2006-05-23
Twelve days Kevin? How can that be? You used to be a regular updater and now you’ve slipped into the occasional visit of too many other people here.I’m sorry – I realise there are a handful of people who have checked by more than once to see whether I’m around and found the deafening silence. I apologise especially to a friend in trouble who may have been expecting some kind of response to an email – I hop she doesn’t think I don’t care.
The truth is I’m struggling to get any private computer access. At home there seems to have been some kind of disaster that I’m not bright enough to solve where my account on the home computer seems to have been frozen out of internet explorer and netscape access but nobody else’s has. I can’t work it out – it definitely knows there’s a modem there because it’ll play Reversi with anonymous people all around the world. It just won’t let me contact or read anyone I know.
And here? Here I have Jo sitting to my right and able to see what I’m doing. I think she might be interested in what I write here, or at least the back history, so I’m not even opening these pages while she’s about.
Well that’s the bit we’re interested in Kevin! Never mind all this nonsense about Reversi – how IS it with Jo?
It’s fine. I think.
But it’s different. And I think it’s mainly different on my side, which isn’t at all what I expected.
The Friday before we returned we had a fight over the phone, which she’ll now realise having seen the layout of the new office, was a decidedly difficult thing to do. It happened, I think, because she was under quite a bit of strain with having only just got back from the States, tons of things to organise in a short space of time and general apprehension about being back at work and all the backlash that brings from Dave. She was berating me for not being caring enough during the time of her illness and basically ignoring her when she needed my support most. Which – if you recall – I knew at the time, but struggled (as is a constant problem) with how I can be in touch with her at times like that without adding to the grief with her husband. Sure I didn’t organise a get-well-soon card from people here. Not because I didn’t think of it, not because I didn’t care but because anything with my name on wouldn’t be acceptable, and it would be a little hard to organise such a thing and then not sign it.
Inevitably, and I was prepared for it, it took her a couple of days to adjust from being a full-time mother back to being a worker. Hey – what am I saying? – I’m amazed it has taken so little time to manage the appearance of adjustment, and I know that inwardly there’s a bit to go. We sat and chatted for a little while the other day and the question of part-time came up, together with questions about whether I would be ‘disappointed’ – not disappointed that she was thinking of not being here to help, more disappointed in her for having become someone who could contemplate it, someone who had finally given in to the overwhelming task of trying to be a working mother. There were tears under the surface that she fought to avoid.
And no- of course I’m not going to be disappointed. I want her to be happy in whatever way and if that eased her strain a little I’d be all for it.
But the difference is in me. The difference is that somehow I’m seeing the effect our closeness has on the people around us. I’m seeing, if anything, that the way to preserve the intimacy we have (and this is assuming that it can, will, never return to what it was) is to not be so brash and in peoples’ faces with it.
And that’s confusing her a bit I think because it’ll feel like I’m keeping her a little at a distance, until I can find the way and the opportunity to explain what I’m feeling. She said yesterday that it’s hard already being so close together, not having a room to escape to and discuss things in the way we used to in private. Being geographically close but our hearts not so connected.
Am I as attracted to her? Yes. Does my heart leap when she comes in? Oh yes. Can I smell her all the time? Yes – so much more than before. Do I care passionately about what happens to her, how happy she is, how she’s coping with everything in her life? It’s all come flooding back. But do I care how much the world around us knows that? More than I thought I would, more than I did before.
But maybe it’s just because we’re in so much more of a public environment than before. I don’t know yet.