How can one predict the path of destruction of a natural disaster? That was what it felt like, that I survived something brutal and unexpected, the panic of which left me bed-ridden for a solid week. I can only say how it felt for me, what it looked like to me, what I thought about things. It is only beyond the aftermath that we can trace the path, and even then, how are we to know it is not something beyond what we can see or know?
His parents I had met several times in the four years off and on that I spent with their grandchildren. I found them charming and cheerful and I got to know them, I enjoyed them very much. They also knew me, not as thoroughly as someone who spent a lot of time with me might have, but they knew me in the soul to soul moment way, when they saw me with their son. He brought out the best in me and I was cheerful and relaxed and delightful in his company. To spend so much time in their home did not bring about any nervousness at all.
When we arrived, it was a wonder, we left a snowy climate that had battered us with wet and cold, it was early February and still unrelenting, but just a few hours away we encountered an unexpected gift, London was having an early spring. She'd already arrived, perhaps a week or almost two weeks before us, close enough to where you could tell she had not yet been, especially on the naked trees, many with their limbs lopped off at so many awkward angles they resembled gnarled hands reaching into the sky. But the sky it clamored at was bright (not the dreary London I'd been told to anticipate, grays, muddy skies, obscuring fogs). The clouds were puffy and dense, the skies behind them idyllic blue and the sun shone into our faces, not the rough summer sun, but the paler, lighter sun, that I could navigate the city without sunglasses surprised me, it was such a weak warmth, but just enough to give breath into the air, instill a sense of openness and joy. We shed our winter selves quickly, it was a pleasure to be free of winter's grip.
I was in a sort of palatial bliss, in which I was dropped suddenly into a completely different world that I had no real knowledge of and I soaked up everything about it, even just around them, I was so enraptured by everything there that I didn't already know, unlike the way I knew so much of my life back home, a routine, a sort of network of daily habits of awareness. As much as these dismay me, the breadth of them, the networks growing larger and out of control, that I see the inability to make it to the furthest outreaches to protect every outpost from harm; I enjoy them. In them, in learning the routines of my world, I see the stories, I see the themes, I see what drives certain people, I puzzle over all of them in great detail while also knowing their scope.
To learn a new place was challenging and exciting. I learned their house, where the parquay floors had lost their seal and where the silverware stayed and where the stairs creaked. I learned their neighborhood, where I could go and buy something from a place I'd seen while walking, in a few block radius. I learned the buses, the trains, most of the city. This immersion was sudden and immediate, within days I was forming sentences as a Briton might (have you got any jam for this bit of toast?) and, I spoke with an accent very easily. It almost seemed to me an unofficial long standing etiquette training. I was in my own transformation story and I hadn't even expected to do anything more than sit glumly in the corner and hope for invisibility and enjoy the four days off they promised me. Museums were free, there were so many sights, and I hoped to feel like I had seen some of another great city.
And then, there was Iris. The joy of our lives was now shared by them, and she was a round eyed creature of great beauty, who captivated all that encountered her.
We spent those first few days in great ease, seeing sights and people, it was a heady time for me with the newness of the new and they even did some touristy things with me in mind, we rode The Eye, they pointed out the sights, he drove me around one night, and he pointed out his life there. Then somehow, perhaps the moon crept into fullness or the thrill of the new wearing off, or how they say traveling with people is a test of a relationship, and ours was set in motion on the fourth or fifth day. It was a succession of dominos, that slow slap of one thing pushing into another to build us into raging.
I was probably woken up by listening to the baby cry. I am a light sleeper and that first gasp of air hit my ears and I was awake instantly. She may have cried for five or ten minutes or so until I heard their door open downstairs, and the lumber of his body climb the stairs and he pulling her from her crib, to tend to whatever it was ailing her. To hear a baby cry like that, one that you love, who loves you, and to not know if you should get up and tend to her, or if that would upset the woman and she would be colder to you the next time she saw you. So there I lay, on the other side of her wall, frozen by indecision.
Then, strangely, sadly, she began to cry for me even when in her mother's arms, and I cowered in the shame of having delighted in her so much that she now yearned for me. I wouldn't say she preferred me over her mother, but I do think she enjoyed spending time with me. I constantly interacted with her, with a toy, words, noises, hand clapping, testing her understanding of the world around us. It was part of our joy that previously we had been able to enjoy without boundaries. Suddenly, that woman had something to prove to her in laws, and the second the baby cried for me while in her arms, I felt the slap of those dominos falling.
It happened several times over those near three weeks, but the worst one was when I came downstairs after having some time to shower and get ready for the day. She heard my feet on the stairs and knew it was me (everyone else was sitting in the dining room eating breakfast) and began to cry. She had just gotten settled when she heard my voice and began to cry louder. I was embarrassed for that woman, as much as I did not care for her, I still respected her humanity and that was quite the blow to hers. In order for me to eat breakfast at the table with everyone, she had to carry her child away so that she did not see me.
