“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
It’s high noon and a line has been drawn in the sand: a wavy line, disjointed, multi-coloured. And not in the sand. It’s in the middle of the living room floor.
Tempers are frayed, patience is waning. The high octane fun of the morning dance class has long since evaporated. All that remains is the aftermath; a lethargic crusade between swaying siblings and one tired Apocalypse Daddy.
Sun Tzu is hovering above us, reading enthusiastically from The Art of War.
Luca and Alice stand, weapons at the ready, eye ball-to-eye ball, brother to sister, catching their breath. The end is in sight, the battle waged, everyone awaits the death blow.
“Begin by seizing something which your opponent holds dear; then he will be amenable to your will.”
That’s how this all started Sun Tzu, don’t you remember? Luca took Alice’s train and threw it out of a second floor window. She held it dear, he held it tight, the window was open, no wills were ever amenable. Whatever the opposite of an amenable is, Alice became.
“Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.”
Blinded by fury and with zero deliberation, Alice jumped on her brother’s tricycle and high tailed it to his bedroom. The lockdown pounded on like some kind of fairy tale giant, slamming its boisterous fists into the beanstalk. I’d long since lost count of what day it was, even the month was fragmenting into mathematical fractals in my unravelling mind. It was cold outside, much colder than it was. Winter was coming, that was a sign.
Outside battles were being waged on infinite fronts. A vaccine is on the horizon. Radio waves travel at the speed of light and so Covid-19 is barely out of the Solar System. They won’t hear about first waves on the rocky shores of Proxima Centauri b – our nearest goldilocks planet – for another three years.
I pity the universe that media.
Alice had bought herself time. Luca stood staring out the open window at a crane, his brain working at a billion calculations a second, synapses tripping over themselves to make sense of the world.
“Crane.”
A new word.
To celebrate he started repeating the word over and over again like some kind of broken down polygraph skipping over presidential lies.
“Crane, crane, crane, crane, crane.”
He got louder as he got more excited.
We all know someone like that.
“Crane, crane, crane, crane, CRANE.”
“Yes Luca,” I said, my eye twitching to the same rhythm as the broken polygraph. “It’s a crane. You’ve learnt a new word. That’s great. Can you hear my excitement? Why don’t you say it another five thousand times, just to be sure you have the pronunciation correct. Phonetically you pronounce it kraːn(ə).”
Every parent goes through five stages when their toddler learns a new word.
- Laughter
- Joy
- Frustration
- Boredom
- Hate
It’s about at this stage in your parenting life that you start to sound like your own father. “You spend the first two years trying to make them talk and the following twenty trying to make them be quiet.”
As Luca stood there in some kind of transcendental toddler state, repeating his new word, I looked up the science of what the hell was going on in his head.
I could hear large furniture being moved around in his bedroom. Crashing and thumping as Alice ransacked it, looking for revenge, malice and an end of level boss.
“Crane is a one syllable word,” I read from the Encyclopedia. “It has four sounds in it: ‘k’, ‘r’, ‘ei’ and ‘n’. The third sound is a diphthong (a sound combining two vowels), the ‘r’ sound is made by bringing the tip of your tongue near the alveolar ridge at the top of your mouth, without touching it whilst simultaneously scrunching your lips together. The final ‘n’ sound is made by touching your tongue about a centimetre away from the back of your front teeth, and directing air through your nose.
Luca was doing all of that. No wonder he was impressed with himself. Being a father is really watching the universe unfold.
Note to self: don’t be so disparaging of his one word diatribes in future.
I left Luca to his internal discourse. Alice was a mad bull in the china shop. Raging.
“Bravery without forethought causes a man to fight blindly and desperately like a mad bull. Such an opponent, must not be encountered with brute force, but may be lured into an ambush and slain.”
“It’s not a cup, it’s train,” she said to herself as she flung his toys around looking for, as Sun Tzu had already said, something he held dear. “I’m a magician, magic is glitter, magic is abracadabra, I am magic, I’ll turn him into a frog. I remember when Luca was in Mummy’s mind.”
“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
Glinting from beneath a pile of Peter Rabbit books like a diamond on the sandy beaches of Namibia, lay Luca’s favourite teddy bear.
“Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain.”
Children don’t need that piece of war strategy Sun Tzu. Moving slowly is an adult condition. I could read her mind and blocked her path, to no avail. Too quick, like the wind, the fires of revenge ravaging the forest of her mind as she slid under my legs, kicked a 16-piece puzzle of a Siamese cat to pieces, dodged a remote control car, put a triangle into a hole (rubbing it in: she knows Luca can only do cubes) and accelerated, finding a sixth gear where before there were only five.
“The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”
Confusing the enemy you say?
“Crane, crane, cra-”
As in Hollywood when the tension rises and the children rush to tidy the house as the parents walk up the garden path, Alice put on her breaks as Luca turned to face her. And there they stood, eye ball to eye ball, brother to sister; catching their breath.
Luca was confused (it’s the factory setting), he looked at Alice, trying to read her intent. Her face was red from effort, was she smiling? It didn’t matter, Luca was only 18 months old and couldn’t decipher the hidden meanings of body language, facial expressions or hidden intent
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
Sibling rivalry is like warfare. Deception, slight of hand, misdirection. They are magicians of chaos. They know it and they don’t care. Alice was about to feed Luca a lie and he was going to fall for it. Gobble it down with insatiable inexperience. He had a lot to learn.
Alice smiled.
“To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.”
“Crane,” she said, pointing mockingly out of the open window.
“Crane. Crane. Crane.”
Luca turned, enraptured by the show of camaraderie from his sister.
“Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical.”
And she threw his teddy bear out of the window.
“It is easy to love your friend, but sometimes the hardest lesson to learn is to love your enemy.”
