Only Child
A lady from a woman's magazine wrote and asked me what it felt like being an only child. Well nothing. Just a number. But then I started having a little think. Maybe the only child is wrongly named - maybe it is the Only Parent. Most of the only children I knew (and there were a lot of us about in the suburbs of the thirties) made no claim to special status - but one or two did, and looking back I realise that they belonged to parents who did not look like parents.
When you bent down and pushed open the letter boxes of these Only Parents their houses smelt barren, like the houses of spinsters - something to do with the lack of physical movement, as though dust never got stirred up into the general atmosphere as it does when a child is in the house, but lay heavily on the carpets generating a separate presence. Whilst ordinary children were robbing orchards, Only Parents took their offspring for Walks. When you saw them, you felt they had just met. I wonder if there aren't people who have children who never - in some deep or desperate way - relinquish a virgin status?
Quoted without permission from BBC broadcaster and author, Robert Robinson (1927-2011), from his book of short pieces of journalism 'The Dog Chairman'.
No comments:
Post a Comment