Leap Year

A ramble and reflections on my day so far

“He thumped me really hard on the arm, spat in my face and threw all this stuff around the room this morning, before he went to school”

I announce, as he, his father, enters the house to see me slumped upon the sofa.

As I say this, it amuses me to think of the Cole Porter song ‘You’d be so nice to come home to’.

I’m wondering what it’s like to return home on your work break, to find me - still not dressed, crying - curled like a dormouse in my longest hooded dressing gown. A miserable huddle of furry grey.

He’s smiley, hi vis and flat cap on, his ruddy skin looks ripe and waxed like a proud fruit, his teeth like marble against it. Always had that outdoorsy kind of complexion that beets and blanches.

He starts picking stuff up from the fluffy, forest green rug.

Things our 12 year old son has hurled around the living room - books, clothes, pens….

Things I’ve left, the way an act of a play remains untouched until it is cleared for the shaping of the next scene. Each detail deliberately indicative of an aspect of the drama.

The metaphors.

An open book - what is written and those blank pages yet to fill…….

What can be fixed, what can not.

“At least he didn’t start chucking my guitar around!”

Every cloud, eh?

“No….”

There’d been a young cat at the window earlier on. Jet black, tiny voice.

“If you see that cat, don’t encourage it! I know it’s a nice one but if you do…..it won’t leave”

He’d said a few days ago.

And at the time, I hadn’t minded ignoring it.

But somehow, this morning, when I’d felt so sad, it had been harder to switch off from its pitiful cries. So damn hard. How I’d wanted to open the door, wide, let it curl upon my lap, take all it wanted from me in both food and affection..……..allow me to mother it.

But I hadn’t. I’d been ‘sensible’

Funny how ‘sensible’ is so often at odds with ‘sensitive’, isn’t it?

Or maybe it’s not…….not really…..

Emotional intelligence.

Every animal in the neighbourhood had had a bloody ‘message’ for me this morning. Sometimes this row is like a scene from ‘Snow White’ or ‘Bambi’.

Had started at 7am. The barn owl had combed the field. I’d been mesmerised by the plane-like nature of its soar,  the tilting, impressiveness of his wingspan, a sure sign of good fortune…..

Then, I’d considered another angle. How another creature watching the same bird, had seen only impending death, hovering above it, encroaching talons, an ivory grim reaper.

A final shadow.

Next, a mistle thrush had been drawn to the window. His bib so speckled, eyes so cartoonish and big, his beak persistently tapping on the glass.

At that point I’d had enough.

“Fuck off with all your cryptic signs!”

I’d wanted to yell.

But of course, I hadn’t. I only say nice things to animals and birds. Can’t lose my shit with a thrush can I? Would be illogical…..

Back in the room, Julie….back in the room….

“Anyway…….he’s not like that with you every day, is he?”

He says.

Blasé.

“No…..but….”

“He does it to me too”

“Oh…..so that’s alright then, yeah?”

“Not saying it is, it’s just how it is. It’s not always like that….you know it’s not. But nothing else happened, no?”

What is he wanting to have happened, I wonder. What will deem it noteworthy?

Of interest? An event? Worth a mention?

Saying this will only escalate matters. So I don’t. I say;

“No…. it’s just that when it happens so early on, it sets my mood for the day, makes me sad…..been talking to my friend online and her son is 16 now and he still does it, hits her…….hasn’t changed…..”

It’s true, I have. He’s autistic too.

As I think this, I chastise myself.

It’s not the ‘autism’….. because if I thought that, it would make me an ableist monster, wouldn’t it?

No! It’s the ‘co-morbidities’

THAT’S what it is!

Difficulty regulating! All these newspeak niceties arrive in my head at once. It’s not ‘naughty’, it’s challenging, Julie. He ‘struggles’. Label the behaviour not the child!  I know, I know….

I love him, I do….

“Everyone has problems with their kids. Just different ones.”

He says, cutting through my self indulgence with his blade of underwhelm.

“Alex is worried about his daughter. 14. She’s always going out, vaping, losing loads of weight…..Matt is worried about his son, completely different, just wants to stay locked in his bedroom all the time, won’t go anywhere….”

“I suppose…”

“Brew?”

“Please”

My tea arrives. It’s a new mug I bought from ‘middle of Lidl’ the other day. That aisle they have packed with shite you didn’t come in for. Impulse buys. But I had needed a mug.

We go through so many…..

It’s textured, looks and feels as though someone made a plaster cast of an old school cable-knit cardigan. It’s massive. The sort of mug you sip from and feel as though your tea will never end, the comfort of it will never leave you, a flood of liquid love.

Until, it does.

“Anyway….how was your Open Mic?”

I ask, with faux cheeriness.

“There was this young guy in his twenties with this much older woman….. his mother. He was playing dark stuff….at least, I think it was his mother”

“Might have been his woman”

“No….I think he had issues and she was just sort of accompanying him. ‘That’s enough now!’ she said, ‘you’ve done one song’…..not sure why he was only allowed to do one song…..”

“No”

“Landlady starts telling me she grew up in Kebs. Starts talking about the winter of ’79 and how they had to move a dead body by sledge”

“Yeah?”

I quite like that story. Maybe there’ll be more….

There isn’t.

“I got told I look like Dan Reed…….since he lost his hair. But I don’t know who that is, so…..”

“No? I’ll find a pic on my phone…”

“I nearly told him he looked like Willie Nelson from 1983 in the documentary I watched…..but I didn’t”

“Good. Not sure that would have gone down that well”

I say.

“No”

I bring up a photo of a bald Dan Reed.

“Alright, isn’t he? I suppose he looks a bit contrived in that one, the pose is a bit Alan Partridge….”

I play him a burst of ‘Rainbow Child’

“You MUST know this?”

“No”

“No?”

And it’s strange isn’t it, how because you grew up in the same town, knew the same people or even share a child, that you assume a person must know all the same things you do, hold the same references.

“Come on….you MUST know….!”

We say, disbelieving, hopeful that someone - anyone - has the same codes carved upon them, a shared history, the same destiny…..

But there is no truly ‘like minded’ person, is there?

Nature does not care to duplicate.

It’s delusional.

No-one has the same biology you have.

No-one has had the same life you have had, the experiences that shape the person you are now.

We are born with a misplaced nostalgia.

A longing for belonging that remains unmet.

But any void, can only be filled by you alone.

Tomorrow is 1st March, Spring.

I have lots to look forward to. My 50th birthday, my forthcoming trip to South America.

But today, the 29th February, Winter was extended. I ask myself why.

Maybe to have us contemplate what we do - what we should do - when given ‘extra time’.

Not this! I conclude.

We must play on.

And I go get dressed.