Friday, 26 October 2012

Grievous harrowing.

My beloved husband is in arctic retreat, he barely speaks to me and I will certainly not speak to him until he apologises, sees the error of his ways, identifies where it all went wrong, SHOWS  me that he SEES how badly he offended me, and well just says  sorry.  It was  about my driving, and it started with my use of the gear box, moving  on to my incorrect  employment of wipers, and came to a fine culmination  with his histrionic gasp when I braked a little  abruptly in traffic. On being told to Shut Up, he (as I told him later) aggressively read the newspaper in silence till the journeys  end, when words bitter and unwise were  said  about my driving,. And now, no words at all. It is  day three and I miss him grievously, feel hamstrung by  the difficulty in having a very necessary clearing of the air before my  very interested and impressionable teenagers.

Last night I holed up in my bedroom, clutching a book I have trying to read for months, my own words to my children.ringing in my ears.  I mean  "I have known a kind of hardship and suffering you have no notion of, and will NEVER have to experience"  and "I am not going to be subjected to further harrowing from my own children now" was not what I saw myself saying (roaring) at my children. Ever. .Not even after a very trying evening of door slamming, flouncing and bloodymindness from one or other of them. I wondered was it even true. It seemed to have been yanked out of me from some stray place. . Was it true,  and ought I to have said it, and was that actually me?

Well yes, yes and yes. Of course it was true. After all I had an Irish catholic childhood circa 1960s. And I do believe that most people you meet are engaged in a quite  dreadful struggle to live, more or less. Also, I'v been doing it for a long time now, you get punch drunk in time. . If you are still standing that is. Besides  lately the odd skittery jerk of my heart warns  me  ENOUGH  with the unconditional offering.. (The hearts a slave)

Whose heart then has not been rung this week by the story and the  images of the two little girls, two years and three months old, mown down by an out of control car as their father wheeled them out on a Sunday walk. All week long the woeful tale played out.  The guard crouched by the smashed  and empty buggy, bowed head  in hand,  the people standing  paralysed with pity at the scene bearing flowers, the undertaker who wrapped the baby in her sisters arms in one coffin, one,  a mystery wrapped in and enigma, why.

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