I'm living in the quick-quick slow tempo of early mid-winter. A waltz of days in-between, when the solstice had passed and we wait for yet some other. Living in the too dark days that have begun ever-so-slightly to lighten. That will guide us into summer where I'll don a straw hat, my hair will turn golden, my skin remain pale, and we will walk along the beach. Solving all of life's problems as we go and having talks philosophical because that is what we do. It is our summer evening ritual, and like all rituals is repeated every day, no matter what.
There will be no more bullshit: no flirtation, distraction, inability to deal or immaturity because those days, thank god, seem beyond us now, or is it just beyond the pale? So far away, yet I can feel the pain of it in the tick-tock of my heart and still it aches with the sting of betrayal.
But we do not speak of such things. In this great land we "move on" which is a good philosophy in theory, but in my country we are petulant and sulky. Our European lips in an ever-constant pout. We are children, whining and pronouncing every with with an “eu.” We, or my family and friend's anyway, are forgiving, but the sting of the past still stings. Even years later it is remembered and can still jerk the tears from those big grey-green eyes.
When a close relative recently died, one who had helped bring me up and was as a father to me, we went out to clean out his car. In the boot, we found bundles of letters - love letters – all written to his ex-wife and all the awful evidence that he had cashed out his pension and sent it to her. They had been carrying on an epistolary affair for more than thirty years and none of us were any the wiser for it.
Who would have suspected? This was the quiet and kind man who raised me. I had to reconcile not only my own sense of betrayal, but what he had done to his present wife, she who also raised me. She who bought me up. She was desperate and furious, no object for her fury because kids like Elvis, He had left the fucking building, and in doing so had left us all alone to deal. Where do you put such anger toward the dead?
Article comments