Tuesday 15 October 2013

Australia. No babies. No judgement. .

                                                  TRUTH                                                                                                     "Did they come out of the computer for their holidays? Did they?" So said the infant niece of my first born son's  wife, he, she and the three children having come home once again from Australia to visit.
"D'u think its the vitamin D from the sun that makes them like glow" the boss wonders.   "Hmm, yes, probably"  I muse, taking  pleasure from that glow, from actual presence, and also from the ease of conversations without the three seconds pause of  Skype and Facetime.
"Do you think it will be long before we see them again? Will they ever come home again" asks my watery girl, as they leave.
Truthfully, I think not. Employed, glowing, prosperous,  established in a fine circle of friends, why would they? For what come back? They are planning to buy a house ohmygod. How we all swore never to do that again! Australia and they are a fine fit, thanking you Australia. You won't regret it I think.
"Someday baby. Maybe " I tell a kind untruth.

                                           THE WHOLE TRUTH
"Nope. Don't trouble yourself. Don't actually bother. Don't  basically lie.....DON'T  tell me it doesn't hurt!" "Nnnnno, I'm not saying ....I mean its a very particular kind of pain.....not like.....I mean it sort of builds and builds and then.... gone.....builds and builds and then.... "   "Stop!That sounds like even worse. Like actually awful!"  "Yes, but it's a...it's a... um ..fruitful pain. And...and I mean the most wonderful high, of your life, when it  like you know arrives." "Yeah, yeah and then it howls and wails and slobbers for YEARS. I'm NEVER EVER  DOING THAT"  I wonder why I am in effect trying to sell motherhood to the beautiful girl? We don't want that, after all. Not for years and years and years.

But I want her to understand. I want her to see. To know it's not  a conspiracy of women to soften the edges, to lure free spirits on to the horror the horror. I want her to have an inkling of  the unique and transformative nature of labouring and giving birth. The act of being torn open, the car crash trauma an essential component even . I want to tell her .....  everything. The truth.  The whole truth. I want to tell her. Oh well I guess she will, having asserted how it isn't for her, come to the yearning aching need  for what grows inside her when she gets there, however she gets there, like the rest of us. One day. Maybe. Most likely.


                                          NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH
And then there is another woman's daughter this week who had the ambivalent victory of proving her father a rapist in a court of law. A full and poisoned chalice. A vindication mired in the loss of her father, in private when she was four years old and first violated and in public this day.  "A good wee girl. I believed her." said her uncle. As did her mother, when the child spoke up at thirteen years of age. But then the years passed and no crime was acknowledged,  no punishment marked. The uncle failed to act, the police were not terribly interested. Other fish to fry. Oh yes.

I  have no truck with Gerry Adams.  And yet, and yet. His revelation to the police finally, of his brother's confession of guilt, was a powerful proof in his niece's case. And I am a little haunted by how he went on to reveal his fathers abuse of some of his ten children, though he himself does not recall it.  He did not say whether he experienced it. The abused becomes the abuser, and all surely in the abuser's family  are expected to sing in that circle., take on the yoke of that which may not be spoken, the bad thing carried by each according to kind.

He is brother, son, and uncle is Adams, and there is no simple truth and nothing but..  Not here. Not for Adams who delivered his brother in to the maws of the justice and penal system. Not for a brave woman who tore open a family circle leaving everyone of them  exposed and isolated in the unsupported light .

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