We sit here, he and I, chilly in the December onslaught.
“I’m not feeling good, frankly,” he tells me.
My heart sinks.
“I’m chilly, my head hurts, my hands are freezing…”
“I’ll put the heating on,” I reply.
A flash of inspiration.
We put the kettle on and assemble the mugs.
A nostalgic long-forgotten flavour.
Bovril.
Bliss.
Who’d ‘ave thunk?
There comes a stage in every man’s life, over the hill’s brow…
Let me start from the beginning:
“You need to return your bum to the shop,” he announces.
Little eyes widen in awe.
“I do…? Why?”
“It’s got a crack in it.”
Paroxysms of giggling delight.
“I didn’t know grown-ups were so silly.”
It’s an easy power: post-cool step-dad.
I have scrabbled on my knees in the dirt, allowed you to wipe your feet on my already beleaguered back, begged for scraps, jumped through hoops.
You know no mercy.
There is no way but yours.
And to progress I must tear out my own heart with my own hands.
It is brutal.
Savage.
Unjust.
It is the only way.
Slumber-bereft eyes, sandpapered and pricked by nocturnal vigil; the chambers of the mind become labyrinthine with cerebral dislocation; I am half-waked, not asleep, only partly here.
Sluggish and slow I perambulate through the familiar corridors of thoughts and home, performing each habitual function adequately, automatically; not well, not badly.
Sleep is of vital importance.
You had best not forget that.
As I type, my two biggest boys are busy earning Granny Points.
Tea finished, Artie aged 7 is washing up, while Humph aged 9 is drying.
Five points each.
Seven for tidying your bedroom.
Two for hanging up your coat unbidden.
One for putting your pyjamas under your pillow and making your bed.
Extra points for cheerful cooperation.
The cake is ready.
A policeman murdered his soon-to-be wife; bludgeoned her to death before staging a fatal car accident.
Hundreds are bereft of their homes; flooded out a month before Christmas.
A forty-six year old man has spent half his life in a conscious state of paralysis; believed comatose, unable to communicate his awareness.
I struggle to comprehend.
Still less should I complain.
I am not proud.
Today I am grumpy: shoutily, swearily, unfairly, hormonally, horribly grumpy.
I have shouted, washed up very noisily, stamped my feet melodramatically and had all within a 50 metre radius of me running for cover and cowering in corners.
I have no excuse.
I think, on balance, the best medicine is to administer chocolate.
It was ever thus.
“What’s for tea, Mum?”
I dread this question. Its response usually elicits rolled eyes and groans. And “Has it got peas in?”
This time, though, it has a purpose. A gadget given by school to suggest healthy snack replacements.
I mention chocolate cake for pudding.
“Frozen fruit” is the suggestion.
“Well you have that, and we’ll have cake.”
“NO!”
See?
Be careful how you play at home.
Sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, biding my time until he emerged, smiling and shiny-toothed, I read a gossip magazine.
My little one played with bricks next to me, until he tired and reached instead for a leaflet outlining dental disasters.
Opening it, he pronounced loudly, pretending to read: “Mummy smells of poo!”
… Life is the kind of adventure I always dreamed of…
… but never fully apprehended until now.
… The world has become a place of unprecedented contrast…
… the dark as potent as the light.
… The once calm lake of my emotions now experiences seasons…
… winter cold makes summer heat the sweeter.
… For all the pain, the searching…
… it was meant to be.
