Clingy” was how one of the nursery workers described Tom. She stood in the doorway, hair in pigtails, with a red-cheeked baby in her arms. “We’ve had this before,” she said. “They always settle fine in the end. Don’t worry,” and she reached over to pat my arm. “Some children are just more clingy than others.”
I recoiled at the sound of the word. Even more so, because of her pronunciation; “clin-gy,” with a hard, metallic “g.” I stared at the ribbons in her pigtails and her pink nail varnish. She looked about twelve. She went on to talk animatedly about “the module on attachment theory” at college. I stared at her incredulously as she told me all about Bowlby and transitional objects.
I smiled. “That sounds very interesting,” I said tightly. “The thing is—while books can be really helpful, I’m his mother. And, well, you really don’t know what it’s like until you’ve had your own child.”
I flashed her another smile. My tone was pointed and persecutory, but she was so pleased with herself, she failed to notice.
“We do see it,” she said, “from time to time. And really, the best thing we’ve found is to simply ‘drop and go.’”
“Drop and go?” I said.
“Give him a kiss and cuddle. Then go. Don’t look back. Leave with minimum fuss. You know, the way you do with Carolyn.”
“Carolyn is different,” I said. “Tom is upset. You’ve seen him, screaming when I try to hand him over. Carolyn isn’t.”
She nodded. “Drop and go,” she repeated breezily. “We find the children settle much quicker. If you draw it out, it makes it worse.”
Her smile was knowing. Smug.
“Carolyn, she’s a happy little thing,” she said, “so independent spirited. Knows exactly what she wants. We were joking the other day that she’ll be the next prime minister, the way she holds court over the sandwiches at teatime.”
“I’m sure you’re right about Tom,” I said briskly, “but I’d like to arrange to speak to Gillian.”
Gillian was the manager and I wanted to speak to someone who at least looked old enough to have had her own child.
“Sure,” she said, obviously irritated. “You know,” she continued, shifting the baby over to her other hip, “I was just thinking, when Dad brought him last week it was much easier. Perhaps Dad could bring him more regularly? See how that goes? Tom was so much less clingy with him. We all noticed the difference. Could Dad bring him?”
Dad. Dad. Dad. And that word again. Clingy. I wanted to reach across and slap the word out of her mouth.
You have no idea, is what I wanted to say. You’re just a kid. Clueless. What mother wouldn’t be distressed by the sobs of her child? At having to prize his small fingers from my hair, from my coat, from a curled position around my thumb? I dug my hands deeper in my pockets, my fists tight as buds.
“Do you know Jennifer?” she offered. “She used to have terrible trouble leaving Sam, then she followed our suggestions and he was fine. Settled just like that,” and she clicked her fingers so loudly that the child in her arms startled with surprise. “Maybe you should have a chat with her. Might help?”
I had no desire to speak to Jennifer. I knew exactly who Jennifer was. She was one of the “Lycra Mums.” The ones that had high-powered careers into their thirties, before they gave up work to have children. Jennifer’s husband had a job “in the City”—and although she didn’t need child care to go to work, she brought Sam to nursery to ensure he got time to socialize and spend time with other kids. “It’s healthy for him,” is what she said. What she didn’t talk about so readily was her desire for “me time.” I’d overheard her use that term at pickup, as she described her timetable of Pilates and yoga and training for her half marathon. Every aspect of Jennifer’s life seemed project-managed; her social diary, her house, and her children were all on a meticulous schedule. I’d see her sometimes with a group in the mornings, striding along, pushing buggies with such determined efficiency, all ready to drop and go—like they were handing over a bag of shopping.
I did arrange a meeting with Gillian. But by the time we met, there had been several more mornings of distress—Tom’s followed by mine. I’d felt the eyes on me as I cradled him on my lap. Pitying looks from some of the mothers, as they waved cheerily to their offspring while I sat wiping away his tears, calming him down from near hysteria when I so much as tried to put him on the play mat. I’d heard the shushing that the nursery girls had taken to doing in response to the noise we were making. Even though we were tucked unobtrusively in the corner, they moved exaggeratedly around us, as if Tom and I were a tractor trailer restricting vehicular access.
