Another ordinary day

I’ve a day of work and a meeting planned today.  The excitement will likely be what I eat for dinner.  This is an ‘ordinary day’.  The ordinary days are the manure or compost for the garden days.  I’ve an appreciation for the hum drum because it gives a comparative dash to the less mundane days of my life. I remember the less mundane. Looking back I’m troubled sometimes that I find the threats and dangers and abuse and betrayals spring to mind so easily yet the ordinary days run behind all that drama and excitement. I was married a couple of decades but rather than focus on the relative marital bliss I knew for so many years my mind goes to the rather sordid years of divorce.  I almost forget or refuse to reflect on the incredible beauty of the bride and the pride I took in being the groom. I miss my first house.  She had liked it till her sister got a bigger one and then my home, my home, which my father had helped choose given his knowledge of wiring and plumbing etc, became the ‘starter home’ for her but she never focussed on children and sex was no longer the thrill it had been before marriage.  See my mind goes to the sense of betrayal. I worked hard was a good man and hoped for family and was denied but rather was increasingly criticized and in turn was judgemental.  That’s the inner dialogue that preceded the outward dissolution.  The fact was there was no future, no children and sex a chore rather than love. The song ‘she’s a young girl and will never leave her mother,’ played out and she was angry and resentful but that was all in the end, the last months ,the time after I’d begged her to come alone with me to renew our relationship but she’d rather be with her family and not spend time alone with me.  I watched her sister become a woman and be with her husband because they left and envied him the escape from that cesspool of suicide and alcoholism and death.  Her mother was a sad woman, hysterical and entitled.  But my mind is riveted by the memory of that time, the breakup and the sad causes.  Now the water skiing , the laughter on the docks , the canoeing, the little tents on the in land lakes are lost. The cycling and cross country skiing, the hot stews in the winter huts, the ballet and the gowns and suits and all those wonderful times. The visits with friends and the dancing. I taught her to dance and she was a lovely dancer. She and I did Viennese waltz about the rooms. She looked like a princess and we studied in libraries long hours weekends, together side by side , sharing pens, 10 minute breaks on the hour, coffee and back to the books,  laughter an a joke, going to the cafeteria for a quick bite, so much of those years of medical school linked to her, looking forward to seeing her, revelling in the friendship and melting at the depth and beauty of her eyes.  I’m so thankful to have known her and the chill of the morning, getting up first to use the washroom and turn up the heat, the warmth of shared bed in the northern winter, the huge duvet, then the hard wood floors and the oak furniture of the friend, hand made for us, the parties, the well dressed, lovely educated beautiful people, music, guitars, poetry, and always discussions that were of the times, ideas and learning.  Opinions and debate, the women we’re young and beautiful and their pheromes fill the room with perfumes and we drank red wine till too late and I was glad I didn’t have to drive home but cleaned up till much later with her till we went to bed to sleep in till late in the morning.  It was an idyllic time. Friends and family and home and love.  I was working in and out of town.  We were admired.  We were the golden boy and girl.  She began to call me names, like ‘lucky’ and criticize my parents who we didn’t much see while her mother was always in our face and was a disturbing overbearing woman who thought her self ‘superior’ and was so critical of her husband, a beaten down alcoholic, who my father liked Mano o Mano.  Mother didn’t like her mother as ‘she treats her husband poorly and thinks so highly of herself’.  I wasn’t paying attention, so fixed on study and saving lives, clinically desparate for skills and competence always catching up in the country and the north alone with my fears and frightening diseases and so much beyond the textbook becoming thankful for mentors and in with the heads of departments and deans who were the only ones that could answer my questions so complex and harrowing in the late of night. The nurse unable to get lines or oral with the girl seizuring so I told her to shove the valium up the anus and saved another life. So many celebrations and thanks and victories out beyond the wilderness.  Radio phones and bush planes and she was safe in the centre of her urban cocoon of the ‘middle class white gentile ‘team’.  I was a part of a motley crew from all over the world, exceptional sorts, female doctors who went on to serve in the arctic, nurses who flew around the world serving in war zones and outback’s, the Irish doctor and the English doctor, igloos and polar bears.  She asked me to take down the picture of the polar bear that I snapped before it ate me. She said it upset guests and didn’t belong in her house she’d painted pink. She wanted all my ‘junk’ in the basement.  I didn’t know what to make of this and frankly didn’t like her friends who didn’t like their husbands and men and they all talked so negatively of us and our avhievements and we were bullied and lost.

And the mind forgets the smell of her in the morning after a good weekend when she was happy and her mother hadn’t visitted and her sister and her had had a good time and I was not facing another exam or trying to find out the latest of the latest case of whatever by going through texts and journals. I read so much in those years. A half dozen medical journals cover to cover each week. Always studying .Always reading. Writing poetry and journals and playing guitar badly.  It was wonderful to go for coffee on Osborne and let out a sigh. I’d only have that time of meditation in the living room in the morning and late at night. Mostly I was on a treadmill with so many demands and we were running full speed in parallel and it was fun to drive to work with her when we were both in town and chat about whatever. She had such a lovely girl voice when we met. A sing song sweet voice that had fairy laughter woven into the fabric of it.  

I loved to kiss her and hold her. She was tall and slim and felt so perfect in my arms. Naked she was Venus.  Really.  That could be her stepping off of the shell. She touched my heart and soul.  I was another person. It was another time.  Another world. Another place. A fairytale princess and a young prince.  There were no children and she was pro abortion.  And I wondered what I was waiting for and why I was playing this game of barren house and accessorizing a little girls doll house.  I was so lost and confused before the nightmare really began.  I prayed and she didn’t like my talk of God and thought it silly.  She mocked me and I was unwelcome.  I never have stayed where I was unwelcome.  She was such a beatiful girl and person and we were seeing all the illness of th world thrown into the sickness and death and coming home trailing despair and disease trying desperately to love in the midst of illness and change.