All the chances we took

When he saw her for the first time, she reminded him of a long since forgotten lullaby, of something soft and smooth and mellow. She was a boat in a tempest, she was flowers in the wind. She was water in the desert. She was a song where the words would mash themselves up, creating new ones, nonsensical ones, but that would make more sense that the real words of any song.

 That is when he knew he had to talk to her, he was to confess years later. What for? He did not even know. To say what? His mind went blank. He was unable to craft anything new, anything old, anything at all, really. Language was somehow out of his reach. What can you say to someone that suddenly appears in your life, out of nowhere, giving your heart a rest without even noticing you, let alone noticing it, and will step out of your life the very same way, within a matter of minutes, if not of seconds? To someone that creates an unwanted, unnecessary, unrealistic need? A painful sense of emergency. What would you do? What could you do? Could you do anything to retain this person by your side, and if you could, then what? Happily ever after? Was that even an option for him, for her, for anyone? Surely not.
 He would break her without even knowing. She would break him, carefully, carelessly, not on purpose, of course not on purpose, she was not a monster, no, of course not, but she would break him nonetheless, slowly and surely, break him with kindness, she would, he knew she would. She was just the type, he could see it from where he was, safely sitting a few feet away. He would break himself, his heart and mind and soul, for she would make him way too aware of his shortcomings. As if he could not be aware of them even now. Calm down. You are safe. Safe. You are safe from her, his head repeated to his heart, again and again. Another lullaby. How many would there be, if he was to talk to her, when she filled his life with them without even acknowledging his existence? Safe, you are safe. But was he really? How? And for how long?

 For the second she would notice him, plunging her soft, deep black eyes into his, he knew she would see everything there was to be seen, everything there would be inside, everything there will be, and it terrified him, and his heart was already getting tight at the thought that he couldn't keep her for long. She had to realise how empty he was, how difficult he would make things, always, that was who he was, she was meant to notice it. Unless she was really stupid. But she wasn't, it was obvious at first sight. His gut feeling could not be wrong on this. So as drawn as he was to her, what was the point, if it was only to break himself?

There are possibilities here, though, the steady voice was saying in his head, in the deep down place he was familiar with, endless possibilities even. And he saw them with his inner mind. They rushed in, like waves, crashing again and again in his memory, jamming themselves up. The sunny days starting in his kitchen, the light flowing around her head, her lips on the cup of Earl Grey tea, while he would be pouring himself a cup of pineapple juice. The grey days watching TV on her coach, her head on his lap, his hands caressing her arms. The look of contempt of her friends. Walking in the city for hours. Blowing raspberries on her soft belly. The sound of her laughter in general. Kisses. Holding hands. Sounds of cries. A room filled with their friends. Especially the ones he would not like. A glimpse of a shoe on the floor. Fighting. Announcing they would be getting married. Her sleeping. Everywhere. Her sleeping. On the bed. On the coach. In the car. On a table. Walking off. Her in a white hospital room, her hair longer, of a darker colour, a baby in her arms. Their daughter, it had to be a daughter, he realised it with a pang. Him walking to meet her in autumn in a park, leaves falling, flowing around her, and him carrying the youngest of their children on his shoulders. The oldest one, blond fluffy hair and looking all serious was walking by his side.

Within a few seconds he had seen them all, and more, images that he didn't make sense of, couldn't make sense of, images that paralysed him. By the time he could finally catch his breath, he was alone at the bar. She had finished her drink and had left. The images lingered a bit longer, like a dream you just awake from, and reluctantly let go of. He imagined he could still smell her perfume linger in the air. He took a deep breath. So that was what it felt like to be too scared to do anything. For things to be broken from the start. He walked out of the bar and in the cold wind of the street. Timing is crucial. Timing is everything.

The Children Shelter

When I came home on this Saturday morning, it was cold like hell outside. My hands frozen by the November wind, I turned to Jesse as I closed the door and the words tumbled out of my mouth: “Darling, I want a child.” He was cooking and he paused, the knife in his hand had very slightly trembled, too slightly for anybody else to notice, maybe even him. But I saw it, and regretted having declared it this way, without having prepared him beforehand. I should have been more sensitive.

“Are you sure?” He talked very slowly, saying the words carefully, without looking at me.“Yes. I know we have talked  a lot about it, and decided that not having any was best, and all that, but I realised I most decisively want one. I am not sure how or why, it is just the obvious thing to do. I want a child.” “You know we do not have the paper work, and even if we had...” He did not finish his sentence. He didn't need to. I had been with him for over six years by that point, long enough to know that, at the age of 15, he had had a vasectomy. Long enough to know that he never ever regretted this choice. Long enough not to blame him.

