Close Encounter......

Quite amusingly my husband teased me when we first met many years ago that he was an alien, from a different planet. It was a silly tease and I can't remember all these years later how it began, something to do with the shape his fingers made when held close together. It used to make me chuckle when if anything occurred that was a little extraordinary we would grin and agree that it was probably due to his alien background!

When the girls were smaller I told them of this silliness and a few times they joined in with the giggle, a chorus of "it's cos daddy's an alien!!" when he did something peculiar.

Of course it now doesn't seem quite so funny, when I think back to how detached we have become, how hard he is to relate to, how 'deep' he keeps his feelings. Sometimes I wonder how I ever thought I could get beneath the surface and know him.

My Mummy isn't doing so well, unlike the warm, radiant lady I have known all my life she is now struggling. She is pale, cool, gaunt. Her once unwavering appetite has diminished. She is constantly breathless. She is fading, her heart failing. It was her birthday on Friday, and too many visitors, all well meaning, wore her out. She'd had a bad night and when I visited on Saturday she wasn't very bright. When I got home I got a upset and tearful and hubby gave me a hug and said it was understandable, it was only human to get upset about seeing my Mum like that.

And that made me think back to when his Mum (remember MIL?) was so ill and stopping with us. So with a (regrettably) scathing remark I mumbled about him obviously not being human as he had shown no emotion over the demise of his own Mum.......
The 'idea' that he might be from another world fleeted across my mind and this time it didn't seem funny at all!

I read a lovely book the recently where there was marital disharmony (of course it all turned out all right and had a happy ending - damn) but there was a single line in there that so summed up how I often feel at times when hubby and I 'share' a moment, I felt I had to quote it.....

"...the mortar of misunderstanding filled the small crack I had made in my hard, dark shell"

A perfect line, one I would love to claim as my own but sadly not. But there it is, my feelings in a nutshell.