I don’t think I’ll ever get right to the bottom of the problems that occurred with mum and dad last summer, and I guess I don’t really want to know all the ins and outs of it – after all, I am their daughter, and there are some things that should remain safely away from a child’s knowledge of her parents! I guess I need to start from the point in time that I went home to visit, in June last year. It was dad’s sixtieth birthday and a bit of a milestone for him, and also one for mum as it turns out.
I realised there was something wrong as soon as I arrived home. The relationship my parents had was always a little volatile, but that was something I assumed they used to keep things going. The atmosphere I stepped into, though, was the equivalent of Vesuvius letting rip! For the first time, I heard genuine anger in the barbed comments being thrown back and forth. There was a sense that the build-up had been going on a long time before my visit but, even so, it was a huge shock when it all boiled over the night of dad’s party.
It was only after all the guests had left, with embarrassed expressions, and a slightly dazed air of having survived the combat, that I got to the bottom of their extraordinary behaviour. It turns out that mum was going through ‘the change’, and had been too embarrassed about the whole thing, both physically and emotionally, to be honest with dad as to her problems. So dad, being the sensitive soul he could be, had assumed the worst, and had thought mum was angling for a divorce! I ask you, who would have parents, unless they had to?
(299 words)
Written 14/12/2008.
The Night Owl 