A kid, napping

“Terrible about that tanker fire in Nigeria”, I say to no one in particular. “Worse, still, there’s that story about the bird flu hitting ostrich farms in the Karoo”. It’s today. I can see that by the date on the top right-hand side of the newspaper. Your face is next to it, eyes squinting as if unused to the light. I notice that your hair needs a trim; there are curls like spring tide waves over your ears and eyebrows. You’re holding up the Times. Proof of life, I guess.

It’s been a decade since you vanished on the way to the shop where I presumed you’d wanted to get a packet of chips or chewing gum. Some small treat to ease the passage of the day. It took a couple of hours to notice you were gone. I mean, how do you notice the absence of a person? There have been times when I barely noticed when you were in the room, fiddling with your phone or adjusting the volume on the Hi-Fi when a favourite song came on.

Then I remember how it was to watch you sleep, with your chest rising and falling with each breath, an exhalation of carbon dioxide that smelled a bit like a hamster would if it rolled in jam. Earthy and sweet. Years of childhood pass by with parents grading themselves on basic milestones: child can brush own teeth – does so without asking, child can actually notice a used tissue on a countertop and help it migrate to a bin. Small, meaningful steps towards adulthood.

In sleep, the face of a child glows like a peach in the warmth of the summer sun, pink cheeks, soft fuzz. A soft toy, misshapen by years of being held through fevers and accidents with the necessary washing those call for is tucked under your chin like a telephone, listening to the confessions of nightmares and dreams.

There’s no newspaper, of course. No proof of life required.

You didn’t disappear at all.

You just grew up.

One moment, an infant with hopeful requests for snacks, the next, an adult, closing the front door with glee at the freedom it represented.

I remember how I let my guard down a few months back. At a low ebb, I was standing crying in the kitchen. Sobbing, really.

You came to me and hugged me, comforted me, told me it will be alright.

My son. My grownup son.

It’s getting better every day, as The Beatles said. And we’ll get through this life together, kid, you and me – ridiculous in our adult suits in this fancy-dress party of a life.

Love you, son.