Liam at 6 months

Invisible

In the summer of 1982, when I was about 7 years old, my sister and I decided we wanted to sleep in a tent instead of our rooms. So my dad built us a huge indoor tent. We slept there the entire summer. I can vividly remember the sense of freedom that tent brought with it.

We would run around the house as if it was our playground. We turned the stairs into a slide, the hallway into a racecourse. We declared the floor off limits. All the furniture in the house needed to be aligned so we could get from one side to the other. We weren’t the only ones who shaped the house to our own wishes. When my dad was fed up with all the running from room to room, he would just take away the doorknobs. Once, we were fighting on the upstairs landing. Suddenly, a giant black boot came whooshing past us, a giant bang, and there it was, his statement, right in front of us. We could easily take the hint.

I told him I wanted a place that was all for me. The house had more than nine rooms, one of which was my own. But I wanted a place to hide. So he built wooden stairs inside my closet. I could climb them and sit on top of the closet, hidden behind the winter coats and the fairy costume. Nobody could see me there.

On the weekends, my parents took us to opening nights of their own or their friends’ expositions. We played with the other artists’ kids in the museums. While the grownups were getting themselves stuck in heated discussions, amplified by large amounts of alcohol, we climbed in, jumped over, hid under, ran between art pieces. I remember colors and shapes, no meaning. Nobody cared how many bottles of soda we drank. Everything was possible. Coming home from an opening night were the only times my dad was willing to play games with us. My mother would be annoyed by that.

Once, we put our two rabbits in our old stroller and walked all the way to a museum where my mother was working. We let the rabbits run around the museum. We told the visitors their names. Our rabbits were an art installation that day.

My dad got a medal of honor. Mom told me that the Queen had decided to give it to him. I was shocked by the Queen knowing my dad. I think I was four. We overslept the day of the ceremony. Or, to be more precise; mom, me and my sister overslept. We were woken up by the swelling sound of trumpets and drums, the brass band parade with the mayor behind them and some other very official looking people. We rushed to get some nice clothes on. My mother was swearing, then calling for my dad. He was nowhere to be found. We were standing in the doorway, with messy hair and sleepy eyes, looking at the nearing procession, when my father appeared from the other side of the street. He had been walking the dog, enjoying the morning sun. He’d watched the brass band from afar, not realizing it was there for him. We still have a picture of my father receiving the medal, with my proud sister in her first communion dress and me in my mother’s arms, staring at the mayor.

In our house, someone was always up. I used to think adults didn’t need to sleep, they only slept when they wanted to. Whenever I awoke from a nightmare, there was mom. She’d be in the living room, ready to comfort me and put me back to sleep. And when the sun wasn’t up yet, dad would take us to the park to watch the birds.

We'd watch The Invisible Man on tv. I was not impressed.