So, when Gillian and I met to “discuss the situation,” it was obvious that things had shifted. I’d already been cast into the role of the overinvolved mother. The tearful, emotional mother who was unable to separate, who couldn’t let go. Gillian listened as I spoke, her head cocked to one side. “It is difficult, Ruth,” she said, but I could see what was coming. More drop and go.
“Really, it’s what we’ve seen to work.”
“The thing is,” I said, “I know my child. I don’t think that would work with him. I just don’t think he’s ready.”
She nodded kindly, then leaned forward and reached for my arm. “Perhaps the time isn’t right,” she murmured. “Perhaps it’s you that’s not quite ready. We say to all our mothers that they must do what’s right for them. It’s an individual thing. But obviously, we’ll need a plan soon.” Her hand was hot on my arm and I fought the urge to shake it off.
“We have thirty children here, and if we had all thirty parents doing different things? Wow,” she said, shooting her fingers in the air like small fireworks. “It would be chaos. We need a routine.”
“The difficulties,” which was how she referred to my emotional outbursts and his screaming, “are becoming disruptive to the other children.”
David suggested waiting until the end of term. “See if he settles? Or I can move work things around and take him more often?” I didn’t even reply. I didn’t want to acknowledge what I saw as an implicit criticism. My mind was made up. I began the nanny search that weekend, interviewed six potentials, and paid over the odds for one who could start in a week’s time. In any event, a month later, David was offered a temporary teaching job in Oxford, so he was away from London three nights a week. It was a relief to have the nanny.
Tom was much happier in his own house, with all his things. And Carolyn—well, she seemed fine too. In retrospect, I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t think much about her. Whether she would miss the nursery, the friends she’d made. It simply didn’t occur to me. Besides, we couldn’t afford to do both.
WHATEVER CAROLYN WOULD SAY NOW, and she’s certainly had plenty to say on the matter, I didn’t favor Tom over her. I simply saw that they had different needs and that he needed me more, and in a very different way.
Tom was always a worrier. When the twins were little and we read them bedtime stories, Tom was always overly concerned about the fate of the characters. Tom Rabbit was a story about a child’s stuffed animal left out in the rain. He got to know and love the story, with its happy ending of reconciliation, but each time, the moment of abandonment in the rain on the hard stone wall left Tom’s small face devastated. It was the same with all tales of missing things—the mislaid giraffe, the teddy left behind on the bus. The juxtaposition of loss and reconciliation both thrilled and terrified him in equal measure.
On the first day of school, Carolyn was up and dressed in her uniform, her hair brushed, all before breakfast. I was holding her hand as we stepped through the gate, but her fingers were desperate to wriggle out of mine. She searched for and found her class and then stood neatly in line. When it was time to file into the building, she was gone, without so much as a backward glance.
It was different for Tom. He clung tightly to my hand, and all the way up the hill he asked the same questions: When would school finish? Where would I be standing? How would he manage to see me over all the tall people? Would I definitely be there? What if I wasn’t? What would he do?
After Carolyn had happily disappeared into the classroom and the last of the hesitant children were coaxed inside, Tom was still curled up like a monkey in my arms, hands tightly clasped around my own. Often, after he’d gone, I’d see the moon shapes of his fingernails in my palms, or the indentation of my ring where his hand had squeezed so hard. That first day, in the end, to prize him off me, I gave him my change purse. It was a long red one with a golden clasp that clicked open and shut. “You can have this,” I said, handing it over, “so you know I’ll be coming back.”
His teacher, Mrs. Flynn, told me he could keep it with him in class, and all morning I pictured him sitting at the table, opening and closing that shiny golden clasp, clicking away the minutes until home time.
Now I wonder what I would think if a patient had told me this story. What conclusions might I draw? Would I wonder about this boy’s separation anxiety? And what would I think about the mother giving her purse as a transitional object? Why would she think the boy would need to know she was coming back? Would I want to know more about the mother? About her own separation anxiety? Her own secure attachment figures?
