I who am poisoned by the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
--Derek Walcott
Thoughts that might have been J's had she been able to articulate or perhaps for when she will. She does not know R except that he and I are not together and for obscure reasons believes I was the victim. She knows that she belongs to us both and if she could she would purge him out of herself.
In almost a Ying -Yang or God Demon parable she has a concept of a bad Daddy (R) who threw Mommy out in the trash(an over-simplification but not too far off the mark) and a good Daddy (undetermined) who is out there somewhere looking out for her and me.
Sometimes when she sees me stressed, J will tell me in due seriousness "Mommy, don't worry. Good Daddy is busy right now. He will come to see us soon" It would be a cardinal sin to break such innocent trust. I have nothing left to say.
She has made peace with herself in working this heuristic in her mind. It does not seem to confuse her that she has no memory of either Daddy. This makes them both somewhat mythical as must be the case with God and Demon. Apparently there is fairly stable equilibrium except when there is a real person to step into good Daddy's shoes.
That is not something J is ready to accept yet. To her a Daddy that is real could soon turn to a monster that throws Mommy in the trash just like R did. After all he is real (J has seen pictures of him) How does one explain to a three year old that life is not all black and white that there is an infinity of grays in between ? Maybe it is best that she and I live in her myth.
Somewhere within your loving look I sense,
Without the least intention to deceive,
Without suspicion, without evidence,
Somewhere within your heart the heart to leave.
--Interpretation - Vikram Seth
A feeling I am well acquainted with. This is the look that I have seen on faces of men I have at different points in my life loved and lost. It is the look that tells me "It's over" and yet I cling to remnants of hope, hoping that I have read wrong because it is "without suspicion, without evidence"
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
-- When You Are Old - William Butler Yeats
Yes, I have known that one man. Just that it was not in our karma to be together. I am blessed that I have known him. I wonder if Yeats also means to say that there can be only one such man in a woman's life.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
Comments
Perhaps this might help: Soulmate
Delusions can be nice....until u need to wake up!
"only one such man in a woman's life."....I wonder....
how does 'love flee' anyway??