9/21/12

Fractions
By S Marston


Maybe two thirds will be enough.

There’s the sun, games and friends and we make the most of the weekends when the weather’s good. I still have the old house though it’s falling apart faster than I can repair it. Jackie visits and she’s good with him. She makes a point of keeping him laughing and we have a few glasses of wine when he’s gone to bed. But with all these things there is no joy in them for me. Without you.

You should have seen him today, it was his first cricket match. He was terrible. He’s never going to be a sportsman I’m afraid. But there was something I experienced while watching him. The assembly process of a person. You deserved to see it more than anyone else. His run up is good, though that running was nothing but the natural progression from that first step you watched him take all those years ago. While I was at work. It’s quite amusing because he takes a massive run up using all his energy, but before he even starts to bowl he stops dead in his tracks and negates all that effort. The bowling action itself isn’t too bad, his release is good and that’s thanks to you picking up his spoons and crayons and placing them back into his clumsy hands time and time again for all of those years. The smile he has settled on is clearly one from your arsenal. He cheers unabashedly which is thanks to you and your lack of discipline.

So he’s not going to be a sportsman but he’s good with the other kids. He’s funny so they put up with him. He can’t bat too well either but I’ve been working with him on that, we can fix that. It should be enough to keep him in the team.

He has stopped asking about you. For no other reason than he sees what those questions do to me. He misses you, of course, but I think he’s starting to forget. Kids are resilient like that. Apparently.

I make a point to have music playing in the house in the mornings. Right now he’s enjoying ACDC, I’ll put him onto zeppelin next. I know this was important for you, for him to enjoy music, even if it’s my old-school redneck rock.

I have a growing worry. He’s going to grow up to be only half the man he was meant to. A fraction of what he should have been with you. I just hope he learned enough before you left, maybe it was enough to take him up to two thirds of a person. I don’t know how to answer his questions on the big stuff. I know why the sky is blue but telling him? I just don’t know how to. You would have known what to say. I tell him there’s a heaven and a God and you’re with Him there but I don’t know if he buys it. I don’t want to tell him what I really think about God and that He’s really nothing but the thief of mothers, constructed from lies and fairy tales. But I don’t tell him that because that would be subtracting from your portion of him.

Maybe two thirds will be enough.


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