The most significant thing that happened last year was that I started living with my children again. If you are that sharp cookie who reads between the lines, you might have figured out by now that I haven’t always lived with my children. If you aren’t the sharp sort, then you must be the type who likes jokes explained to them. The reason for this domestic situation, and other short stories will be in my memoir, which I will publish, in a rather cliche way, when I turn 50.
I’m 47, in case you are wondering. Which means I’ve started carving it. It’s got a bit of ugliness in it, lurid truths and hopefully some lessons sandwiched therein. It will have the potential to leave me naked, but isn’t that how we came about here in the first place?
How this recent story unfolded was that one-day last year, I drove over to Mountain View Estate to pick up my son. The reason why I was picking him up is tied to another story that is not yours to hear. It was dark when I parked at the cul-de-sac. I had on my house pajama bottoms because I had already showered, and had dinner, when I had to leave suddenly.
I leaned against the car and texted to say I was at the gate. I looked down the empty curving street, the yellow light from the streetlamps seemed to boil the tarmac. A neighbor’s dog barked in the distance. Inside those homes, I imagined, families were seated in front of TVs, or winding up a late dinner. Maybe a house cat napped under a table. It felt like I waited for a long time but in reality, it might have been three minutes before I heard the key and then the gate opened.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
She stepped outside. She was wearing dark tights and a worn T-shirt.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded, but then she said, “No.”
We hugged. Then we talked a bit before walking to the house.
The house was bright with white light. It felt like daylight. I can’t recall the last time I was there at night and I remember thinking, what do they do here, open heart surgery? Light bounced off everything and bounced right back into the back of my head. My thoughts squinted in the light.
Kim’s suitcase was in the middle of the living room. He was standing next to it like he was catching a Red-eye or something. He carried his school backpack. I looked at him, he looked like any 10-year-old boy whose life had been root-canaled and I felt all manner of overwhelming feelings towards him come crashing over me like a brutish wave. I felt sorry for him. I felt a deep love for him. I wanted to be his blanket, to cover him until he turned 20. I wanted to heal him from fear and anxiety. I hoped love would be enough to see him emerge from the other side. Mostly, I wanted to cry.
“Go to your room, Papi,” His mom calls him Papi. “I need to talk to Papa.”
Papi left the room. Papa sat down. The TV was on. The curtains remained still, as if ready to weigh in on this conversation. We talked. She held her head in her hands and wept. I didn’t know what to do. Nobody tells us what to do when women cry. So we say dumb shit, like, “it’s going to be fine”. Later, I dragged Kim’s suitcase to the gate and hauled it in the boot. He had on his sky-blue crocs. When he hugged his mum goodbye, she clung to him and it shattered my heart to see that. Because I know one day when he’s 27 years old, he will be on a date with a girl he likes that he met on TikTok or some dating App; and being a sensitive boy, he will always wear that moment on his sleeve, and he will tell this girl about that night when his dad came for him, and he clung to his mum at the gate, holding onto each other like two drowning people. And she, a petite girl, for I see Kim being the type who will take a shine to petite girls with tiny oracular tattoos on their collarbones, will reach out, and touch his hand and say, “Your eyes are even more beautiful when they are sad.”
“I’m not sad,” Kim will say, “I’m nostalgic.”
She eventually let him go but let one hand linger on his shoulder. “I love you,” I heard her tell him. He said something like “Yeah, me too,” and walked to the car because he’s now set on the path of being a teenager in a couple of years, and it’s unbecoming to say “I love you too” in public, under the glare of streetlights and a fence. That night we sat on the sofa and we spoke and I held him as he cried on my chest. He went to bed and I stayed up thinking and thinking until 3 am when I started hearing the familiar sounds of dawn.
And so the landscape of my life changed drastically after that. My routine changed. Suddenly I had a child living in my house full time, not just for the weekend. There were things to consider, changes to make. I had to create space for him, literally and figuratively. With help from Lady, who I wouldn’t have done this without, we made him comfortable, a replica of a home. I reached out to my great friend, Sly who gave me insights and tools of home management, for nobody runs a tighter ship at home than Dr. Sly.
My life quickly started unfolding into small confusing scenes. It was strange seeing him standing in the kitchen in the morning or walking through the door after a long day at school. I’d never seen him remove his school shoes in the recent past. It took some getting used to, having someone come into the room to interrupt my writing and ask, “What are you writing?” It didn’t irritate me as it normally would.
Mostly I realised I didn’t know my son like I thought I did. You can’t possibly know someone when you see them for a few hours every week. Now I had him in the next room, in the kitchen, on the balcony, and sometimes I’d look at him and think, that is me: very sensitive, broody at times, silent, easily distracted, forgetful, hates noise. I learned that he can’t sleep in complete darkness. He can’t sleep with the doors of wardrobes open. Can’t stay in the house alone with any of the doors ajar. He likes to have his head stroked, and his feet rubbed. He likes being touched. He thrives on affirmation. He Is Considerate and loving and hates to offend. Doesn’t like onions in his food. Hates curry, prefers dry food. Leaves lights on. Forgets to close the fridge door. Hates tomato sauce, loves his tea warm, orders the same damn thing on the menu…
One day I asked him about a bottle I had been seeing next to his bed.
