Essays from The Shadows
Volume Three
I am just going to assume that if you know me and manage to work out who I am talking about, you will just keep it to yourself. It is the least important part of what I am about to say. It is the essence, not the specifics, of the thing.
Slap bang in the middle of this period of post-intense therapy, where my mind was open and exploring the whole issue of my childhood and the lack of whatever, I was shown a vivid contrast of what might have been.
I have a pair of friends who moved a long way away and we didn’t see them for a long time. Well, there were moments when we got to spend an evening or a lunch together. They had children who we didn’t meet in person. We saw pictures, but we hadn’t been around them or watched them grow up. More importantly, we had never seen our friends being parents.
The other day, he messaged me and explained that he was about three miles away with two of his three children. I went and picked them up and drove them back to our house for popcorn and lemonade.
The eldest boy is ten years of age and as we crawled along in London traffic, I suddenly found myself witnessing this father/son relationship up close. There was laughter and mocking each other and this natural, fabulous, easy vibe between them.
Now, my friend is one of those people we had always believed would make the most wonderful father. To suddenly witness it up close, to see this product of his parenting in real life, interacting with him and to watch the giggling and the easygoing mockery was breathtaking to me.
It slowly dawned on me how different my childhood was from this, how I was looking at the kind of things that were absent. An actual, real-life example of how it could be if it was done well.
It wasn’t just that there was laughter and a shared joy in each other and the relationship they had, but it was also the confidence of the boy, the assured knowledge that he was safe to say or do anything, that he knew the boundaries, that he understood it was ok to say anything; the immense trust in this adult was obvious and played out in sparkling eyes and sloppy grins and uncontrolled giggling.
Now this boy has travelled and lived in different cultures, and I am sure that can make for a confident and assured child, but that doesn’t take away from how his parenting has shaped and balanced him.
Through the afternoon, he chattered and just fell naturally into being with people; he seemed to just assume that if his father says they are ok, then we are good to go.
There was one little moment, an exchange between us that I will never forget. I stood up to get more drinks and asked him if he needed another lemonade, and there was a beat, a flicker of something across his eyes, and he mumbled something and looked a little uncomfortable.
I crouched beside him and got down to his level and asked if he was ok. He took a little breath then quietly said to me, “Oh yeah, I am just a bit shy sometimes, I would like some more lemonade, please.”
I was so struck by how brave he was to just say it, but also by the trust that meant he could. Yes, of course, I would adopt him if I could. It was like watching a version of what I could have been if I had been loved and nurtured in the same way he had been.
I took a moment in the kitchen and tried not to lose it. I was flooded with a sense of loss, of grief almost. It made me aware of what I had not had. In some strange way, I was being shown something, something I had been struggling to define and see.
Nothing to do with him, nothing to do with what he did or said in any way, just personal to me. Just threw everything into sharp focus.
I dropped them off where they were staying for a few days with friends and went in so I could say hello to their mother and make arrangements to meet up again while they were in the country. As I was leaving, this boy launched himself at me and gave me a hug of such affection that I was left with the feeling that he was a new friend and I had been included in his world.
Such privilege, such safety, such absolute and complete freedom that he had no hesitation in expressing himself, and I understood for a moment what a boy’s love feels like.