Theo Spurn
February 19, 2021 7:49 PM
Quality time by Theo Spurn
Dad was still sleeping. That meant Theo had a choice between hanging out with his cousins and being as loud as he liked, hanging out with mum and doing something moderate, or hanging out with dad but being very, very quiet. A long time ago, back before Theo could really remember, and back before anyone had realised he understood the concept of ‘quietly and gently’ this had been something of a point of contention between him and his mother. Theo wanted who he wanted. If it was a dad day, he would not accept anyone else. He had dug his heels in, and had several heartbroken and heart-breaking meltdowns over being refused access to his dad’s company before the penny had dropped for Liz: no one had said that Ileum needed to be awake, and to Theo this absolutely was not a prerequisite. It had been one of the first lessons she had learned in thinking laterally when it came to Theo. And so, she had put together the Quiet Box. Its contents had grown with Theo, but it had always contained things that Theo could absorb himself in happily for hours and which kept him quiet. Once he had a rule, he was usually good at following it.Only gentle touching. Only whisper voice. Keep yourself amused. Those were the rules. And occasionally, he got frustrated that dad couldn’t be up and about with him, and occasionally he did get over-excited and forget a rule, but mostly it worked.
Today, Theo wanted to be with dad, and dad needed to be asleep, so Theo went to the Quiet Box and pulled out some mandala colouring sheets, coloured pencils and a tray to work on and carried them into his parents’ room, picking up his favourite blanket and a couple of plushies from his own room on the way. Mum was in the garden, attacking weeds with serious displeasure at their audacity to have grown when she could swear she had dealt with them… sometime in the last year. Ish. The familiar bump of dad, wrapped in the covers and rolled onto his side greeted Theo, along with gentle steady breathing. Theo breathed in time. In some ways, it was a sad noise, because it meant that dad didn’t feel like getting up today, but it was dad breathing and it was impossible not to feel calmed by that.
The room was dimly lit by a modicum of sunlight making it through the very effective deep red velvet curtains. Theo would touch them later when it was time to pull them back and welcome sunshine into the room. Right now, he made his way over to the bed, setting down his plushies, one beside where he would sit, and one leaning on his dad in case he wanted it when he woke up. He wrapped himself in the blanket and set up the colouring tray.
“Hi,” he said, remembering to use his whisper voice. He reached out, and patted dad’s hair very gently. It was soft. Theo wasn’t sure why anyone thought you needed both people to be awake to have a nice time of things. A lot of the time, when people were awake, they were very shouty and overwhelming. Not in the fun way where Stanley was shouty and the floor was lava but in the way where there was just altogether too much happening and they wanted to talk about boring things and ask you stupid questions. Dad rarely asked stupid questions when he was awake because he knew better than that, but he absolutely never asked them when he was asleep.
He turned his attention to his colouring. He could stare at these designs for ages before he even picked up a pencil, planning out the way the patterns and the colours would interconnect. He liked making new pictures, ones that weren’t there, using blocks of colours to pick out groups of shapes. This one was for dad, so even though it looked like something vaguely floral, he would make it into dad’s favourite night sky. That meant a thinly waning crescent moon. Theo liked crescents because they looked like they were smiling at you. Dad liked them too, and especially the waning one, because, apart from the new moon (which was often no moon and therefore hard to draw) it was the furthest it got from full. He started connecting tiny geometric fragments in yellow.
“I coloured you a moon,” he whispered when the yellow bits were all done, “You can look when you wake up,” he assured his dad, reaching out to pet his hair some more. He stretched his toes which were warm and fuzzy in their seamless socks.
“You’re the best and I love you,” he whispered before resuming his colouring. It didn’t need a response. It was true anyway.
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Theo Spurn
Quality time
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