The Boy with the Porcupine Spikes

Sleep barely visits me last night. Even when I finally drift off, some part of my brain stays awake — standing guard, worrying about things I can’t fix. Then Mat gently shakes me awake. “I’ve dropped Alex off.” For a second, I don’t know where I am. Then I remember. Venice. His first trip abroad with school. A trip that should fill me with excitement. I should be lying here imagining him wandering sun-warmed Italian streets with his friends, eating too much pizza, taking blurry photos of canals, buying something wildly overpriced in a souvenir shop that will mysteriously become “the best thing ever” for exactly three days before disappearing into the black hole of his bedroom. Pretending none of it is actually that exciting because, apparently, that’s what thirteen-year-old boys do. Instead… I worry. Because something hasn’t felt quite right for a while. Alex is thirteen now. Which, I’ve recently discovered, is roughly the age where complete conversations are replaced by grunts, sighs, and noises that sound suspiciously like someone reluctantly acknowledging your existence. “How was school?” “Hmm.” “You alright?” A shrug. “What do you fancy for dinner?” Another shrug. It’s a remarkable language, really. Entire conversations conducted through shoulder movements and the sort of non-committal noises teenagers seem to invent purely to avoid conversation. Mat sighs. “He barely spoke all the way there.” I nod. “He barely speaks anywhere these days.” Unless he’s online with his mates. Then, apparently, the power of speech returns without so much as a warm-up. Mat sits on the edge of the bed for a moment before saying something that lodges itself firmly in my chest. “They were all giants, Mandy.” I look at him. “The kids. They were taller than me.” “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah,” I say. “To be fair, that’s not setting the bar particularly high.” He smiles. Only briefly. Then it’s gone. “They all seemed to have their own little groups already.” He pauses. “Alex just stood there.” “So small.” “So… vulnerable.” I can picture it immediately. My beautiful little lad, standing amongst children who seem to have grown up overnight, trying desperately not to look as frightened as he almost certainly feels. A lamb among wolves. There was a time when Alex stood out for all the right reasons. He was beautifully, unapologetically strange. While everyone else seemed desperate to fit in, Alex went gloriously against the grain. His sense of humour was years ahead of him. Wonderfully crude at times. Entirely inappropriate. Absolutely hilarious. The sort of jokes that made me gasp, “Alex!” …before laughing far harder than any responsible parent probably should admit to. He made me cry with laughter. Back then, he was still wonderfully innocent — carrying Dog-Dog everywhere he went like his little four-legged shadow, completely unaware that one day the world would start asking him to be someone else. Dog-Dog had once been an inflatable travel pillow shaped like a dog. Years of love had transformed him into something that looked less like a dog and more like something you’d instinctively swerve around on a country lane. Every bit of stuffing had long since disappeared. One ear hung on by little more than hope. To anyone else, he belonged in the bin. To Alex… He was priceless. Every evening he’d climb beside me, Dog-Dog held close, tap me three times on the shoulder… Tap. Tap. Tap. …then shuffle underneath my arm until he was tucked safely under my wing. No words. Just our little ritual. Then secondary school happened. And slowly… The taps stopped. The walls began to go up. I’d seen those walls once before. Back in primary school. Some lunchtimes I’d watch him standing alone in the playground, hood pulled up despite the blazing sunshine, staring at a drainpipe while the other children played around him. He looked so heartbreakingly alone. The sadness was there, but even then he was learning how to hide it. How to make himself smaller. Quieter. Easier to miss It broke our hearts. So we moved him. A little village school. Smaller classes. Kinder teachers. People who actually seemed to see him. The transformation was incredible. He found friends. Found confidence. Found himself. Watching him blossom felt like watching spring arrive after a very long winter. Which is why secondary school terrified me. Only weeks after starting, he came home with a fat lip. A few weeks later, I was collecting him from school with half a front tooth resting in the palm of his hand. The dentist patched it beautifully. My confidence wasn’t quite so easily repaired. As the months passed, Alex became quieter. The hugs stopped. Or rather… They changed. Whenever I hugged him, his body became stiff, almost as though he no longer knew what to do with being held. As though invisible spikes were beginning to grow, protecting him before he even knew he needed protecting. So I learnt to love him differently. We watched his favourite programmes together. At opposite ends of the sofa. Three cushions between us… Somehow managing to stretch themselves into three miles. Then one episode became twenty minutes. Twenty minutes became none at all. His bedroom slowly became his world. And the rest of the house became somewhere he occasionally visited for food. A teenage lodger, basically. One who paid no rent, avoided conversation, and still expected room service. I’d take meals upstairs. Sometimes he’d eat them. Sometimes they’d come back untouched. Then came three days where he barely ate anything at all. