Skimming Stone
My son never asks for anything.
Obviously he asks for things like help with finding his shoes, and what’s for lunch, and more time with the telly, but what I mean is that he very rarely asks for anything material. His sisters are constantly wanting things, but he seems completely content with what he has already, which makes me so very very FOND of him in a way that makes my throat ache.
So when I begged him to write a list of things he would like for his twelfth birthday, I was surprised and happy that he asked that his bedroom be repainted. Of course he had never mentioned that he wasn’t ok with it before, but there’s this long time, after they stop needing you for bodily functions and baths and prevention of death, that they don’t appear to need you at all, and this, added to his non-acquisitive nature has me waiting in the wings, gagging to give something to him, or do something for him, so when this request landed I jumped.
He chose skimming stone (a ubiquitous but none-the-worse-for-that neutral that is warm and inviting but calm), and all the stuff of his younger self has been equally calmly parted with. Zero fuss. The lego things…just so many lego things…all gone now. The strange bags of stones picked up from roadsides on random holidays…gone. The planets hanging from the ceiling. Gone. The books have been sorted and we are now left with several shelves of Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler. The Yoto is out, Alexa is in. There are tins of hair wax. A small safe has been acquired, to keep the money he never spends. There is a drawer full of cheap custard creams, which he sells singly at school for a profit.
I LOVE HIM.
Thank you for reading this. If you liked it, please do click on the ‘heart’ just down here under the writing, or send it to someone, or leave me a message and tell me to stop being so silly.
Back soon.
x Laetitia
I cleared out my 23 year old’s room now inhabited by his 22 year old brother on Saturday. There was at least 12 empty trainers boxes, a vast quantity of various cables, empty AirPod cases. In the tangle of these mixed possessions there was the treasure: the tiny favourite car, the rubix cube, a snooker ball. My sons are equally unmaterialistic. They have what they need and that’s it.
Oh my gosh my boy is who your boy was. The stones. The Yoto. The chess. The SO MUCH lego. Thank you for being a pleasure to read on a Monday morning - making the world one tiny bit better.