Culture
is shopping, love is laughing
Saturday 20 May, 2000
It took a little over 12 hours, but a lot of that we had been sleeping. To have a fight I mean. Maybe it was the drawing of boundaries again after being apart for a few days. Maybe, more likely, it was that the time apart had allowed some space to see that old routines weren't going to keep cutting it.
Deb sat sobbing in another room, choking and gasping on each sob. I heard her call my name a few times. I sat here. Silent. Eyes closed. Shut off. Angry. She came out, "Why didn't you come when I called you?" "Because I was angry", I said in a cold voice, and let her walk back out again.
A few minutes later I did go out and see her. Kneeling, crying on the couch. I held her and said I love you. Which was never in question, but never on show. We finally talked.
"You used to cook, to bake bread. You used to care about the house; the day you picked out that coffee table, you were so excited! What's happened, don't you care anymore?"
"Well, you used to come cycling with me, and tramping. When was the last time you exercised? And music, when was the last time you wanted to listen to some music, let alone buy anything new?"
We sat close by each other as we talked.
Deb said, "Maybe we both need to stop looking to the past. Maybe we need to stop idealising how we used to be. Maybe we need to start becoming how we want to be."
I said, "perhaps as a way of changing we could do one cultural thing a week, we'd each choose what it was, swapping each week … "
She was laughing by now. A good laugh. The once-a-week-cultural-thing is a long standing joke with us. It stems from when we lived in London and must have been worried about our distinct lack of making the cultural most of it. I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea to improve matters. It lasted for one week. We tried it a number of times. Each time it lasted for one week.
We went out to a shopping mall this afternoon and bought Matthew a potty, some pyjamas and some slippers. I ate some KFC while Debbie and Matthew had McDonalds. I pushed Matthew around in a really cool ride-on car while he went "vroom, vrrom" and pretended to steer. A shopping mall counts as a cultural thing.
A
family outing with laughter and fun counts as love.