Tuesday 26 November 2013

Leaving home (some day). More Sex.

The beautiful (and adamant) girl is completing her College Application choices for next year.  "Perhaps you could maybe put down eh Business Studies? or uh... Law!,  or.... or Languages... combined with eh Business Studies or like Law. As I mean a third option, a..um... fallback position, so to speak, darling."   "Pardon!?  Why would I do THAT when I am taking English and Drama, or I am taking  English and Film, or possibly I am taking Film and Drama. I'm not actually like DOING anything else. Or don't you think I can get the points? Didn't you see my pre mock results? I mean hello?!". I have seen 'em. She has a point.  She needs more points for the chosen option than for any of my ridiculous suggestions. And she's on track. My vision of the beautiful girl as self supporting, comfortably established, launched!, sooner rather than later is fading fast. "Well, I mean maybe the chosen option will actually yield a living wage" I harrow to my husband. "Yeah. Maybe baby, maybe. Or,  she will be exhausting the arts department on your ticket for the decade. Either or."

"Well  I'M thinking of goin' local, the IT, Institute of Technology you know.  You'll save a fortune..my mate's getting wheels you know... SO I have a lift.  Until you've sorted me with a car. Nothing to worry yourself about here! "  My husband asks the hopeful boy what he would be proposing to study. "Don't know yet.  Havn't decided.  I mean I could do anything. The way I see it.  Pure History maybe,  I'm like good at that. Do they do that there?  Or Archeology! Architecture! Agricultural Science! or, I know,  Vetinarian!  I'm really like good with animals. As you know. Like how many years would THAT take me?". "More than you'd think", I mutter brokenly.. "Maybe you could ASSIST the vet" the boss says kindly   "And, you know,  it will be weird for me when they have both gone AWAY to College. Kinda lonely",  a thoughtful and not unhappy light in her eye.

"It WILL work itself out in the end, angel. It will, you know, unfold as it unfolds, follow its own strange trajectory,  take its own mysterious course. So. We must just go with it, like roll with it,  have faith in the universe. And like also the teenagers" I finish magnificently to my husband, he having by that time cooked the dinner, fed the dog, driven the beautiful girl to drama, gathered in the boss and boy from the darkening night and the suck of a teenage swarm on the road.  "Yeah" , he says, "yeah. Or maybe we should get down on our knees and pray. And afterwards  call one of those helplines, tell them where to get me, tell them there's two of us here, tell them how I'm worn to the bone, pinned to the mast,  may not actually be getting ENOUGH SEX". "Pardon!!!!!!????"  "S'ok," he hastens to add, "I mean I've grown accustomed,  I 'd actually miss 'em if they ever did. Leave I mean. They can stay. Bless them. Also their babies, lovers, hordes of little friends. And you, you can let me know when you have a window, no pressure, I'm basically always at home. Though off to fetch the beautiful one, first."

Saturday 16 November 2013

Save the Children Stupid!!

 Home ( before I take off my coat)

"Yes, I know. It was bad. Very bad. Grounded? Right. OK, And anyway I have things to do. So that's good" "Eh?" "Yes, I'm making you know like designer christmas cards? for the like Hand Made  Christmas Card Market.? And you won't like have to give me too much money this Christmas, becuase I  will like sell them?. Do you think many people would buy Hand Made Christmas Cards?? Well there is always the family. We could like go visiting THEM when I'm done"

Oh she's very good, my boss. And the christmas cards will be very good too. It all started on an indignant high for my part. You know, the kid is missing when you get home, not seen for hours, no phone on her,  finally turns up at 7pm hot on your heels. "Where?" I asked my husband. "I mean its dark, cold,  alien, out there. AND no phone, no credit, no coat". But like I said, she's good, tipped the wind nicely out of my sails. Easy peasy I guess. "I'm thinking Boyfriend!" my husband  offers. !?!?

And on upstairs,( first floor).

"It was HIM" the beautiful girl tells me, "It IS tobacco smoke, BUT it was him". She doesn't actually stop playing something classical and fluent on the piano, as she assures me that she herself may have taken a drag but it was the Boy's cigarette, and anyway she hardly ever....I mean how could she?...can't afford them, her friends get cash from their parents for like a few drinks  on nights out and other like  needs,  "but not me. Ho no, not me". "I'm thinking  nicotine plus what?" my husband calls.!?!?

"Nope. It was HER," and anyway he doesn't smoke, not  hardly ever,  maybe like  a drag to keep her company, and  anyway he can't afford....and so on and so forth and... "I WILL NOT HAVE IT IN THE HOUSE" I say, and also "You may do what you choose when you go out in the world. Make your own choices then, pick your poison, undermine and pick apart the good health I have tended in you all, but not yet. And...and then it won't be on my watch...and.. and.." I come to a stuttering stop, catching a distinctly wry and long suffering  twinkle in the boy's nordic blue eyes. That wind has deserted the parental sales again. Oh well. "I'm thinking you gotta laugh" my husband mutters. !?!?

And upwards to the marital bedroom

In the blessed peace of there  I listen to  the beautiful one's trilling fluent scales on her piano,  the masterful slam of the front door and unmistakeable stride of the boy gone towards the gate, all six foot one of him undiminished by the cigarettes he does not smoke. Beneath me on her bed sits the boss fashioning the finest of hand made cards, calmly planning the purchase of presents, mascara, chocolate. But not cigarettes. No.  An idiotic habit she thinks. Her siblings idiots she thinks also.

"Stop thinking!" "Am not!" "Yes! you are! I hear you thinking, thinking". My husband  comes to fetch me for dinner where I sit lost in knotty twisty dilemma. I order him to take himself out of my mental processes, where yeah,  I am....mulling, twisting, wrestling with work related turmoil and imponderables, the slipperiness of teenagers. He asks me how I think I  have advanced  things with my fruitless broodings, and if I realized the unflattering displacement all this is causing  to my facial features. Hmm. There is no point, I think much later on from the deep deep peace of the marital, there is no point in trying to control anything, ever, at all. And when the whirwind gathers you up, the only think to usefully do is hang on. And wait, hopefully, for deliverance. In due course. Stop thinking.

Musings in the Wee Small Hours.

I wonder if the enthusiastic policemen who snatched  the two Roma children from the bosom of their anxious families, the ones also who made herculean attempts to transmogrify a twenty four year old Australian woman into a lost girl ripe for the rescue feel as I do about the pointlessness of one's efforts to control the bad stuff,  one's enthusiastic blunderings to get a handle on the world?

And then there was Sweetie, virtual girl bait, the lifting of a stone to reveal the predatory feasting horror of men on children via the internet. Tip of the iceberg. Devouring of the innocents. And the free for all of the Beast on children orphaned by Tyhoon Haiyan. Can we do nothing?  Are we helpless in fact?  Forever barking up the wrong tree, forever backing off from the one true fight we have to fight and win ruthlessly, unflinching, whatever it takes. My husband awakes, sighs histrionically, pokes me in the ribs. "Stop. Thinking."