“That’s holy water,” he said.
I looked at him.
“Holy water? As in for church, holy water?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you get that from?”
“Mum gave it to me.”
“For what?”
“For protection.”
“Protection from what?” I asked.
“I get nightmares.”
I sat down on his bed.
“What are these nightmares about?”
“That the world is ending.”
I stared at him and then at his holy water.
Sometimes I felt like I was in his nightmares. And I have felt a few times myself like the world I knew ended and this was another world.
One thing he lacked was structure. He was just winging shit, flailing through his day like a winged dove. I had to fix that. I sat down with him and I told him, “Kim, you can’t operate like an animal in the forest. This is what I want you to do from the moment you wake up.” We drew a routine; wake up, brush your teeth, draw open your curtains and window, spread your damn bed, shower, use roll on, you have skin – not hide, so moisturise it, have breakfast, go to school where if someone pushes you, push them back (a boy keeps pushing him around at school and he walks away, it galls me), come home, clean your shoes for the next day, shower, homework, write a page about your day and how you feel, one hour of TV, read for thirty minutes, brush, sleep. No gadgets during the week. Repeat. Repeat.
It’s tough setting new habits but I’m up for it, I’m pedantic, almost anal. He’s 11 now, I figure I still have three years to beat him into shape. Metaphorically, of course. I will do it in under a year. The girl with a tattoo on her collarbone will ask him, “How did you become this habitual person, Kimmie?” [For girls give you wobbly nicknames] And he will tell her, “When I was 10 years old I moved in with a fascist.”
“Oh, Kimmie.”
He’s slowly getting in shape. Boys sometimes forget to shower twice a day, but that we have fixed. Sometimes we forget to moisturise but we are reminded. Sometimes we forget to clean our plates. Sometimes we leave our wet towels on the bed. Sometimes we forget to clean our school shoes. It’s annoying but it’s all good, we will work it out. Sometimes we are reminded by a raised voice, other times by compassion and grace. But we are reminded, constantly. I got coloured stick-ons and wrote words on them that I pasted on top of his bed for him to see when getting in and out of bed.
Consistency.
You can’t do much with your life without it.
Discipline.
Do it daily, even if it doesn’t make sense now.
Order.
Your environment is a mirror of your mind and life.
Body
Exercise, keep moving
Mind
Read, write, learn.
Soul
Pray. Believe in something. A God.
This is Rome and we are laying a stone at a time. Some days the stone falls off and we pick it up and replace it.
He was sick of me at the beginning. His mum said, “he says you are very hard on him.” I said, “Life will be harder on him if I’m not.”
I dreaded Tamms coming back home from boarding school. Another hurdle that I felt I had to jump over with ruined hips. The evening of her return, the three of us lingered at the dining table after dinner. I told her that things had changed and, “This is going to be your home now. Indefinitely.” I told her why. She listened and said OK. She never betrays emotions, cards are always close to her chest. Life, to her, is one unending poker game. “Maybe take a few days to process this and let me know what you think?” I offered. She said she’d write me a letter. That’s how we “talk” about issues. I come back from home and I find a letter on my dresser. I read it and I walk up to her room and I hold up the letter and say, “Do you want to talk about this?” and she says, “No, please reply with a letter.” It maddens me but I shut up and write her a letter, for was I not a writer before I was a father?
So having an 11-year-old super sensitive boy, and a deathly quiet, and sullen teenager in this house full time is a high-wire act. Half the time I don’t know what the fr*k I’m doing, the other half I’m hopeful that everything corrects itself eventually. No state is permanent. I cling to cliches, and wisdom like, “All things are difficult before they are easy.” or the serenity prayer about God granting me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. That Ruto must go.
And so my 2024 was greatly disrupted, actually turned on its head. And just when I thought things were starting to get better, and the fog was lifting, the apartment I lived in was sold, and I had to vacate. (I wrote about this). I got a house, (I’m still moving in), and then my fridge died; as a final middle finger to this great experience.
So the last half of the past year was quite challenging. Domesticity was the hardest thing I did last year. This year I’m starting a series called The Hardest Thing.
What was your Hardest Thing last year? It could be getting an appendectomy done. Breaking a leg. Getting a baby through complicated procedures and then finding out that your mum has dementia. Burying a friend or even worse, a friendship. Losing a job. Starting a job with savages who drink peppermint tea at lunch hour. Finding your father and finally discovering the mystery of your crooked nose.
What was your hardest thing last year? Ping me, [email protected]
Otherwise?
Year looking good? You feeling good?
Let’s open the curtains to this digs, let some light in, settle in.
Shoes outside the door, please.
Happy New Year, Gang.
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