Page 61 of The Happiness Blueprint
“Then I got injured. The other player got a red card, but my knee was still shattered. I broke up with the game and accepted that the sport didn’t agree with me any longer. But here’s the thing, Klara. You don’t stop loving something because it doesn’t agree with you anymore. I still watch the matches on TV and will always love soccer.”
“So having Mum next to you on the screen when you eat dinner is like watching a match?”
“Something like that.”
He ruffles my hair in that way which is set to ruin any hairstyle. This time the only place I’m going is bed, so I let him do it without ducking away.
“Saga is not doing so well,” I say.
“I figured. Keep her busy, let her work and just be near you. She’ll be fine.”
As I take my glass of water and am about to leave the kitchen, I stop and look at him.
“Dad, can I ask you something?”
He nods.
“Do you ever miss...soccer? Wish you could still play? That the injury didn’t happen?”
“No. Soccer is demanding and all-consuming. It controls you. I quite like how things have turned out and the freedom I have. I wouldn’t go back.”
The next morning, I show Saga around our current projects. I glance at her suspiciously in the seat next to me. She has put on her Girls Aloud playlist, but I still love her.
“Why haven’t you told Mum why you are really here?” Again, it looks like hopeless Klara needs support, and accountable Saga sweeps in. Some part of me is desperate for that narrative to change, but more than anything forherto be the one to change it.
“There’s no need, is there? If this all goes away and I feel better again, then there is no need to worry our parents. Not at this point.”
“So they should only worry about me? That’s unavoidable, is it?”
I see my sister thinkingWell, yes. But not saying it out loud. Instead she says, “I toldyou. That makes you my person.”
I ponder this. I quite like being Saga’s person, and I’m not sure I’ve ever really been that before. I suppose I could keep something secret and even look likeIneed help if it means I’m someone’s person.
“Okay, then,” I say.
“Thank you.”
“Why are you bouncing up and down?” I ask her.
“Oh. I keep grinding my teeth when I’m stressed, so I’m trying this thing where I redirect the urge. Thought it might work. I refocus my energy on something more useful. I do a pelvic-floor squeeze every time I want to grind my teeth.” That’s Saga for you. She could be sitting in a lecture room full of students talking about old bearded historians all the while casually squeezing her pelvic floor.
“How are you and Heinrich really doing?” I ask her over “Something Kinda Ooooh.”It turns out this was a good question, because the answer is long.
“Ithinkwe are okay. It’s a lot having a child.Hedoesn’t mind that we end up sleeping in different bedrooms because Harry needs me, or that I have to leave Harry and him playing on the weekend while I head out to a coffee shop just to finish up work I’m behind on. He says it’s a phase and things will get easier. He’s a good man and dad. Really. But I feel sad. I’m not at the point where I have a family life, if that makes sense? I want the dinner together, the park on the weekend kicking a ball around, and a weekly date night. But it’s not physically possible. I get why women start working part-time, but I promised I wouldn’t give up on myself.”
“You shouldn’t, but your promise to yourself means nothing if you burn out.” I am aware I may be repeating self-help advice I have read, but Saga doesn’t seem to mind.
She looks sad.
“I don’t want to choose. I want to be an example to my female students. I’d hate for them to see their professor go part-time because of a child.”
“What if it’s not because of the child but because of your mental health? Isn’t that something they should admire?”
“Sometimes I feel that you are the smart one, Klara.”
“Thanks, so do I. But not sometimes, all the time,” I say jokingly. She sticks her tongue out at me.
“There is something else, Klara.”
