Shriven

The Girl told us yesterday that one of the boys in her class "did the love look" at her.

The love look?

She demonstrated: a sappy expression and rapidly batted eyelashes. AH. THAT love look.

Stop looking at my kid like that, lover boy.

She doesn't tell us many things that happen at school - school is school and home is home and she likes the two to remain separate worlds. The Girl is a private person, like her father, layers of secrets buried down inside of her. She likes to remain unruffled, undisturbed, deep water down for miles.

Three years ago, my uncle died on his 42nd birthday after a brutal struggle with lung cancer. I was heavily and precariously pregnant with The Baby and it was just so sad, sad, sad. A week after he died, my phone rang and it was the doctor at the clinic telling me that my husband's appointment had been moved. His appointment that I had not known about. I phoned my husband at work, my voice full of questions, and he told me, sadly, that he hadn't wanted to scare me. I was instantly terrified.



He had found lumps all through his wrists, fingers, arm, and had not told me because he knew that I would worry. He had carried it alone for weeks, waiting to see the doctor. I don't suffer alone with ANYTHING, really, as my constant complaints about PMS and minor illnesses should obviously show, but he carried his worries all by himself so he wouldn't burden me and because he prefers to be undisturbed in his fear. And this is what my little child, my Girl, does, too.



I only had a few hours to be worried about my husband - the problem was nothing, just a genetic fluke that he shares with his mother, grandfather and probably an endless line of quiet, stoic people. I worry nearly constantly about my Girl, though, this quiet child who bears so much alone. Only rarely do stories burst out of her when she can no longer carry it by herself - childish cruelty bourn a little too long, amourous classmates being both amusing and creepy, lunch monitors who yell a bit too easily. Sometimes she wants me to fix something, but more often these days, her stories sound like a warning or an apology, giving notice that she is getting older and older and older.