I in fact never expressed myself as openly to either of my parents as young, fair Rosanna does to her father, throughout the family strife.
On paper, at a superficial glance her reaction towards her another seems like a defensive one, a recoiling and a sign of weakness. However now that I have met her in person, I admire her move of halting contact with her mother and choosing to have a relationship only with her father.
There I was; at the dinner table with a single father, and his two daughters a 16 and 8 year old, eating with their cutlery, treading on their
expensive yet cheap rug, digging into the organic mung bean sprouts. The gauze is impermeable yet if it ripped, how different the scene would be. These young girls can’t possibly guess of my arrangement with their father- shouldn’t be expected to ever have to know or live with the fact.
Their lives are incompatible with the knowledge thereof.
Yet, physically, ostensibly.
There I was; chatting, trying to impress in subtle and cautious treading the schoolgirl, in her bold blue uniform, as much as she was trying to impress me. En meme temps, I should do nothing I got the feeling to alter their outlook or reality very much, I must be a pleasant but forgettable encounter- though I expect I constitute an incident that is not easily forgotten in the rerun of their life history at this critical juncture.
Richard and I get on quite well if you exclude the holocaust denial on his part. Part of me suppresses the outrage of this so as to make the arrangement work and part of me does it because in all other respects we get well. We’ve been engaged in conversation with few pauses since 09.45 this morning and it was 09.45 when we parted so …yes, I’ve just done the math! That is something that occurs naturally or not at all (at least with me; had it not, I would have fled with one way or another).
Another bit of math- I am closer in age to his daughter than to him-7 years closer.
I floated through unperturbed through potentially awkward situations I think, by virtue of the conversation keeping me floating mentally (cerebrally) above the material level of what we were doing- he paid for transport, my coffees, a cab, and lunch.
We have similar eating habits, resilience in cold and aversion to heat, affinity for argument and reason, a preference for the simplest and clearest route.
Yes, it’s uncanny…
but it is uncanny also in that it’s neither lust nor love.
Aftethought: I think Rosanna could be a tough judge, and wouldn’t give me the benefit of the doubt or even do me the favour of speaking to me unless she thought I was worth it. So I’m touched to be accepted on the first day.
mutedtrumpet 