A single fragment in time on a Friday afternoon

A recent waiting room experience left me pondering...

She was idling with her phone when her son came up to me, or rather, the mini semblance of me, to strike up a conversation.

“Très mignon,” he commented, extending his hand for a high-five. The little one responded with delight in his eyes.

I have grown accustomed to how the little one can be sociable and charming with strangers, and was rather bemused by this five-year-old’s genuine curiosity about my son.

“What is this scratch mark near his eyes?”

“What about this red mark on his arm? Did he fall and hurt himself?”

“What’s this on the side of his face? Did he scratch himself too?”

“Can I hug him?”

“Can I bring him home to play?”

As his mother plays translator between us, he became visibly impressed by her and started peppering her with questions to the point that she summed it up, “I used to be a lot of things before you.”

The clock struck three, and it was time for his appointment. In a collective clinic of physiotherapists, osteopaths, and psychologists, I was curious as to why he was there. I’ve always been open about my son’s condition, often punctuating my sentence with an usher to the little one’s wry neck on display.

“Pourquoi?” My mind fumbled through the pages of my elementary French to draw out a fundamental line of questioning in interview techniques.

She explained that her child is highly gifted, advanced amongst his peers and way beyond his years. I smiled and pressed my lips, not wanting to intrude any further, even though the thought of asking them out for coffee did cross my mind. But I was too chicken to do so.

Maybe next time, I reasoned with myself. Well, yes, I needed time to prepare for a social interaction. I’m also a believer that sometimes we should let serendipity do its magic and let a single fragment in time hold its own weight.

On my way back, I reflect on this pleasant encounter. What a beautiful yet strange problem to have, I thought. There was once a time when highly gifted children were deemed geniuses and celebrated in respect and admiration, but Tom Hazard (a fictional character from Matt Haig’s ‘How to Stop Time’) was right,

“As far as I can see, this is a problem with living in the twenty-first century. Many of us have every material thing we need, so the job of marketing is now to tie the economy to our emotions, to make us feel like we need more by making us want things we never needed before. We are made to feel poor on thirty thousand pounds a year. To feel poorly travelled if we have been to only ten other countries. To feel too old if we have a wrinkle. To feel ugly if we aren’t photo-shopped and filtered.”

There’s wisdom to this insight, and it piqued my fascination with this author. We all know that artists often hide underlying sentiments about themselves in their work. If one looks hard enough, one can detect parallel pieces of an artist’s raw experiences or skeletons in the closet. This year, I read fewer books than I had intended, but precisely because of the lack of time, my book selection became more intentional, and in the process, I discovered rare gems, such as those by Oliver Jeffers and Matt Haig.

A good book is like having your favourite meal over and over again. The first time, you devour it because you desire more of its deliciousness. Then, you return to it as the memory of its exquisite taste lingers on in your mind. After which, you just keep finding reasons to return to it.

Back to the chance encounter in the waiting room - I was wondering why it strikes a chord in my being. In my subconscious, I was comparing it to other recent waiting room experiences I had - bawling kids throwing tantrums, hyperactive kids trying to elicit attention from their parents who were glued to their phones, a pesky kid repeatedly throwing his toy on the floor to test the patience of his mother… so I guess this pleasant encounter was simply refreshing.

It also left me pondering… Maybe as parents, we are often weighed down by the responsibility of caring for our children, our glasses smeared with print marks left by a mobile child, our clothes and fabrics stained by milk vomit or saliva of an active child, our ears deaf to the testing shrills of a vocal child, our exhaustion compounded by putting our child to bed. In the daily mess of setting up a routine that works for our children, we fail to see the glimmer that occasionally shines through the rough - their child-led curiosity, bravery, and trust in the goodness of humanity. They possess gems in this universe that will soon become tainted if it is not nurtured and protected.

And that is our job, as caregivers, to protect and harness it.