March 26, 2021:
Aug 67.
Lanky boy, glasses, concentrates on a circular-shaped jigsaw puzzle. Does he know his photo is being snapped? A staged opportunity? If yes he's plenty natural.
He's bored, as passionately as it's possible to be while bored. This house contains no books, no games, only a handful of jigsaw puzzles, all of which he's already previously solved. It's telling that before this visit nothing has been provided which would have made his two weeks here less excruciating. This isn't a familial culture which values children's feelings. Or their time.
It's telling indeed that apart from King James the house holds no books. Yet the matron is by profession a schoolteacher. A schoolteacher who doesn't read. That should be all which needs to be said.
He is not valued here. His role is to be "seen, not heard", as it is once delicately expressed. His parent seems fine with that. "It's only two weeks," she promises. It turns out to be a lifetime.
This is important to her. The family she fantasized about, which turned out to be real. You can be happy for her, for that. While at the same time mourning the loss of your own family, the one you'd already had, who from the first of these two visits for the rest of her life displayed as little interest in you as the matron and her husband.