In Actual Fact…

Post Temporarily Removed:
Sorry to the people who’ve posted comments, but I’ve pulled this post for now. It’s one of the few stories that I want to get exactly right before publishing it. I’ll work on it and re-post it when my brain is functioning in a lucid manner (so perhaps never).

He’s three and a half years old and we’re standing together in the midday sun of the local train station, waiting for the S-Bahn (because that’s what the local trains are called here) to arrive so that we can get on board and head off to the nearest outdoor swimming pool (Freibad) for the afternoon.
He’s not a typical 3½-year-old – the kind of mewling, puking creatures to whom I’m normally allergic. It’s not hard to say why he’s so independent. It’s not because we live in Germany and he has a British passport, nor is it because that his skin tone, somewhere in-between his British-born mother’s Indian skin tones and my whiteness makes him stand out – it’s because if we go out together as a “family unit”, when people comment on us being a British multi-ethnic family, he will point out that I am not his Papa. Papa is in Heaven. Papa developed a brain tumour shortly after his birth and rather than is typical, he spent his very early years, not as the centre of attention, but watching one of his parents slowly die. This lack of attention has turned him into someone who is aware of the concept of looking after himself.
Then something happens. The train arrives. Suddenly the platform is filled with passengers pushing to get off the train, off the platform and to the exit. He panics – he’s only waist-high to these people in suits – and reaches desperately for my hand. Somehow that connection triggers a protective feeling in me; I’m overcome with the knowledge that if necessary I will jump in front of the train or fight everyone on the platform to protect him. He’s not my son, I have no children of my own, and yet the knowledge that he trusts me implicitly is enough to evoke unique (and frankly, unexplainable) feelings within me.
The point is that he trusts me implicitly. Later, when he jumps into the deep end of the swimming pool, after assuring me that he can swim – he can’t, he just owns a pair of goggles and Speedos – he assumes that I will be able to save him. He doesn’t know that I am, or at least was, a qualified lifeguard, but he trusts me implicitly. The bond between children and their parental figure is as trusting and as close to unconditional love as makes no difference.
It only works with children though. That was last summer. This summer, he’s one year older, his mother’s with a soldier (they both like songs by Squeeze). Unconditional love doesn’t work between consenting adults. Holding their hands at train stations isn’t enough, taking their children swimming isn’t enough. Nothing, including the correct response to their complaints about the day at work is enough. One can never tell what is enough: unconditionally loaning a portion of one’s heart to someone else seems to be a guaranteed way to get that part back, irreversibly damaged, at some point in the future.
And yet we insist on doing it: when relationships break down, we may think we act childishly, yet in fact, we behave exactly oppositely. Children trust – it’s only when we grow up that we eye the ones we should trust suspiciously….
German Word For Today: “Kinder statt Inder” – Better increase your birthrate then
Song playing as this was published: Bina Mistry - “Im Nin Alu”