I didn’t ask myself any of these questions. I did what was required of me. If he needed me, I was there. If he was anxious and unsettled, I was there. I worked part time, so I could alter my schedule to accommodate pickups and drop-offs. Three out of five days I was there when they both came home from school. It was soon clear that the structure of term time was a struggle for Tom. Sports, lessons, the very act of attending school itself were all examples of large organized activities that he seemed to hate. Perhaps it was the herd mentality, but also the pressure to perform in a group. When I asked what he enjoyed the most, he always said, “Lunch break,” when he spent his time helping the gardener dig over the flower beds. “Wet-play” days, the whole class cooped up indoors when it rained, were intolerable to him.
It was when the twins were at primary school that my mother embarked on her fourth, and what turned out to be final, alcohol detox program. This time, it was a twelve-week residential stint in Taos, New Mexico. She showed me pictures of a large red-clay adobe house, under the shade of cottonwood trees. The rehab program adhered to strict boundaries. “I’m sorry,” she explained, “it’s a silent retreat. So you won’t be hearing from me for a bit. You can keep in touch, though—send letters or parcels. We’re allowed to receive things, we just can’t give anything ourselves. Silence is a way of encouraging self-reflection. Finding who we are and the root of our difficulties.” It was hard to relax into this sudden silent exile. And for a while, I didn’t trust the lack of drama, kept waiting for the phone to ring, with a teary or belligerent request to be picked up from the airport. But there was nothing. She rang the evening the twelve weeks were up. “Haven’t I done well?” she said and told me she’d signed up to the advanced program. “Integrating the learning back into our lives,” she said excitedly. “It’s all about relapse prevention and sustainability.” She told me that if she got through the next three months, she was going to stay on as a volunteer. “Run some groups, give something back. They picked me out. I was selected,” she said proudly. I was in the kitchen making a cottage pie at the time. She sounded high and giddy. I smashed the potatoes against the saucepan as I listened to her incessant chatter. “You should see me,” she gushed. “I look so healthy. Taken years off me.” Her euphoria was exhausting. I’d heard it all before. I wished her luck.
“Luck?” she scoffed. “Luck has nothing to do with it.” I put the phone down, grateful for the impending silence of the next twelve weeks.
It was around that time that Tom’s night terrors started. He was eight. It was textbook stuff. Sudden and abrupt night waking, and I’d find him sitting bolt upright in bed, his body rigid, staring at something only he could see in the room, a look of dread stretched across his face. Sometimes he was crying, other times it was more of an animallike moan, and it could take up to an hour of lying next to him, stroking his back, to coax him out of his strange reverie. I read up about them: Common at this age. Sensitive children were susceptible. Something they grow out of. And sure enough, he did. But while the nights became more peaceful, he was left with a legacy of worry, a general state of free-floating anxiety that could land randomly on whatever was close at hand. He began to catastrophize about the world; an item in the news about a plane crash or a motorway pileup would cause him to ruminate about the event. Once, the local news reported a collapsed wall at a school that had injured a child. What if that happens at our school? What if someone gets hurt? It wasn’t long before the worries escalated into feelings of unwarranted responsibility. One morning on the way to school he’d noticed roadwork on the street where someone in his class lived.
“I saw the trucks. They go so fast around the bend.” His face was tense and earnest. “I must tell Charlie,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because he might not be able to see around the truck. He might get knocked over crossing the road.”
When I tried to make light of it, to point out that Charlie would see it for himself, he became agitated. “But I know about it,” he said, “and if I don’t tell him, and something bad happens, then it will be my fault.”
I tried to reassure him, to help him see that the world, for the most part, was a safe place. But we turned off the news and stopped listening to the radio in the car. It helped, for a while.
As the twins got older, David was back teaching in London full time, and he got more involved in family life. “You’re too enmeshed,” he said, dramatically clasping his hands together, “you need to separate from Tom. Step back. Let him be his own person.”
