My Son's Marriage
Welcome to his sentience, please slow down
The other day, my son came out of school and said, “The girls are crazy about me,” before releasing a loud, drawn-out sigh. My wife and I had asked how his day had been, expecting him to tell us what he’d eaten for lunch, and his announcement took us by surprise, given that he is five.
I asked, “What do you mean ‘crazy’?”
“They all want to marry me,” he said.
This is the kind of conversation that is both fun and bizarre for a parent to have with their child.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“L told me,” he said, referring to one of the girls in his class, who’d let loose the scoop on a school trip.
“Well,” I said, looking at his mother, “it’s nice to have a choice,” a comment that made my son wince sharply, sigh again, and then kind of slump in on himself, as though totally embarrassed.
At bedtimes recently, my son has been giving me rundowns of couplings happening in his class: E is marrying C, I is marrying S. Watching football practice the other day, a mum told me that her daughter, who is six, was in the middle of weighing up two serious offers of companionship, and that a decision was imminent. I’ve already heard news of break-ups and estrangements, of couples being couples one day but not the next, of boys and girls floating away from each other and into the atmospheres of other classmates. All of this is shocking to me; I thought conversations like this would come later. Why are these kids considering marriage? The way I see it, they’ve not long been out of nappies. Don’t they want to have some fun first? Maybe travel?
This is evidence my son is growing up, I suppose, though I’ve only recently noticed how much bigger he is now – that he is stretching daily as if by inches – and that his sentience has deepened so much that it seems out of control. While for a few years my wife and I parented a child that had no clue what it wanted from life beyond a bowl of blueberries, something has sharpened in my son’s mind over the past year, and he has experienced an insane growth of self-awareness. Now he better understands his desires in more significant cognitive and moral realms – relationships, work – or he is at least more alert to them. He does not yet want marriage. That much was clear from the sighing and the slumping. Though he might like to become a footballer one day, he says, and he has opinions now on how he wears his hair. Sometimes I watch my son and imagine him beginning to compose a future version of his life – a hoped-for version, his role in an expanded world – which I’m sure is happening somewhere up there in his developing mind, and which I’m equally sure hasn’t been happening much until recently.
Here is another example. My son’s sixth birthday is approaching. On our walk to school recently I asked him what he might like as a present, and he said matter-of-factly: “I’d like my own house.”
I’d.
Like.
My.
Own.
House.
Concealing some sad-dad feelings, I nodded, as though it wasn’t an upsetting request, then said solemnly, “But that would mean you’d have to cook.”
“Hmmmmm,” he replied, as if considering whether or not he might be able to manage that: cook himself three meals a day, remember to drink water, go to bed at an appropriate time.
The conversation moved on, and as we walked together we began to discuss something else. (Slugs, I think: what are they?) But questions lingered. Why does he want to live on his own? Why does he not want to live with us? Is he planning to get married after-all? When we reached his classroom, he saw some friends playing outside, boys and girls, and he ran off to join the fray. S was there, and E, and C. And suddenly his teacher, too, who is as much to blame as anyone for all of my son’s new sentience. And while the scene built I stood a few metres away, slightly withdrawn, still holding his school bag and his coat, watching him play, thinking about what he might make us for dinner.
Work update: A few weeks ago I met the actor Eddie Marsan for lunch and then wrote about it for the cover of the Observer Magazine. In case you missed it, you can read the interview here. Marsan is one of my favourite actors and, it turns out, a lovely man. In related work news, a few agents have told me to “toot my own horn”, or something like that, so here is a nice Tweet (?!) that came out after the interview was published:
Thanks as ever for reading.
Peace.
Alex