It started off horribly with anger and scoldings and incredibly poor behaviour on her part. 'Where does this happy and smiley M. disappear to? Where did she go earlier this week?' I asked. She did not take it badly. I suppose I am glad I did not confront her directly earlier in the week, letting the episode blow over instead. But I am conscious that I need to protect our son while acknowledging that she is the full time parent.
As it is impossible to change her, I had the opportunity to chat with our son who joined me when I had to go for a quick errand; perhaps he wanted to get out of the house as she was in one of her moods!!
'My mother always used to scold me - so don't mind it too much. Even if often it is unfair. I remember when your uncle was 19 or 20 and she had to reach up to slap him for not doing as well as he might have in his university exams!' 'Just be patient.'
But there will either be an alienation growing up or a feeling of being beaten up - not a happy choice.
There was this article in the newspaper the other day: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/30/letter-to-my-husband-who-may-be-about-to-leave
It resonated so much with me but she probably missed it and would not understand it anyway. Basically, it covers the realisation from a wife that she may not have been entirely fair with her husband!
She was teasing me that she meets an ex-neighbour of our's every week now at some kids' activity. 'Aren't you worried that I may do something? After all, he is very handsome.' 'Be my guest,' I replied, 'we live only once and we should enjoy the time.' This was not calling her bluff in any way, I meant it but, of course she was not being serious herself. In many ways, though I cannot imagine it, I hope that she does find someone - someone who makes her happier than I appear to be able to.
It reminded me of an earlier quote in an earlier post:
I can recall a student of mine, a woman in her mid-40s, telling me a long, moving story about being 'awakened' emotionally, sexually and intellectually, when she fell in love with a friend of her husband.
What the adulterer usually wants is better relationships, conversation, support, attention, pleasure. Her question is: how can we get what we want while behaving well, which means, at least, not being ashamed of ourselves?
My student didn't wish for anything like 'total liberation' - a revolution, a new social set-up - just for a satisfying marriage. And it is worth noting about the classic heroines of literature, Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, or even the characters in the David Lean's Brief Encounter, that they are not compulsive transgressors. They are asking for very little, and for everything, which, for them, is a fuller, more satisfying love. Complete happiness is a fiction, but some happiness is possible; indeed, it is essential. There are some people you can 'realise' yourself in relation to, and they are worth searching out.
'When were your happiest/most content?' she asked me one day. I said when I was 17/18 and in the last two years of school. 'I was in a loving atmosphere, I was confident and calm.' 'I was surrounded by people who liked me and were kind and supportive.'
I told her about and read out to her a comment I had seen in response to an article on empty nesters:
A wife dead, a son at university. Left to chatter inanely on the Guardian website. When we are in a full flush of life we cannot imagine the barrenness of loneliness, could not put a face to the dreadful singularity. To think of those happy hours, overdrafts and family calamities, little local difficulties, the school run. It all seemed so onerous once and yet now what would I give for its return.
It is a terrible coincidence when double loss occurs in such a way and all companionship and the secret family dissipates. The house is silent save for the distant warbling of radio four. How you would long for an invitation to shopping or the delivery of the child to his friend's house. The loss of the familiar names and typical characterisations generated over years of closeness, intimacy. And those jobs you have to do, which you were told about but which remained unattended, they are now unattended forever.
You soon come to the loss of self, did I ever have an ego, I must have done. The inevitable is that life will never be the same. From the full flush of the main current you have been dropped like silt, abruptly, while life flushes on elsewhere. It was once that element of surprise, "When I was seventeen, says the child, "My father knew nothing. Now I am twenty-two I find it surprising how much he has learnt in such a short time". But even that knowledge is of little use for knowledge is nothing without employment and care and attentions moulders in self-pity. Perhaps there is a time for all of us when we should resign from life, when we are best to step aside, who knows. But the truth is that even the bad times were good. I see it all now, too late.
'That will be you when I am gone,' she said.
'No, it won't. I'll have loads of friends and loads of fun.'
'No you won't. I'll come back as a ghost and make your life a misery if you do have fun.'
Nuff said...
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