Let him be his own person. The words stung. He knew they would. And I felt a roar of hatred. It was what I’d wanted most for my children, because it was the very thing I’d struggled to achieve for myself. In my own childhood, any opaque rules of parenting would be further clouded by an open bottle of gin. I had to furrow my own path through the chaos. I was good. I was helpful. But I had no idea who I was. I was like a small limpet in a wide-open sea, desperate for a rock to cling to. I found those rocks outside the home. In teachers who took an interest in me—the PE teacher who made me captain of the netball team, the drama teacher who suggested I direct the school play, the English teacher who awarded me the annual poetry prize. I remember standing up in front of the whole school; the sense of feeling special, being singled out, was so achingly acute I thought my heart might break.
“Let him find himself. Toughen up a bit,” David said. “He’s just started in Year Six. Let him make mistakes. See if he can manage things. On his own. Without you.”
I opened my mouth to speak but didn’t know what to say.
“Ruth, in less than a year he’ll be in secondary school,” he continued. “Have you seen the size of those kids? You can’t be hovering at the school gate handing over your change purse as a keepsake. He’ll be ripped to shreds.”
That was always the problem with David. He took something that had happened in one context and applied it to another. Once, after I’d confessed to being nervous in advance of a conference talk, he went on to assume I’d feel the same at all public speaking events.
“How are you feeling?” he’d ask earnestly, a hand on my shoulder.
“Fine,” I’d say lightly, as I put on my earrings.
“It’s just that I know you find these occasions difficult.”
Initially, I’d read it as concern. His attempt to draw on a feeling of anxiety I’d previously experienced, a clunky and rather robotic way of nurturing and offering care and attention. And at first these links, these associations, didn’t bother me. I’d laugh and say, “No—really, I’m fine. I was nervous last year because Professor Bridgeman was there. This is different. I only have to say a few words of thanks. And anyway,” I reminded him, “I’m collecting an award on behalf of the team. I’ll be with all my colleagues. I’m looking forward to it.”
As time went on and I became the director of the unit while David was passed over for successive promotions, I realized that there was something unhelpful, even undermining, about these comments. As if by mentioning a previous vulnerability, he was trying to drag me back to an earlier place of insecurity. Soon, I became adept at keeping things to myself, not telling him how I felt. In truth, that wasn’t a new skill for me. It was a habit I’d already mastered, a survival technique I’d learned much earlier in my life. Perhaps it was something I’d always done—but it calcified the day my father left. I was ten years old when I came back to find he’d gone.
“I don’t think that’s relevant,” I said, my voice tight. “I gave him the purse when he was in primary school. His first day,” I said, “which was six years ago.” I was angry. I hated the insinuation that I was babying him.
Of course, I wished Tom were more light and carefree. Especially when I could see there were times when he seemed happy and less burdened. It was usually on holiday, when absorbed in an activity—digging trenches in the sand, or making a dam across a stream. The task would consume him entirely. Everything else fell away and there was a purity about his immersion in something that gave him real joy. But his life couldn’t just be constructed around these things, and I came to dread seeing his small frown when he came home from school. His worry made me tense, agitated. I can see it didn’t help. And of course, the more he worried, the less he fitted in. Sometimes I could see his concerns loop around specific things, other times his anxiety simply multiplied like duckweed on a pond. I tried to tell myself he’d grow out of it.
“As parents, it’s not our job to take it away, tell him everything is fine. We have to bear it,” David said, “so he can learn how to bear it for himself.”
He held his hands out in exasperation. “Ruth, you’re the therapist,” he said, “you know all this.”
While I nodded in agreement, the next day I resumed my position, scooping up the duckweed into nets that I upended on the side, only to see the surface choked over the following day.
His worry became my worry.
You have to bear it.
Could I bear it? Maybe I simply couldn’t. Maybe all I saw in him was my smaller, younger self, my stomach a tiny knot of anxiety. It’s fine. And a rictus smile of tension stretched tight across my face.