Where We Going, Daddy__ Life With Two Sons Unlike Any Other - Jean-Louis Fournier [7]
I watched the program, which was pre-recorded.
They’d cut out anything to do with laughter.
The producers felt they had to take parents’ feelings into account. They might be shocked.
Thomas is trying to get dressed by himself. He’s already put on his shirt, but doesn’t know how to button it. He’s now putting on his sweater. There’s a hole in his sweater and he’s chosen the difficult route: he’s come up with the idea of putting it on, not by pushing his head through the collar, but through the hole. It’s not easy, the hole can only be five centimeters across. It takes a long time. He can see we’re watching and starting to laugh. With every attempt, he makes the hole a little bigger, but he doesn’t give up, he goes at it with more determination the more he sees us laugh. After a good ten minutes he succeeds. His beaming face emerges from the sweater, through the hole.
The sketch was over. We felt like clapping.
It was nearly Christmas and I was in a toy shop. One of the salesmen was determined to help me even though I hadn’t asked.
“How old are the children you’re buying for?”
I unwisely gave an honest answer. Mathieu was eleven and Thomas nine.
For Mathieu the salesman suggested scientific games. I remember a boxed set for building your own radio receiver, it included a soldering iron and masses of electrical wires. And for Thomas a jigsaw puzzle of a map of France, with all the regions and names of cities cut out so you had to put them in the right place. I briefly pictured a radio assembled by Mathieu and a map of France put together by Thomas, with Strasbourg on the shores of the Mediterranean, Brest in the Auvergne, and Marseilles in the Ardennes.
He also suggested The Young Chemist set with which you could do experiments at home, making fires and explosions in all sorts of colors. How about The Young Kamikaze with his belt of explosives to sort the problem out once and for all …
I listened to the salesman’s recommendations very patiently, thanked him, and then made up my mind. As I did every year, I took a box of building blocks for Mathieu and some toy cars for Thomas. The salesman didn’t understand, he gift wrapped both presents without a word, then watched me leave with my two parcels. As I went out I saw him making a gesture for the benefit of his colleague, he was pointing his finger at his temple as if to say, “He’s cuckoo …”
Thomas and Mathieu have never believed in Santa Claus, or in the baby Jesus. And why should they. They’ve never written to Santa to ask for anything, and they’re in a good position to know that the baby Jesus doesn’t give anyone any presents. Or, if he did, not ones you could trust.
We haven’t had to lie to them. We haven’t had to sneak off to buy their building blocks and toy cars, we haven’t had to pretend.
We’ve never had a crèche or a Christmas tree.
There haven’t been any candles, for fear of fires.
Or children’s faces filled with wonder.
Christmas is just another day. The heavenly babe hasn’t yet been born.
Some efforts are now made to integrate handicapped people into the job market. Companies who hire them are entitled to tax relief and lower charges. What a great initiative. I know a small country restaurant where two young men with slight learning difficulties are employed as waiters, and they’re rather touching, they serve you so utterly willingly, but you have to be careful and avoid dishes with sauces … or make sure you’re wearing oilskins.
I can’t help picturing Mathieu and Thomas on the job market.
Mathieu, who often goes “brmm, brmm,” could be a long-distance truck driver, hurtling across Europe at the wheel of a tractor-trailer weighing several tons, its windshield cluttered with teddy bears.
Thomas, who likes playing with toy planes and tidying them away in boxes, could be an air-traffic controller, he’d be responsible for bringing jumbos in to land.
Aren’t you ashamed, Jean-Louis, you of all people, their own