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.
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!
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.
This too. You are so lucky to feel this kind of pain.