did not
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know they were voicing anything. They thought
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they were making conversation. The bias is in
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the water. You cannot be angry at every person
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who drinks it without knowing. You can only,
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now and then, when it matters, decline to drink
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it yourself in front of them. Mostly I let it
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pass, but once, with the man who said why not
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your own, I did not, because the awake years
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have made me unwilling to leave certain untruths
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sitting in the air. There's no such thing as
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your own, I said. That's the whole illusion.
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No child is anyone's own. They arrive through
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you or they arrive to you, but either way they
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arrive as complete strangers you then spend 20
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years learning to see, and the learning is identical
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either way. I'd have had to learn a child born
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to me just as slowly and carefully as I'll have
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to learn this one. Nobody is handed a child they
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already know. The own you're talking about is
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just biology, and biology is the one part of
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this that doesn't actually matter. The looking
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is what makes a parent, and I intend to do the
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looking. That makes the child mine in the only
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way the word means anything at all. He did not
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quite know what to do with that, and the conversation
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moved on, but I noticed Solonie looking at me
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from across the room with something in her face,
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and later she said it was the first time she
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had heard me defend the thing aloud, the why
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I had not been able to say to the social worker,
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and that I had apparently been able to say it
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after all, when the door it had to fit through
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was the right shape. Tara, when we told her,
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did the thing that I will not forget, which was
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to cry, briefly, and then be furious at herself
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for crying, and then explain. Sorry, she said,
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wiping her eyes, annoyed in the way the young
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get when their feelings ambush them. It's just
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I know what it is. To be the one who gets looked
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at late by someone who didn't have to. That's
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what you two did for me, a bit, with the workshop.
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I had people, I'm not saying I was, but I know
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what it is to have an adult decide to actually
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see you when they had no obligation to. And some
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kid out there is about to get the full version
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of that. From the two of you. She laughed, wetly.
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God help them, they'll be the most looked at
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child in Delhi. He'll write notebooks about you.
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She said to the imagined child, and it landed
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in the room like a small bright blessing, and
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Saloni laughed. And I had to look out of the
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window for a moment, because the girl had said,
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simply, the thing the doubters could not see,
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that what we had to offer was not second best
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to anything, that it was, in fact, the rarest
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and most valuable thing one person can give another,
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and that she of all people knew it because she
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had received a portion of it herself. And it
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struck me, watching her wipe her eyes and scold
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herself for the tears, that Terra was in a sense
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the proof of the whole proposition we were betting
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our middle age on. Here was a young woman not
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born to us, who had arrived a stranger, an apprentice,
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a hire, and who had become, across a few years
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of nothing more mystical than sustained attention,
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something very close to a daughter, with no biology
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involved anywhere in the making of it. We had
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not been handed Terra by blood. We had earned
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her... Slowly, by looking, and she had become
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ours in exactly the way I had argued a fostered
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child would become ours. She was the experiment
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already run, the result already in. If the looking
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could make Tara family, it could make anyone
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family. It was Saloni. in the end, who cracked,
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quietly, one night, and let me see that the serene
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one was not as serene as she let the doubters
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believe. I woke, and she was not in the bed,
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and I found her in the empty room, not empty
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now, the bed in it, made up, waiting, sitting
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on the floor with her back against the new bed
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in the dark, and she was crying, without sound.
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The way people cry when they have been holding
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something for a long time and have stepped away
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to a private room to set it down. She had been
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so steady. She had answered every doubter, studied
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my every wobble, bought the bed against my caution,
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been the faith of the whole enterprise. And here,
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at two in the morning, on the floor of the room,
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was the cost of all that steadiness, the ache
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she carried and did not show. that she wanted
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this so badly and could not make it come and
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had no lever to pull and might wait a year and
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was frightened, under all her certainty, that
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it might not happen at all. I sat down on the
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floor beside her, against the new bed, and I
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did not try to fix it or to reassure, because
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I have learned that from her. I only put my arm
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around her and let her be exactly as frightened
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and as wanting as she was and stayed and looked
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at her. and let her be seen in the one moment
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she had tried to hide. It was the first time
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in the whole long process that I had studied
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her instead of the reverse, and something in
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me was almost grateful for the chance, after
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years of being the one who needed holding, to
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be for one night the one who held. There is a
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particular intimacy in being allowed to see the
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strong one falter that I do not think I had ever
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earned with her before. For years she had been
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the awake one, the steady one. the one who held.
