Hastings Old Town, 14.10

How do we know any of it is real?

Tail end of the storm, feels like it’s barely moved, sideways rain bites her hands red, her hair is wind tangled from days of this weather and the fact I can’t find her brush or anything much else, when she tucks one of her cold hands in mine, I rub some of the blood back into it, and then she looks at me with the serious face she’s perfected since birth and asks mummy how do we know any of this is real. In media training they teach you silence is your friend. I try this tactic now. Breathe in. Ask her to repeat the question, she does, with more insistence. Let’s think about this when we get home, I say, as my son tugs at my sleeve to take him into the bookshop, he’s somehow discovered H.P. Lovecraft, wants to see if they have some in stock. After the pause, she resumes eating her sweets, happy to suspend the question for now, although I am sure as she’s sucking on the overpriced imported American candy she’s still wondering how we know any of this is real and I was wondering it too and am wondering it now and have been wondering it for the last four years ever since I started writing memoir because anyone who’s written a memoir knows, or should know, in terms of reality it’s the most flawed form there is; novels, I think are more attuned to the knotty nature of reality than a first person account can ever be and it’s this, the first person nature of our reality that bites as she tugs at my hand; how subject we are to everyone else’s versions of events, their willingness or unwillingness to consider the depth of their reality, the ways we lie to ourselves in order to live or at least to pretend we are, and how these versions of our own reality do more harm than good half the time unless we’re aware of how flawed it is; and the shame we encounter when our reality doesn’t match what we think it should, the way shame keeps us lying to ourselves, the pernicious shame we shed when we stop caring, how do we know any of this is real I still need to answer her question, part of me hopes she forgets it by the time we get home.