When You Say Nothing At All

If you know me, then you have probably heard me talk or read something I have written about Mia. She is my six-year-old niece and is one of the most adorable people I know. Before she learned the art of speech, Mia was often seen biting, spitting, or throwing the biggest tantrum you would have witnessed. This all made sense if you knew her mum when she was a kid. Bratiness however transformed into adorability.  If you haven’t adopted one of my favourite words, this is the kind of transformation examples that you will see in the dictionary under the term bouncebackability. We wrote her off. Cute kid, but the biggest brat of all time and Super Nanny was needed. She learned how to speak and the frustration resided and being able to express herself vocally reduced the need to inflict physical and mental pain on those around.

She received her school report last week and I’ll take a quote from it.

“Mia is a popular member of the class and she has a close circle of special friends. She is also one of the most thoughtful and sensitive children I have ever had the pleasure to teach.”

How fortunate Mrs Bell never her met her four years or so ago.

My job in the betting industry taught me one thing. As passionate as I have always been about football, I have developed an ability to remove emotion out of certain equations or decisions and to try to evaluate things on their merits and not be swayed by any biases I may have. It is not easy. Maybe I am biased with Mia. Maybe every kid’s report was similar to that and Mrs Bell has five standard templates that she copies and pastes from one to the next.

Kids come out with pearls of wisdom all the time that usually crack you up. One of the joys of being a parent, uncle/auntie, grandparent etc. Mia has had her fair share and I have yet to meet a kid like her. Last week she told her mum that when Nanna passes away, she is going to move into her house so that she can be close to her. I have not managed to break it to her yet that Uncle Rob will be selling up and putting that cash on black in Vegas. I’m sure she will understand one day. I have however never come across a kid who thinks as deeply as her. I recall bursting into tears after sitting in silence for hours one evening when I was a kid and just mum and I were home. I begged her not to die and to live forever. Mum never made the promise but said she would be around for a long time. Mia is not as naïve as I clearly was, but she is already up to speed a certain realities of life that completely belie her age.

I have always been a deep thinker. I suspect that comes across in my blog and words, perhaps more so than in my personality, but that is tough for me to judge. I’ve always been attracted and have warmed to fellow deep thinkers. As I have gotten older, I find myself surrounded more and more by ‘thoughtful and sensitive’ people as my inbuilt filter system has weeded out many of those lacking those traits. I can only hope and try to reciprocate the thoughtfulness and sensitivity, and get the very most out of those relationships.

I have been thinking a lot recently about the same theme that Mia was referring to. She is on one end of the age scale, and there are folk I know and care about on the other end. None of this business gets easier, but like Mia, we try find ways to deal with something that is inevitable at some point. Who knows, maybe by the time I am old and Mia is grown up, there will be a live forever injection we can take. Although after somebody told me yesterday ‘what?! You’re only 32!?’ I’m not sure it is something I’ll be signing up for in any rush.

Mia is on to something however. No, moving in is not the answer or solution for me, and Uncle Rob’s share will go on black, rather than red due to my obvious distaste for that colour. It is the moments, the words, the gestures that imprint in our minds long afterwards. There is something hugely reassuring we can take from any key relationship in  our lives and that twenty years later, you know precisely what they would say, what they would do, what they would advise and what facial expression they would pull. I am not going to stop asking or seeking for any of the above – I’ll still talk to everybody and ask the questions, bits of advice. If I know you well, I just know what you’re going to say or what you think. It’s how I approach and deal with things in this complex world (read my head) that we live in.