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Her strength had been the fixed point I navigated
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by, and I had taken it, I am ashamed to say,
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somewhat for granted, the way you take for granted
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a thing that never seems to cost its owner anything.
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To see what it cost, to see her set the strength
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down for an hour on the floor of a dark room
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and simply be a frightened person who wanted
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something badly, was to be let, finally, all
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the way in, past even the place the six notebooks
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had reached. The waiting was giving me, among
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its harder gifts, this one. The late privilege
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of learning that she needed holding to, and of
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being trusted to do it. I wrote it that night,
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after she had gone back to sleep, the sixth notebook
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on my knee in the dark of the room with the waiting
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bed. That I had finally found the discipline
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the waiting had been demanding of me, and that
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Saloni's two -in -the -morning tears had taught
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it to me. The discipline was this. You do not
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get through the waiting by skipping ahead in
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your mind to the child, living in the imagined
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future where they have arrived, treating the
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present as a mere corridor to be hurried through.
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That is just another kind of sleep, sleeping
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through the now and your hunger for the not yet.
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The waiting is also your life. These months are
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not the unimportant part before the important
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part. They are months of my actual marriage,
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the only ones I will get, and they have their
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own things in them to be seen. A bed bought in
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faith, a girl's wet -eyed blessing, my wife crying
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on a floor at two in the morning and letting
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me hold her. If I skip all that in my rush toward
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the child, I will have slept through a whole
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season of my life in the name of the next one,
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which is the exact error the notebooks exist
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to prevent. So, attend the waiting. Stay awake
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to the not yet itself. The child is not yet here,
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but the waiting for the child is here, and it
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is mine, and it is, in its own aching way, holy,
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and I will not sleep through it. I have come
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to think this is the final and hardest application
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of everything the notebooks ever taught me. It
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was one thing to learn to stay awake to a present
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full of good things, a wife, a festival, a life
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recovered. It is another to stay awake to a present
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that aches, that is defined by what it lacks,
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that would be so much easier to flee by living
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in the imagined future or numbing into the dull
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middle distance. But the aching present is no
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less your life than the happy one. The months
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of wanting are as real as the months of having.
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And a man who can only stay awake when the present
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is pleasant has not learned the discipline at
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all, only enjoyed its easy version. The hard
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version is this, to keep your eyes open on a
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life that hurts because it is still your life
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and the alternative to feeling it is not peace
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but absence. Then the working line, the sixth
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notebook open, the new bed made up and empty
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beside us, Saloni asleep at last. Do not sleep
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through the waiting. When you are waiting for
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a large thing, a child, a healing, a yes that
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has not come, the temptation is to skip ahead,
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to live in the imagined after, and treat the
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now as a dull corridor to be endured with your
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eyes shut until the real life starts. But the
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waiting is not the corridor to your life. It
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is your life, this stretch of it, the only version
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of these particular months you will ever be given.
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There are things in the waiting that exist nowhere
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else and will never come again. The hope held
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unprotected, the bed bought on faith, the person
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beside you cracking quietly at two in the morning
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and letting you see it. Attend them. Stay awake
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to the not yet. The thing you are waiting for
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is not here. But you are, and so is the one waiting
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beside you, and that is more than enough to keep
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your eyes open for. I capped the pen and sat
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a while on the floor of the room that was no
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longer empty, the made bed pale in the dark,
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my wife asleep down the hall now, the waiting
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still everywhere in the flat like weather, and
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I found I was not, that night, impatient with
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it. The child would come, or would come in some
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shape we had not pictured. In some month we could
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not name, and we would meet them when they arrived.
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But tonight there was a bed bought in faith,
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and a wife who had let me hold her, and a girl's
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blessing still warm in the room, and a discipline
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newly learned, and I sat in the not yet of it
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all and looked, on purpose, at the waiting itself,
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and found it was not empty after all. It was
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full of us. It had been full of us the whole
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time. I had only, until tonight, been too busy
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waiting to see it. To be continued in episode
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62 of My Playful Wife. If this story is staying
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