In spending that much time with them (an unrelenting progression of events with no quiet time to myself and no solace in sleep, because the frozen sister slept in the same room with me and woke up several times during the night, and the baby crying next to me every morning), I lost my ability to maintain my cheerful disposition. And when it seemed that my love for their child and her love for me was too much for that woman, I was angry with them for bringing me there. And him, I was angry at him for choosing her, a woman who was not nor never could be his equal. I was angry at him for being so damn charming and funny and clever and so devoted to her.
There was a moment when the slaps of that love, the love I had flourished under, denied, vilified, loathed and forgiven; there in London, there was one huge slap, and it came after a day of seeing their friends and having a lovely time, in which I was never treated like the help and still managed to feel chasms apart from him, because he was adoring her, enjoying her, loving the mother of his children with such beaming joy. Slap. We were standing in the doorways of a grimy tube car, the children at their feet, his arm around his wife the darkness of a tunnel dimmed the scene and when I looked into our reflection, I was standing on one side, they on another and their children between us and they were kissing. I wanted at once to champion for their love and devotion and to smack her and say how dare you! when all you do is complain and create messes for him to clean up. I wept. I hid in my hat. She tried to talk to me and I could not be polite, I grimaced at her and hid from her.
After enjoying a day off (to my glad ears, it was told with no advance warning, but soothed by the cavernous room of Mark Rothkos at the Tate), I vowed to not be bitter any longer. I had the burnham, things were still good between us, and perhaps had I been born some years earlier, I could have been where she was. Things were the way they were and that was that.
Except the dominos had already begun to fall, and by the time we reached that weekend, they were falling with such rapidity, that I can barely recall the sequence of them: every moment became pregnant with awkwardness. And, specifically, she teased me about my newfound accent, she was mortified that her child cried for me, she was jealous that he had driven me around, she was offended that I did not want to come to the pub, because he was sad that I opted not to, she came down with a headache one afternoon that I was supposed to be free for the day and on and on.
The weekend we went to the countryside, the girls and I were a cluster of irritation. The frozen sister had a headache, the baby was teething, and I was cranky from little sleep and the exhaustion of being polite with them so much. The country was typical English dreary landscape, which I believe also affected our mood. We tromped through the paths and toured the neighborhood, but it was with some effort on my behalf. I retired after the children went to bed. And then we traveled on to Wales.
Wales. I had not expected to travel there, so I think it was doubly impressive in its surprise and it was so lively in its atmosphere, as soon as we crossed the border I felt a connection to the land that I could not say I felt for London or England, a sense of belonging, a smile as my heart whispered, welcome home. It was absolutely gorgeous and mysterious. I was in love and they (being Britons) were quite annoyed by my sweeping sense of awe of the place. To them, it was just a silly country (the Welsh language the biggest factor on the list of silliness) but to me it was heaven; rolling hills of properties marked by wire fences or wooden posts with clumps of sheep bleating in the distance and brilliant blue skies of breathtaking beauty and the town nestled at the feet of the hills, a town that still resembled much of how it has always been, and it has always been quaint and lovely.
This scene was edified by the home we spent a night or two in, a beautiful maze of rooms and spaces, some big some small, stained glass, a snooker table on which I learned to play the sport, a lovely garden with ponds, a cliff with the countryside all green and blue and rolling ahead of your eyes, and the woman of the house was an excellent cook (their mother had somehow become a true English woman in many senses and her cuisine was less than exciting; especially the meal of cow tongue, which I truly will never forget for how disgusting it was) and her husband was a pleasant man and their children were older and very smart and I enjoyed their company very much. I decided to fall into the delight of their nephew who immediately adopted me as his play pal, despite the fact that I was a giant woman who was only visiting for a few weeks and not a boy of his age. We had so much fun. I know it irritated that woman because she had tried so vainly with them (her awkwardness was a sign of her desperate attempts to fit in, I think), but she lacked the ability to laugh at herself, laugh with them, and trust them. I realized I was outshining her and I did not hold back at all on her behalf.
This seemed to upset him as well and there was some talk about what was expected of me and what was not expected of me. I don't think there was a clause for getting along too well with his family and somewhat abandoning my duties, but I reasoned, it was the weekend, they traveled there to see his family and how could they enjoy the kids if I was always taking care of them. Also, I was having too much fun playing snooker, doing a puzzle, gossiping with their niece, assisting the lady of the house, pulling up sheets of ice from the ponds, and many many other small joys. They hadn't expected me to fit in so well, especially not with them who found his wife to be cold and unfriendly (because she was cold and unfriendly). I hadn't expected to fit in so well with them either. I'd met them all separately when they came to visit in Chicago and found them all to be good people, but them as a family, well they were too charming to deny.
The dominos took a different turn then, she had been gracious to these pile of irritants I'd delivered while simply being myself, but soon she began to lose her ability to be polite.
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