He was walking alone on the sidewalk one summer evening when a luxury car slowed down beside him, the windows down, the music on the carpet. The passengers brandished large wads of banknotes and taunted him. He smiled, didn’t say anything. The car continued on its way. Son too.
He was 16 years old. He was telling me the story this week, and my stomach knotted. What if the car hadn’t continued on its way? What if his passengers had decided that his smile was smirk, that his silence was insulting, or that his face did not come back to them.
What if, like Thomas Trudel… What if, like Jannai Dopwell-Bailey… He goes to school five blocks from where Jannai was killed in broad daylight. He was going to high school five blocks from where Thomas was killed that evening. Two 16-year-old boys who died a month apart in Montreal. I was counting the street corners on the map, and my stomach knotted again.
It could have been him.
They come into the world, and their fragility moves us. Our survival instinct is awakened and extended to them. Nothing in the world seems more precious to us. I was coming home from the hospital almost 18 years ago with a baby in the back seat, driving 20 km / h. Cautious to be dangerous.
They grow up, and we tell ourselves that our early fears, irrational, visceral, will disappear with their baby teeth. The fear that they will stop breathing, for no reason, in the crib. The fear that they will be bullied at school. The fear that they will fall from a bicycle and scratch their knees.
He’ll soon be an adult, and I’m still worried he’ll hurt himself on my bike – an open door happened so quickly. Over the past few months, I have developed the fear, also irrational, that he will end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, like Jannai, Thomas and others before them. A fear in the stomach, deaf, which grips me permanently.
It’s stronger than me. No matter how much I try to put things in perspective, I can remember that when I was 16 myself, there were four times more murders in Montreal than today, repeat that we live in Quebec, not in the United States, where a 17-year-old can go out in the street, a semi-automatic weapon under his arm, and shoot anyone on sight, killing two young men in the process , without being convicted of homicide. Nothing works.
My fear is irrational, and I know it. This week I had a nightmare. Son was being chased by a gang of armed teenagers. I woke up feeling dizzy. Death on the trail, a blast to the heart.
When they are small, they are the source of little worries. And when they are big, big worries, a friend reminded me this week. I know you never stop worrying about your children. My mother is worried that my sister, a big traveler, wants to return to a country she left urgently just before a coup. My sister turned 45 earlier this month …
I think back to all the times I asked Son what time he was coming home from a night out at the park with friends. To the banality of this request. In the dark twists of fate.
Her brother will be 16 in the spring. He doesn’t have a phone. He never claimed one. Until recently, I was delighted not to feed her internet addiction further by gifting her this devilish device. But now, Son, after 15 years spent mostly at home, mostly in front of a video game console, discovered the pleasures of walking in the park and evenings with friends. I begged him unsuccessfully for 15 years to come out. He finally does it of his own accord.
Will I start to worry that I won’t find it at home in front of a screen? It would be absurd. And yet …
I can’t help but think of those teens getting beaten up for standing in front of their bullies after being taxed with their cellphones. It is not rational, I repeat.
Call me a papa hen if you like, a snowflake if you want to. Of woke, even, this word-scarecrow which will be exploited while stocks last.
You don’t have a phone and you are doing all the better for it; When you were young, you were given an orange at Christmas, which served as a tennis ball, a nutritious snack, and a device to treat plantar fasciitis. The good old days, I know.
I’m not fooled. I understand very well that if I succumb to the temptation to offer my son a telephone, it will not be so much to please him as to reassure us, his mother and me, of his comings and goings. However, I try, as much as possible, to practice letting go with my sons. To let them live their own experiences, by guiding them of course, but without infantilizing them.
Still, sometimes I worry about them. A lot. Too much, no doubt.
“Are you okay daddy?” He read this week, in my cloudy eyes, my concern. He hugged me. We stayed like that for several seconds, entwined, silent. A son consoling his father. I finally managed to answer, without hiccuping, a sentence: “It’s not always easy to be a dad. ”