He’s been drawing soldiers and wars for weeks. His pictures are careful and precise with lines drawn with rulers and profuse rubbing out and altering until things are just right. He presses down hard on the pencil and his erasing leaves a flurry of criss-crossing white track-lines.
He’s seven years old and his parents are separating. His life is suddenly divided between Mum’s house and Dad’s house. I imagine that decisions have been carefully considered and that his parents are doing their best to put the children first. When I ask him how he’s doing his reply comes in the words of an old man “Mustn’t grumble, it’s not so bad”. He’s putting on a brave face. Chin up, worse things happen at sea etc; the words of a stalwart, an old soldier. They seem incongruous on the lips of a child. I hear the words like a signal over radio waves. Innocence lost. Farewell to childhood. Just last week he asked to throw away the painting he made the first time I met him. He thought it was “babyish”.
He asks for the “Sticky Invisibility Tape” and makes a joke about not being able to see it. He wants to join two pieces of paper together with an invisible seam. I think about making things seamless, repairing the division between his parents, mending the sudden rift in his life. He’s carefully cutting off a measured strip, but I can see it’s just a few inches too short to fit the length of the sheets he wants to join. I bite my lip. Tell myself to step back, let him find his own way. Resist the desire to make it right for him. I wonder how much tape it might take to hold a boy’s world together.
Joolz Mclay 2004