{"id":22224,"date":"2024-09-13T12:50:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-13T10:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stadtsprachen.de\/en\/?post_type=stsp_text&p=22224"},"modified":"2024-09-14T11:45:21","modified_gmt":"2024-09-14T09:45:21","slug":"seaside-child","status":"publish","type":"stsp_text","link":"https:\/\/stadtsprachen.de\/en\/text\/seaside-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Seaside Child"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I met Tao when he was six years old. I had to look up at him for he was perched on the fridge, overlooking the room and the door through which I had entered. I would soon learn this wasn\u2019t unusual. Tao liked to be on top of things. In fact, he liked to be everywhere at all times. He zoomed about the place with the speed and the ease of some wind forming waves on the water, dribbling a football between his small feet, sometimes rolling around on the floor or hanging head-down from the nearest piece of furniture, his thick blue glasses fastened behind his head like goggles. His mother said he had won the Brighton Charity Run that year, not the children\u2019s, but the real one. I believed her. I remember thinking that I had never seen so much life in so little body. After school, he would race home, fling himself into a corner of the flat, snatch the football from somewhere and kick it up at the chandelier, which was miraculously still intact. He never bothered taking off his school uniform. He didn\u2019t have time for such banalities. He had to move and keep moving. I, on the other hand, was stuck in-between places. I was between kitchen and living room, trying to convince him to take off his shoes. I was between bathroom and bedroom, trying to convince him to put on
his pyjamas. And when he was sleeping I was awake, bridging the time until the return of the adult world.
Tao\u2019s parents worked in London. I picked him up from school two days a week, each time being immensely relieved when he had made it home without having been run over by a car. They lived in Marina Square, in one of the beautiful seafront-houses, and while Tao was doing his running and jumping, I would often just stand by the window, transfixed, gaping at the sea and the setting sun, so that he would sometimes stop and say: \u201cWhat you looking at?\u201d
The curiosity was honest. Tao only talked when there was no other way of expressing himself.
\u201cMy name is Jim and I\u2019m a dog,\u201d he would sometimes declare. The first time that happened I committed the crime of asking what dog he was and didn\u2019t get an answer. I realised then it had been a stupid question. No one, after all, would ask a dog Hey Jim, what kind of a dog are you?<\/em> It was, as I realised ten minutes later during a toilet break, an adult question. I looked at my face in the bathroom mirror then and looked and looked, as if waiting for a trace of the child I had been to reveal itself, as if trying to free my face from that old frame it appeared in.
It turned out that Jim the dog wasn\u2019t so much different from Tao the boy. Jim, too, was up on the fridge and down on the floor again and playing football all around the house. I remember sometimes calling him Jao by accident, when, after a long day, the English words tumbled over in my mouth; or maybe I got confused with the whole Jim-thing. \u201cThat\u2019s not me!\u201d, he would say indignantly, leaving me to marvel at the staunchness behind that statement. Sometimes we spend so much time asking children who they want to be later, that we forget they already are someone.
\u201cHe\u2019s Black and he\u2019s Jewish\u201d his mother said one evening, \u201cThank god he\u2019s a boy.\u201d It was a joke and I laughed, but the weight of the words spoken so lightly stayed with me that night.
Something else that stayed with me then were nursery rhymes which had become a constant companion of mine. The only stories Tao allowed were Dr. Seuss\u2019s. From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere<\/em>. I couldn\u2019t get rid of it. Dr. Seuss had obtained a voice in my head saying Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one<\/em> first thing in the morning. Sometimes it came through in my actual speech.
\u201cIf Jao or Jim or Tim or Tao
Get in the bath, and do it now!\u201d
Bath-time was a struggle. Or rather, getting him in the bath and getting him out. The time inbetween was fun, albeit mainly spent trying to keep Tao from flooding the bathroom which I did by applying different distraction methods. Singing worked the best. We settled on songs from the musical Oliver<\/em> because Tao had seen the film once and was fascinated by the
characters.
\u201cHow old is Oliver Twist?\u201d, he asked.
\u201cHe\u2019s really young\u201d, I said, having no idea.
\u201cAnd how old is Nancy?\u201d
\u201cShe\u2019s also young.\u201d
\u201cAnd how old is Fagin?\u201d
\u201cWell, he\u2019s a bit older.\u201d
Tao looked at his own reflection in the water, then took off his glasses, dipped them in foam and put them back on his nose.
\u201cI think he\u2019s one hundred,\u201d he said.
\u201cNo, not that <\/em>old.\u201d
\u201cHe\u2019s probably ninety, then.\u201d
I explained that my grand-parents were eighty and could hardly make it up the stairs.
\u201cFagin is oldish\u201d, I said. \u201cBut he\u2019s still active and cunning and making plans for the future and such. I\u2019d say he\u2019s sixty.\u201d
But Tao was dissatisfied. He nagged me about Fagin\u2019s age all the way from bath to bed, spitting toothpaste everywhere while complaining that I was wrong. Story time was a nuisance (from there to here, from here to there \u2013 but he must be one hundred!<\/em>) and when I had finished reading the problem was still unsolved.
\u201cHe must be really old\u201d, Tao was shouting now. \u201cHe must <\/em>be, he must <\/em>be, he must <\/em>be!\u201d
\u201cFine\u201d, I said, \u201cIf you want he\u2019s really old, but why?\u201d
\u201cHe must be really old\u201d, said Tao, \u201cBecause he\u2019s already old in the story. And the story was written a long time ago!\u201d
Then he fell asleep. Being the fastest boy in the world, he was also a fast sleeper. As always, I removed his glasses carefully and put them on the bedside table. Next door, I sat down by the window again (the sun had already fully plunged into the sea), and felt that grown-up\u2019s wisdom inside me like a foreign body. I got up to open the window, but heard Tao\u2019s mother\u2019s key in the door and paused midway through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I met Tao when he was six years old. I had to look up at him for he was perched on the fridge, overlooking the room and the door through which I had entered. I would soon learn this wasn\u2019t unusual. Tao liked to be on top of things. 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