A space at the table

My big boys have been away on school trips.

Last week the eight year old went on camp to one of the outlying islands in Sai Kung National Park. They went abseiling, cooked their own food and built rafts. Then to test the seaworthiness they put their teachers on the rafts and sent them floating across the South China Sea, or to the bottom of it. They were away just two days and one night but returned happy, dirty and bitten by sand flies.

This week the ten year old has been away on a five day trip to Beijing with his school year group. The night before each of the boys departed I sat up late hastily sewing Cash’s name tapes onto all their clothes. My mother used to do this for me when we lived in London. Now that it’s my job I always leave it to the last minute. I think I’m in denial, hoping she might pop in at the last minute with her sewing kit and settle down to help me out.

So, for seven days now we’ve had just three children at our table. It has been unusually quiet and there is a yawning space where the fourth child normally sits. That is not to imply that the absent child is the noisy one but the dynamic has changed and the children are exploring their new roles within the revised subset.

Our eight year old says he likes being the eldest. He is flexing his big brother muscle and trying on the bossy hat on for size. He even slept one night in his brother’s top bunk. On the other hand he has taken to coming upstairs to join the Little Ones at bath time when the absence of his elder brother means he has no one to lark around with while he gets ready for bed.

I keep thinking I’ve forgotten someone, neglected to collect a child from school or an afternoon activity. Having three is relatively manageable and yet we all miss the absent one. The remaining three come home from school or nursery and ask where he is, forgetting momentarily that he is away, really away, not just for an afternoon or a day.

Before he left he turned to his little sister and said, Can I have a hug, please? I think he knew he was going to miss her. Or that she might change while he was gone. When he returns he too will have changed. He’ll be that much older, cannier, a little more mature. I’ll want to hug him to me and tell him how much we missed him and perhaps he’ll feel it too but want to show us how well he coped without us. And in this way one more of the many tiny threads that bind him to us will have been cut as he sets off on his way to independence.