Nekyia's Threshold

subject:
A Suck and A Hug
post date:
2007-10-03 17:18:23
views: 16 comments: 0 ratings: 0

Once upon a time, quite a long while ago, my husband came home from his job looking very pale and upset. He'd been working building pole barns all across the state for the past six months. He was part of a team that consisted of one other man and the man's wife. It wasn't very good pay, but it provided for the basic necessities and I learned how to make an excellent meatless stew. When he walked through the door I was eight months pregnant and had a year and a half old son clinging to my leg. He picked up our son and started to cry. "I got fired."I was stunned. He was good friends with this other couple. He partied like a rockstar with them, and then built big barns. How could this be?? I put a hand to my side to still the tiny foot kicking from the inside out."Why!!???"He looked at me from under silky brown hair, with tear filled brown eyes, and his tanned cheeks flushed."Jim walked in on Paula giving me a blow job."oh...huh...So Jim, his friend and his boss, walked in on his wife giving my husband a blow job. What to do. What to do. What to do. I had to DO something. I'm a doer. Always embracing kinetic energy because to go forward is to not go backwards, or worse - to remain frozen in any number of painful and afflicting circumstances.So I left my husband crying into the neck of our son while he sat on his lap and I put on my very best maternity shirt and drove to the home of his boss and his wife. I wasn't angry. I thought how horrible she must feel to be caught being so...wrong. Of course now I can look back on 26 years ago with a few decades of self-analysis at my fingertips and realize that I was also looking for a way to regain control of some careening cart called "my life", before it hit the end of the path and tumbled into the gorge of despair. Too late maybe. Or maybe not. I could pull a Scarlett O'Hara and make a fine dress out of curtains and say, "Feedle de de, I'll think about it tomorrow."Very vivid is the memory of my standing on her stoop, knocking, and she opened the door in nothing but a towel. Irony? Oh life is full of it. She stared at me in my very best maternity shirt, and I stared at her - then we hugged each other and she started to cry. And cry. And cry.And why not. Apparently she was attracted to a man who had a wife who was pregnant and he had no intention of ditching that wife, or his family, he just wanted to love the one he was with - and that was her. And her husband. Somebody had to be the third wheel. And the wheel rolled in at just the wrong moment. Wheels do that. 'Round and 'round and 'round they go, and where they'll drop - nobody knows.She went to put some clothes on and then came back and made us tea. Then she talked. She talked about her inability to get pregnant and maintain a pregnancy without a miscarriage. She talked about her husband's family and how they didn't like her. She talked about her hopes, dreams, despairs, and in the middle of this talk her husband came home and stared at me. Then walked back out. Maybe men don't bond with each other in times of trama - especially when one of them is the one that dealt the blow. (Yes, my reverie still allows for unfortunate pun usage. I'm sorry.)All of this was brought back up in my mind because of the book, "Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy" and the explanation giving by the writer: "...if we don't feel like we have to have all the emotions sorted out before we extend compassion, the road to forgiveness is easier..." I did forgive her. But I could only befriend her that one time. She called after that day, asking me to come over and talk, but the shock had worn off and the pain had set in and I just couldn't do it again. And I felt guily. She needed me and I couldn't be there for her. Then a thin little thread of anger would weave its way inside my mind, like a garrote waiting to be used. I certainly didn't want to use it on her, in any form. So I made excuses and lived my life.Then end of the story is that she divorced her husband, and I divorced that husband, and he married her as his third wife, and divorced her shortly after, declaring she was a bitch from hell. And the wheel goes 'round and 'round.