Originally posted May 2009
It has been said that my favourite poet would often sit alone as a child and mutter to himself, “Alfred, Alfred, Alfred…” over and over in some sort of attempt to figure out the problem, the complexity, of self. His self.
Goodness, don’t we all? We emerge from childhood into a fiery adolescence, then that gets molten into another shape as we enter adulthood when we find other ways, other pursuits, to try and sort out one basic question – what the fuck is going on?
This needn’t happen over the course of a season or a year. Indeed you can be challenged many times over the course of the day.
This week I’ve forgotten to take Keira’s packed lunch and schoolbag with us to kinder. Twice. The first time I had to duck across to a bakery and buy her something; this is what happened the second time as well, but the look of disdain she gave me when I passed over the brown paper bag was something to behold.
“What’s the matter?” I said. “It’s a yummy muffin.”
“But it’s not…right. Again.”
Which is to say the muffin wasn’t clicked inside her Dora lunchbox, inside her Dora bag, where at the snack table she could then be surrounded by a plethora of other colourful licensed characters. I can understand her reluctance to accept the paper bag, just as I can wish she’d be more responsible about remembering her bag in the first place. But the fact is that I forgot, as I have been forgetting many things lately.
Ten minutes later I was standing in a cafe line for a strong cappuccino and although there were at least four other people waiting behind me the waitress looked over at my son, standing to the side and clicking his fingers and dancing to the music broadcast through the speakers, a Rat Packer’s soul in a three year old boy.
“Is he yours?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She looked at my face hard, with interest. “But you’re so young!”
“I also have a girl who turned five a couple of days ago.”
“How old were you when you gave birth to her?”
This is all happening with twitchy caffeine-deprived people banked up behind me.
“Twenty five.”
“Twenty five.” She considered that number for a moment. “That’s young.”
Indeed, I guess it is. To many people at least. This year, though, I don’t feel young, I feel old mentally and emotionally, and you can be sure when she said I looked young I wanted to make out with her, briefly. So I nodded, paid, and went to wait for the coffee with my son.
My son, who chose that moment to say, “I don’t love you. I love dad. Dad only.”
Any other day, I laugh that kind of talk off; our kids say those kinds of things. Sometimes it’s a deliberate ruse to get a rise out of a parent. But yesterday, after the repeated snack FAIL and my wondering why that waitress would even ask me that question (Does she think I’m too young? What is ‘too young’? Why do I care?) to my son’s declared paternal loyalty, I can see why it is hard to lose sight of your inner life when it’s being buffeted on all sides.
And all before 9am.
I do not have time to sit and whisper, “Karen, Karen, Karen” to myself. Or maybe I do.
I am sitting here, after all.
So you could say my sense of irony remains intact, at least.