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” I whispered to Mat one evening. He looked just as lost. “Me neither.” “He won’t talk to me.” “He won’t talk to me either.” Then I noticed the little marks on his hands. The picking had started again. And suddenly those little worries I’d been carrying no longer felt little at all. We hoped Venice might help. A few days away. A change of scenery. A chance to remember there was a world beyond four-bedroom walls. Instead… I lay awake imagining my little boy standing amongst giants. Eventually… Sleep finds me. When I wake, Alex is sitting on the sofa. Which would have been perfectly normal… …if he hadn’t been a porcupine. Not slightly prickly. Not “going through a phase.” An actual porcupine. Long quills stick out in every direction, transforming the sofa into something resembling a giant pincushion. He looks up miserably. “I tried getting rid of them.” I blink. “The spikes.” He nods. “I shaved them off.” “And?” “They grew back.” “Okay…” “I tried trimming them.” “And?” “They grew back.” I pause. “What about waxing?” He looks horrified. “I’m not waxing myself.” I stare at him for a moment. “Well… there goes my only good idea.” He doesn’t laugh. “I’ve tried everything,” he says. “They’re just being little…” He looks at me. “Pricks.” I try very hard not to smile. “Technically…” I glance at the spikes. “…that is exactly what they are.” Still nothing. No smile. No reaction. Just the same exhausted expression of a thirteen-year-old who has already accepted that his mother is going to be like this forever. “I was going to say they’re as stubborn as my bikini line.” Silence. Complete silence. Alex just stares at me. “Okay… too far?” “Way too far.” “Thought so.” For a moment, I forget about the spikes. Because underneath all of them is the little boy who used to crawl under my arm with Dog-Dog tucked safely beside him. The little boy who still, somewhere deep down, needs his mum. So I do what every mum does. I try to hug him. “Oww!” Three spikes embed themselves in my cardigan. Alex sighs. “I did warn you.” “Right… back to the drawing board.” I refuse to accept that a few thousand spikes are going to stop me hugging my own child. So I do what any reasonable mum would do…. I go in search of protective equipment. I disappear into the kitchen. Five minutes later I return wearing gardening gloves. That doesn’t work. Neither do the oven gloves. Nor Mat’s puffs jacket. The duvet is briefly promoted to “genius idea” status. It is quickly demoted. The bike helmet proves even more useless. Alex watches the whole performance with the long-suffering expression of a thirteen-year-old whose mother has completely lost the plot. “I think,” he says eventually, “you’re making this harder than it needs to be.” “I’m improvising.” “You’re wearing safety goggles.” “Safety first.” “You’re wearing steel-capped boots.” “I’m not taking any chances.” Despite himself… …he laughs. Only for a moment. But there it is. My boy. Still hiding somewhere underneath all those spikes. “I miss hugs,” he says quietly. “So do I.” I sit beside him. Carefully. Leaving what feels like a socially acceptable porcupine distance between us. “I feel like I’m making things worse,” I admit, looking at the pile of failed inventions scattered across the floor. “The gloves.” “The helmet.” “The coat.” “The duvet.” “I keep trying to help…” “…and somehow I just become another problem.” Alex looks at me. Then smiles. A proper smile. “No, Mum.” “You don’t.” “You’re just a bit of a prick magnet.” We both laugh. The sort of laugh that arrives carrying tears with it. After a while, the laughter fades. “I don’t want to be like this,” he says solemnly. I look at all those spikes. Then beyond them. To the funny, kind, beautifully strange little boy I’ve always known was still in there. I realise I’ve been asking myself the wrong question. I’ve spent months wondering how to reach him. How to find the perfect words. How to fix whatever hurts. But maybe… …that isn’t my job. Maybe my job is simply to stay. To stay long enough that, when he’s ready, he already knows where to find me. To keep knocking on his bedroom door. To keep making his favourite dinner. To keep asking if he’d like to watch a programme with me. To keep reminding him that no matter how many spikes life gives him… …I’ll still be here. Even if I have to sit a little further away. Alex glances at me. Without thinking, I lift my hand. Tap. Tap. Tap. His eyes meet mine. For a heartbeat, I see the little boy with Dog-Dog all over again. Then, very carefully… …he leans his shoulder against mine. Not enough for the spikes to reach. Just enough for me to know… he’s never really gone anywhere. I wake with tears on my face. Alex is somewhere over Europe by now. Heading towards Venice. Towards giants. Towards friendships I hope will find him. I know I can’t walk beside him forever. One day, the journey will be his alone. I can’t protect him from every sharp edge the world has to offer. But I hope he always remembers this. However many spikes life gives him… However unreachable he sometimes feels… There will always be someone waiting patiently on the other side… Ready to love him. Ready to wait. Ready to sit patiently on the other side of whatever walls, whatever spikes, whatever storms appear. Even if, for a little while… …the shape of love has to change.