The Seductive Nature of an Extra-marital Affair | Difficult Relationships

When I was a boy I?d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.

Idiots ? always adults, children were surprisingly patient, ? would make me repeat sentences as if a repeat performance of the humiliating uncoordinated gesticulations, my arms and legs flying in all directions, would make for an easier delivery the second time. That I?d just spent every ounce of energy trying to cough it up was lost on them. That I was already thoroughly humiliated was something to which they were blind.

?Practice, practice,? they?d say as if stutterers simply didn?t speak enough. ?Think before you speak. Now ? try that again,? they would declare slowly and loudly as if I was stupid and deaf. These thoughtless people were ignorant of just how much stutterers do think. Too much ? which is central to the issue!

If I?d known at twelve or thirteen that the day would come when I?d make a career of public speaking I might have strolled off a high-rise building.

Now it is quite easy to hide. I am very comfortable with crowds.

It?s asking driving directions or ordering food at a drive through where it gets tricky. Sitting in a cozy circle waiting for my turn to introduce myself sends my blood-pressure through the roof. The ticket attendant on the London underground can render me dumb after I?ve just spent days addressing a room full of graduate level adults about Family Systems Theory. I know. It sounds ridiculous.

I was almost immobilized the first time I saw Thulani put himself ?on duty? in the event he needed to be my mouthpiece. He did it. No one asked him or appointed him. He just did it.

If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it ? which is something I once read somewhere ? gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.

I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there?s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.

Our house is the same, but instead of painting from end to end and back again, I am the guy constantly cleaning, ? and, it?s hard to tell.

Where I cleaned and swept and dusted and vacuumed and sponged and sterilized yesterday there are scooters and bicycles (boys), mail in piles (me), books (boys and me), newspapers (me), magazines (me), and socks (boys and Max, the Chihuahua).

Turn my back and the boys and Max are at it again ? enjoying life as boys (and a dog) while I find being a cleaning lady quite an exhausting challenge.

There is a point of no return, I?ve noticed, or at least a point of the chaos where I feel compelled to let it all go for a while and I throw up my hands and join in the fun of trashing the place.

But when I clean I like to think I?m just like the guy painting the Bridge, which I can only imagine must be a slow and methodical task.

I do it room by room, starting at one end, the front, in the event that I soon lose interest ? then, at least, the front room is somewhat in order. I push it (trash, magazines, books, socks, clothes) all back from the living room, through the piano room, then into the TV room until everything lands up in the kitchen.

Once it hits the kitchen I separate out what?s Max?s ? he?s has his own set of toys with which he ruins the house ? what?s Nate?s, what?s Thulani?s, and what can be recycled, dumped, restacked on bookshelves, placed in drawers, hung on a hanger, or filed in the ?important documents? file I keep losing.

We moved into ?122? (creatively named for its street number and which has had very few updates since it was built in 1886) when Thulani was about two ? and I have been getting it in order ever since. Nate joined us in 2002. Max, in 2009. The house- attachment, at least for the boys and Max, is strong. When I talk of selling Thulani reminds me that Rhino, the husky that was on the run for nine months and returned to die within a few weeks after we reconnected, is buried in an Air France first class cabin blanket just outside of the kitchen door. Nate reminds me of where the fat goldfish is buried and Thulani ends the litany with his inability to think of living in a house without the large tree in the front yard where he has his brother (and Max) have ?peed like boys? (and a dog) for the past several years.

So. I?ll go on painting and, before you send me letters about giving the boys chores and responsibilities and assigning daily tasks and getting on top of it before it gets on top of me let me advise that you are barking up the wrong tree (sorry, Max for the dog metaphor) because we do have all that in place and it does work here and there and off and on.

I know, I know. Consistency is the name of the game for parenting and let me tell you, the ONLY thing that is consistent here is the need to keep going room by room with or without the boys (and Max) to get this little bridge painted one stretch at a time so the world can see just how organized and decent our lives are here at our beloved ?122.?

We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.

Sometimes we walk to both and we don?t see the car for days.

I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.

That?s the upside.

We are a 10-hour-drive to the nearest coast? ? and, most of the east coast beaches are not worth the drive. The west coast, which has many wonderful beaches comparable to where I was reared, takes three full days of driving to reach.

Being landlocked is one thing but another is the weather. Indiana weather is erratic, neurotic, and downright psychotic.

Days ago I could?ve (but I didn?t) ice-skated across the street. Now, as I write, there?s a small lake in the street next to the sidewalk from last night?s rain. The weather is so brutal and extreme (it is as hot as blazes in the summers) that when we do drive anywhere (there are no grocery stores in walking distance) the streets are often full of potholes making some of America?s finest suburban streets resemble stretches of road you?d find in a rural stretch of South Africa?s Wild Coast. So, I am exaggerating but really not too much. Washington Boulevard is a challenge to drive right now, you have got to dodge potholes and loose pavement or, unless you drive a tank, you stand to severely damage your suspension.

But I do love living here. My neighbors are some of my best friends. My children are free and safe in the neighborhood and everyone knows everyone?s children. Even as I write Joseph (born a week or so before Thulani) from down the street has wondered into the house and it is quite likely he will eat with us, stay the night, and then wander down back down the street to his home sometime in the morning. His mom and I will talk sometime between now and nightfall unless he of course chooses to wonder off home and be gone just as quickly as he showed up.

Potholes and crazy weather won?t send us running, although we will drive to church in the morning ? even though it is really close. I?m not sure I want to brave the elements which could be a snow-storm, an ice storm, the threat of a tornado ? or a little or a lot of each. What else could you expect during March in Indiana?

Source: http://www.difficultrelationships.com/2012/08/31/the-seductive-nature-of-an-extra-marital-affair/

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