Willy split apart pea pods with his Mum. His bare elbows resting on the cracking white laminex of the kitchen table, and his fingers diving into the central pile of peas. He loved her very much and these few hours between arriving home from school and Dad coming home from work were their special times together. He asked her for a glass of milk and he drank it greedily smearing a moustache of white with the back of his hand. The afternoons sunlight formed rectangular pools of light on the kitchen floor and the table through the windows. It was a warm day but Willy felt abundantly well and happy that afternoon. 

At six o’clock, promptly, he heard Dad kicking off his boots at the laundry door. As usual he had come round to the back of the house to enter. The click of the door and a loud ” Hello Darling, hi Willy ” filled the kitchen. Willy felt that his father filled a room in a way his mother did not. When his father left a room it felt emptied while when his mother did so, it felt as if she had not really gone. Mum suffused the home while Dad filled it physically. Willy was an only child but that did not worry him as some of his friends seemed to think it should. They tumbled out of station wagons like beetles out of an upturned plastic bucket, all squealing and fighting. Willy spent some holidays with the cousins and for a few weeks, he did the same things as his noisy friends did year round. It was a treat but he did not miss it when he was home again.

Willy thrived on routines and closeness, even doing something different to one or other of his parents or close school friends was okay if they were close. Going to school with Mum in the car, walked into the class, meeting his teacher and the school work. It was a busy day, every day, but Willy loved it. However, he did not enjoy going to see doctors. They were okay but afterwards there were often blood tests and he did not like these. He learned to be suspicious about anybody in a nice blue uniform saying, ” this won’t hurt”. 

Sometimes his Mum looked worried, it could not be about him because he loved her perhaps even more than Dad, which was a lot. She would sit at the kitchen table, resting her chin in her hand and gaze blankly, not seeing him until he touched her on the arm. She looked at him with sadness, it was so quick that Willy was sure nobody else would have seen it. It was a mystery to him because life was so perfect. Dad played tumble with him, and chased him over the furniture. Mum told us off because we would break a chair or the sofa and we could not afford to replace them. Willy never saw things were never new in his home. But he did not see or even realise it could be a problem. It was a problem for his Mum. Sometimes in the evening after Willy had gone to bed, tucked up under blue blankets and his stuffed kanga somewhere under the sheets lurking about, his parents sat and talked about many things that Willy would never understand. About money, about the future, about Dad’s job, all of them them things Willy would never be able to worry about. They loved him with all their hearts as much as Willy loved them, but there was always an annoying spectre, of loss, of missing out on the future for Willy deserved. 

The next day was like all the others for Willy. He hardly cried. He ate, He played and he loved deeply and unashamedly. His is a peaceful beautiful soul which lies complete unto itself if not the world’s.