“Paperwork or not, we can always adopt”, I said. He nodded. “Where would we put it?” “I don't know. In the study, I guess”. “I see. And my work?” “We could reorganise the living room, no?” I heard myself plead, my voice more desperate that I wanted it to be. “Guess we could,” he agreed “but do you have any idea of what you are doing?”

I hadn't. I couldn't have. But I wanted to try it all the same, and I said so. What's the worse than can happen? I thought. The words were rolling in my mouth, almost on my tongue, almost out in the open air, but I knew better than to say them. Of course I knew what the worst was. It had already happened 20 years before. I needn't have a reminder of that - and neither did Jesse.

“Will you come with me to the shelter?” “When?” “This afternoon.” “So soon? Don't you want to think it over, Tania? To give it some more thought?” “Oh, honey, of course I do, I am not saying we have to bring one home today! But we could go and have a chat with the people responsible for their care, and see what they look like, if they are well treated, well-behaved, you know... that kind of thing. What do you think?”

“Sure. Why not. If that's what you want.”

His lack of enthusiasm might be surprising for those who would be too young to remember, but not for me – I was lucky to have been born just after the war. But Jesse... He was born during it, and it will always be a wonder for me that he could have survived the first five years of his life, let alone the ones that came afterwards.

The Children War – that is how we referred to it, because there was no other way to talk about it.

30 years ago, the world shifted. It had been more and more modernised, and children were more and more left to take care of themselves, as parents where to busy working and enjoying themselves. Some of them started to think that they didn't need adults. Worse, that adults, their parents and teachers and all, were holding them back. So little groups started to organise themselves into rebellion. At first, it was nothing, so adults, who always looked down at children at that time, did not take heed, putting it all on early teenage crisis. They were coming home late. They were not listening. Talking back. They would not go to school. They would shoplift, well, then down right steal, anything they could put their hand on, including cars, money, drugs... even weapons. They would be smoking in the streets, drinking heavily, not even hiding it because no one would care enough to say anything. Most people would just ignore it, not wanting the bother of having to argue with unruly children. They had started to act like adults, and not the good kind of adults. And then, strangely unforeseen by any grown-up at the time, the killing started.

At first, it would be isolated incidents. They would mainly involve teenagers and strangers, at worst teachers, and would be blamed on video games, on films, on the system. But within a few weeks, months at the most, younger and younger kids started to kill. And sooner rather than later, they would kill their own parents, or older brothers and sisters. After that, hell started to break loose. How could it not? What would one do if their own children wanted them dead? If it was their children, or themselves? So the ones that were not killed by their parents, in order to survive, fled home to join children gangs, or were abandoned. They started to wander in the street, killing to survive. The news started to stop counting the dead people, adults and children alike. The bodies would jounce the streets, more and more of them. What could a country at war with his children do? How could it survive?

By the time the government decided to take matters in their own hands, the horror was beyond words. They sent the army into the main cities, they arrested the chiefs of 15 of the main gangs, and without any kind of trial they hung them – children as young as 8, and none older than 13. They thought that without the heads of the movement the disorganised children would have no choice but to go home to their parents. They did not see that it was already beyond that. For over 5 years, the country lived in fear of its own children. Until the children that had started the killing in the first place became adults. For all children have to grow up, eventually, that is the sad rule of existence. Lost between adults and children, rejected by all, they started to work towards peace – they had, after all no choice, they could not fight against both camps at the same time.

It is them who managed to reinstall peace eventually – Though the details are quite fuzzy. There were a lot of conditions, on both sides, but the most important one, the one that was to have the most dreadful consequences, was that, from now on, only parents deserving of a child would be allowed to have one. So children would have a special chip implemented on the day of their 7^th birthday, that would prevent their future fertility, and a new government agency was founded, called The Children Protection Society, who would be responsible for dealing with children at any stage of their life and any couple wanting a child would have to go through them. The Children Protection Society would be the first government agency to include children as members. They would analyse everything – from the couple relationship and bank accounts to their genes compatibility, and eventually would decide to give them a PT - Permit to Reproduce... Or not. If such a permit was received, the chips would be removed for a certain amount of years, allowing them to have children in the mean time. If not, they could reapply later, though only had a limited amount of times where it was possible.

