Mum, if I do extra chores, can I buy a bow and arrow?’ asked my son Whyatt, then nine, at home one day.
‘I’m not sure about that, darling,’ I replied, nervous.
Whyatt was always getting into scrapes. The year before, he’d broken his arm playing handball and fractured a leg jumping off a bunk bed. But I didn’t want to wrap him in cottonwool.
We lived on a farm and, like my other boys, Harlen, 13, and Wailen, 12, and my girls, Santana, nine, and Nirvana, seven,