We took what, about 11 years to get married finall? I like to take my time. Can you imagine what I was like when Grandad Baker started telling your Mum to buy a unit? I got scared. Oh God no, this means that I am in this relationship for good. There is no 'out' once I take this plunge. This was before we got married obviously. We were living above a shop at the time. It was an awful place in a great spot. I doubt we even have photos of the place. Your Mum hated it. It was all mission brown and a breeze would blow up the stairs from outside and we had no heaters other than a small electric one. There was even a time during the last month or so of living there that we had no bed. Your Mum slept on a fold out bed and I slept on the floor. The floorboards creaked horribly and the shop owner would keep knocking on the door telling us to keep it down. But I just loved being so close to everything. I loved the adventure of it. One of the windows had a terrific view of the city as well. So you can imagine that the idea of moving out and buying something became very appealing for her. But for a guy this is a huge thing. There is something deep down in your subconscious that tells you to keep your options open. Guys do not settle down as naturally as girls do. It is definitely a genetic leftover from when we were nomads. So when she started talking buying I panicked. It was a big moment, it was a mind shift. For me it meant making the final commitment and having it sink in. There was finality to it that scared me for a bit. So I did actually say no for a while. Your Mum was great, she did exactly what she should have done and said that she would be doing it anyway without my help. Sometime we all need to be pushed into change, into action and it is your partners responsibility to aid in that, as well as being true to their own vision and needs. So eventually I made that switch in my brain and once I did, that was it. It was a great feeling, I felt free rather than trapped. It was like an evolutionary ascension that us humans must do to keep progressing and adapting. We cant be held back by genetic predisposition. That is no excuse. If only we could all move on from war mongering.
So we bought the unit and for your Mum it was a huge time of growth. We both knew very little about how to look after a house but it is during this time that we started to learn how to fix up a house. I did my first paving job out back and your Mum actually did the garden. We made the place look fantastic for what it was and it ended up selling for over double what we paid just a few years on. It was also during this time that your Mum and I quit smoking finally. I was only smoking beedies for a little while as I had quit cigarettes in London. It was a big thing to do for your Mum who had been a heavy smoker since she was a teenager. It was also the time that her relationship with her Dad changed dramatically. She finally started to think for herself and not take everything he said as gospel. To this day your Grandfather has stubbornly rejected these changes she has made and will not see us. He is not a man who believes in change so he has been unable to become the father of an adult as opposed to a child. It is very very sad for him. He blames me as well, thinks I am now controlling your Mum. I understand why he thinks that because in his own little world he rules his wife. He cannot fathom things can be different to that. Stubbornness and pride have prevented him and those around him from being happy. This means that your Mum has had to disconnect her feelings for him so she can get on with her life and be happy herself.
A cenotaph is a tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of persons whose remains are elsewhere.
Elegy was originally used for a type of poetic metre (Elegiac metre), but is also used for a poem of mourning.
Muggles, a slang term for cannabis, mostly used in the 1920s and 1930s and associated with the American jazz scene. From the lyrics to 'Dope Fiend Blues' by Allen Ginsberg' -
Im a dopefiend sitting in my bedroom high
I did'nt even light up no muggles, don’t know why
I'm just naturally a dopefiend under a friendly sky
This issue with Grandpa Baker also reminds me of one of the big events that stopped him talking to us. I had just got the job at the call centre. This was a big change time for me. I was feeling a lot more confident about myself. After ten years of working in disabilities I was feeling down about my future. I was really good at the job and was given more and more responsibility. I decided I wanted a newer car because of how I felt and because I wanted something nice for a change. It was more symbolic than I realised at the time but this was a big step for me, to stop feeling down about myself and to feel like I should look after myself a bit more. Your Mum recognised this because she is smart and knows me more than me sometimes. So we got this great Suzuki 4WD and I loved it so much. Your Grandpa however kicked up a big stink because he wanted us to buy a brand new car and he wanted to be the one to make that decision as to what to buy (what he wanted was a piece of crap btw that subsequently proved to be a dog of a car that lost its value quickly, while my car retained its value). That was the start of it all. He had a hissy fit and decided to stop talking to your Mum. He also wanted your Mum to have the good car. Mum told him that she didn’t care about getting another car at that time and it was more important to me. As I mentioned above, this is not something he was able to understand. And because it was his way or the highway your Mum finally told him that she didn’t need his assistance or his advice and that was that. I wonder if you have rebelled yet and which of us it was aimed at. God I hope I can keep my head when or if this happens to me.
PS: As an addition to the above (again), my issue with deserving nice things stems back to my father, who to this day does not think he is good enough to deserve anything nice. He buys beautiful guitars and wont play them, instead he plays the cheap ones. He does his drawings on crap paper because his talent is not worthy of good materials. So I had to unlearn this learned habit and im happy to say that I was successful.
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