Last week, I bought a first edition management book for $150, even though the entire text is available online for free. It wasn't until my therapist asked me about my childhood relationship with books that things clicked. Growing up in a suburban town where the library was my escape, I remember desperately wanting to own the books I borrowed, to have something permanent that couldn't be taken back. Now, thirty years later, I'm still buying that feeling of security.
'We absolutely should challenge stereotypes about ageing. Children do build their understanding of the world from these tiny repeated narratives. If old always equals useless or confused then that's going to shape their perception.'
I was thinking about this the other day while scrolling through my phone on a Saturday morning, realizing I'd been working for two hours without even noticing. Growing up, my weekends looked nothing like this. There were unspoken rules, traditions that just happened without anyone scheduling them into a calendar app. These weren't grand gestures or expensive activities. They were simple rituals that, looking back now, built something most of us are desperately trying to recreate through therapy apps and self-help books: genuine connection.
I babysat for a weird family during my early adulthood. They had two kids, 6-ish and 2-ish. They were adamantly anti-screen for the kids, which isn't weird. But this was a relatively wealthy family, both parents were college professors, and most of the kids' toys were like Tupperware bowls full of rocks, things they'd found outside, homemade fabric dolls, etc. Apparently, the dad had grown up in communist Russia and didn't think that kids needed much to become resilient.
I remember the moment this photo was taken: five years ago, on my partner Claire's birthday, in a National Trust for Scotland garden six miles east of Edinburgh. We were standing on a wooden deck, an ideal spot for pond-dipping with the kids and a lesser-known viewing platform for trainspotters. This is where my autistic son, then six, loved (and still loves) to jump in tandem with the ScotRail trains toggling back and forth in the middle distance.