People that wanted a child and could not get a PT had only one choice – The children Shelters, where the children in want of a family would wait. For children that had decided that their genetic parents where not giving them what they needed could, from the age of 5, ask to be relocated in other families. And of course there were always orphans and the ones that had been abandoned by their parents (for the system was not foolproof, of course), or who had been taken away by the CPS if they didn't receive sufficient care. Shelters were there to receive them until they could find a new family, and, in order to make it more appealing to potential parents, the regulation was less strict for adoption than for conceiving.
Such places however had a terrible reputation, from both parents and children side, and potential parents as well as potential adoptees would have to be pretty desperate to choose to go there. While children going there willingly would have the upper hand in the selection process, they could not refuse more than 3 families or they would have to go back to their genetic one. There was, of course, a lot of other rules that I would be trying to grasp for a long time, but these were the basic ones.

So the first time I step foot in a shelter, at the arm of a shivering Jesse, I have to admit that I had no idea what we would find... Or who.

Floating away

I often feel like I have wasted my life. That is probably the understatement of the year. It is probably linked to my doting mother reminding me of it every time she can. I guess it is the only thing that brings her any kind of joy, nowadays.

Well, she will die soon enough, I dare say, finally leaving me and my boring little life behind. I cannot wait. In the meantime, I find solace in blaming her, for she has doomed me from the start. What kind of woman would name her daughter with a French name when she has never set foot further south than Greenwich, and never intended to? I mean, Geneviève is already a most ridiculous name for any French person, in my opinion, so why name someone who is not destined to speak any kind of foreign language with such a preposterous name? “It sounds good” she says, “it was all the rage at the time”she says. Right. How would she know? She cannot even pronounce the thing properly. I cannot even pronounce it properly. My own bloody name. How silly is that?

I think my mother believed that if she gave me what she thought was a posh name, I would naturally be graceful and sophisticated, and so would she have been, by extension. Well, that was a failure, and, as I was to be reminded continuously, a very big one. Such a big one in fact that her, who always had motherly instinct, and wanted to have at least five children ended up giving up on the idea altogether. Which had nothing to do with the fact that no person in their right mind would be able to stand being next to her for more than five minutes.

Anyway, my point is: if I had been named differently, I would have had a more fulfilling life.

At school, I used to tell my little friends to call me Mary-Ann. Of course, they never did. They preferred to call me “Fat whale” “You, the ugly cow” and of course, my personal favourite, nothing at all. I liked my invisibility. Well, it would be more accurate to say I like my invisibility, since, you know, few things have changed since then. Of course time passes, days turn into weeks and months and years and decades and before you know it, here I am, 39, single, friendless. Not even a cat.

Then again I hate the damn things – why would anyone want to get any of these so-called “pets” is beyond my imagination. Dogs are loud, dirty, follow you everywhere, but at least they do give you some affection (if their constant “me-me-me-me-me-look-at-me-love-me-love-me-love-me” can be called this way). But cats! They just sit there, looking pretty, and won't come to see you unless they need something. I rather get dolls, really, and so I do.

I have an ever-expendable collection of 586 porcelain dolls. They all have a name (but none of that silly French name nonsense, thank you for asking), and they all sit in my room, watching quietly. I have some very fine ones that I bought through catalogues, and online, but my favourite one is the one that my grandmother Lucy gave me for my 7^th birthday. I named it after her. She has the brightest blue eyes, the loveliest little mouth, long, curly, silky blond hair and the prettiest flower dress you can imagine. If you were to close your eyes and imagine a perfect flower dress, full of lace, and ribbons, with a petticoat underneath, the image you would see would not be half as pretty as my Miss Lucy's dress. That's how pretty that dress is.

When I was ten, I asked my mother to make me the same dress. She laughed. That was her only answer. “What would you do with such a dress?” she said “Wear it to go to school? Don't be ridiculous Geneviève, please.” And that was that. I never had a pretty flower dress. I could have bought it for myself when I was older, but I knew others would point at me in the street and laughed the way Mother did. So I tried to forget my dream of lace and ribbons, and focused on admiring Miss Lucy.

Often I imagined that I was the porcelain doll, the inanimate object and she was me, it would have made everyone happy, to have such a pretty little girl – my mother, my teachers, the other kids. She would have been smarter than me (one would point out that it is not very difficult, which would probably be true enough), funnier than me, her who was already so much prettier. She would never have made a mess, and she would never answer back. The perfect daughter and friend she would have been, Miss Lucy, for she would have been for the others just as she is for me.

But the world is unfair: Mother didn't give birth to a porcelain doll.