Don’t Kid Yourself

3rd September, 2010

 


When pre-speech becomes suddenly speech: a pause, deliberate or not, in the story

and your daughter, who’s hitherto hedged her verbal bets, utters the next word for you

clear as a bell

the hand of God

the blue touchpaper lit

and you take a bath in heart-swollen delight, which she of course senses and plays to

and this word daddy look I can say this too I can say them all I’ve known them all all along

what did you think that knowing look was? it was me saying without saying I know what you’re saying


When in crisp September mornings back to school photos

are reluctantly proudly posed for, shoes creaking, blazers economically loose, still-wet nametags showing

and you smell that sob coming just in time to choke it silently back


When a pre-teen starts slamming doors on some unfathomable hurt

or a real teen stays up alone sharing with A Friend epic thoughts, searching for cosmological significance

while you can only listen outside to the tap and chirrup of incoming and outgoing intimacy

at first smiling knowingly, and then gently or not so gently suggesting bed, rest


the reflex seems to be, the orthodoxy seems to be to busy yourself

with the logging of life-events, this framing of moments

this dance, this dainty denial of truth they call parenting in which

even as you catalogue and compile, you are choosing not to see

that these lives are not yours, cannot be, you wouldn’t want them to be.


Pritt all you like into albums but don’t kid yourself:

none of this belongs to you, not a single beat of it.


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3 thoughts on “Don’t Kid Yourself

  1. Blimey, lump in throat. There is something about September, even if you don’t have kids, that really is a big tick-tock on the year’s clock (unintentional rhyme). I watched the Leeds kids stomp off to school on Wednesday with a mixture of genuine sympathy and utter glee because I didn’t have to go!

  2. After a year and a half of home schooling, my son finally starts High School on Tuesday. I am – as you – lump in throat, tears choked back. You are right. They do not belong to us. We are simply fortunate enough to be their caretakers for a short while. It is frustrating, painful, heartbreaking at times, but oh so rewarding.

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