A quarter to nine in the morning, we went out the door of the Jon portal and I walked to the school and as soon as I left, he told me “Dad, don't talk to anyone today, okay? I do not respond at the moment because I have to process your request. I immediately fall and say: "Ok Jon, today I do not talk to anyone."
He gets happy, smiles and we begin to imagine that we are two anonymous heroes fleeing dangerous criminals surrounded by hundreds of cronies willing to catch us as soon as possible. So during the ten minutes that the journey takes on foot until I say goodbye to him already at school, smiling at the little lesson he has given me minutes ago, telling me, in a nutshell, that yesterday I did not respect our time, that yesterday I didn't respect him when, going to school together, I started talking to a mother.
Surely the situation will seem the most usual and normal, because it seemed to me: you go with your son walking to school and at a crossroads you meet a mother or father that you know and you get together to share the piece that remains until arriving. Of course, you have a conversation with that person, because of education or deference, or because you have something to share.
I say that it is habitual or logical because I, as a child, lived it many times and came to see it as normal. Even if I interrupted they told me that "not now, that we are talking about the elders." However, my son did not find it so logical, probably because no one has ever told him that the elders are above the children and deserve more respect than they do, and he let me know the next day asking me not to repeat the previous day.
In that moment of reflection I put myself in his place and remembered those situations that I have never understood too much and that I would never provoke in that you stay with someone, that person meets an acquaintance (that you do not know) and stops to talk to him a while. Of course, you stay with the face of but-let's-see-you-didn't-have-stay-with me ?, but since you're very polite or directly dumb (or are you used to your parents doing it to you and, as in the past, now you don't say anything), you shut up, you smile, and when they finish their conversation you recover the person with whom you had stayed to continue sharing time.
For my son, the journey to go to school is much more than a path that must be taken to reach a place. For him it's a moment when you share time with me (Now he also shares time with Aran, because he also goes to school) and, logically, he wants to take advantage of it to play and talk.
That day, the key day, when we came across a mother and I started talking to her, our game was over, our complicity was cut off at the root when a third person intervened involuntarily to talk to me about anything. For him it was surely a small disappointment (or perhaps a big one), a contempt, because he saw that for dad it was more important to talk with that mother than to continue playing or talking with him.
But the problem is not in knowing what is more important, but in be clear about who that moment was. That moment was my son and mine, and I broke it. The day I meet someone to talk and my son comes to tell me something, I may have to tell him to wait a moment, that we are talking about something important (if it is).
So that day, the next day, when I met that mother again, I said “Hello!” And continued playing with Jon, without making a gesture of wanting to share the way because at that time I was with him and for him . It was our moment, No one else's.
