Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Evidence of Change

It’s an odd thing, but after almost three years of the Bim and I circling each other’s lives on a daily basis because of our commitment to remain amicable at all costs for Anna-mouse, the circles we are having to negotiate have suddenly become wider.  I guess that’s what happens.  I guess that’s how things move on.  And I admit I’ve been longing for it without being able to make it happen, but now  the ties are loosening, and certainly his finding a new love so unexpectedly has forced my hand.  I have to move on, too.

Friends and family would say this is no bad thing, though I’ve been doing my best, really I have.  It’s just that I take a long time to recover from wounds.  I like to think that it’s because I’m very thorough about it.  Also I just don’t react immediately, it takes me some while to know what I really feel about any given catastrophe.  I remember thinking, in the first days after our decision to separate for good, Well this isn’t so bad, I can deal with this – largely because I wasn’t dealing with anything at all.  I was immune.  Numb to the bone. 

Recently the Bim has moved into a modest little terraced house in a village several miles away.  Well, he was in a dismal part of Kent Town; the sirens kept Anna-mouse awake at night and when someone was murdered across the street from their flat a few weeks ago, the new love and he decided that it was time to set up their first home elsewhere.

Anna-mouse stayed with them last Saturday night and was brought back to me, smelling of sleep and clutching her Minnie Mouse cushion, early on Sunday morning. 

So how did you get on last night? I asked to make conversation as she lounged on the floor before me, not for one moment expecting what ensued.

We-ell, I didn’t sleep very well, she said, in a pretend grumpy voice which made me know she didn’t really mind, but wanted me to hear her little gripe.

Oh dear, I said, playing the game.  Why was that?

We-ell, first of all I had a nightmare and it was about spiders and it was reeaaally scary and Daddy had to come and comfort me, she said, hardly giving me time to make sympathetic noises before she rattled on.

And THEN I couldn’t sleep because Daddy and Mary were doing that THING they do - you know!

And before I could unshape my lips from their little ‘o’ of surprise, my seven year old daughter launched into an astonishingly energetic précis of the noises of the sexual act, which involved thumping her body up and down, wailing a bit, hitting the floor a few times and ending with an exaggerated groan.

Then she rolled her eyes at the ridiculousness of it all, and looked at me for comment.

Ah ha, I managed evenly, while my features fought to arrange themselves into any kind of expression at all, and my mind embarked on a nano-second race to uncover what I felt about being told that my husband had so very recently had sex with another.  


I continued to hold Anna-mouse’s gaze and nod sagely as she raised her hands and made an exaggerated, Woody Allen kind of shrug.

And then, wonderfully, miraculously, after a moment of crazed, Disney-like jealousy that the Bim is indulging while I cannot even remember the last time I was touched, I discovered that I wanted to laugh.

And laugh, and laugh, and laugh.


  

2 comments:

nuttycow said...

Gosh - what an odd feeling that must be (hearing about Bim and the new love) but, I hope, and I think from reading this post, it seems that you're starting to take it all in your stride.

Lovely to see you back blogging by the way.

Livvy U. said...

Thanks Nuttycow, hope things good with you! Livvy