TheBanyanTree: Finished business

[JMoney]

So here we are again; hurried out of bed by the 6.30am alarm instead of
dreaming in each other's arms until wakefulness comes upon us gently, of its
own accord.  The holiday is over.

The eldest came a week before Christmas.  He rings up regularly but it had
been three years since his last visit.  On that occasion he accused me of an
unloving act.  Somehow he'd got it into his mind that, in those long ago
days when he and I constituted our entire family and we lived on the 14th
floor of that housing commission high rise in central Sydney, I would
repeatedly send him down, by himself, unwatched and uncared for, to the
playground where he was forever being bullied and put upon by bigger boys.
He was absolutely convinced of it and saw this as evidence of my
heartlessness towards him.  How could I have put him in this position?

The truth is that I didn't.  The truth is that he pestered me to be allowed
to go down and play by himself.  He pestered me so often that one day I
relented.  I took him down in the lift, deposited him in the play area and
then spent an anxious hour or so watching from high above, running from
window to window to try and keep him in view when he disappeared beneath
trees, until I could bear the worry for his safety no longer and went back
down to retrieve him.  Thereafter, as previously, he did not play downstairs
unless I was free to accompany him.  The guilt provoking thing for me is
that I had so little free time just to sit and watch him play out of doors.
But he didn't complain that I'd made the TV his babysitter while I cooked,
cleaned and studied.  He complained about something that hadn't actually
happened.

Thinking about it now I would say that the core of his complaint was not
invalid; I was not a perfect mother and I loved him only as demonstratively
as I was able rather than as, in a perfect world, I ought to have done.  He
just made a mistake in picking a false memory as his evidence to
substantiate the charge.  But the thing is that the sense of injustice
provoked by that false memory had been rankling at him for a very long time.
Until he finally made his accusation it coloured a lot of his behaviour
during that Christmas holiday three years ago.  So there was all sorts of
sniping and sudden fits of anger due to his long nurtured resentment.

But I only know this now because we discussed the charge again during this
holiday and he said how good it had been for him to get that misery off his
chest.  I did not know it when I went to pick him up at the airport on his
arrival here.  All I knew then is that the last time he came things had been
difficult.  I was afraid that they might play out the same way this time and
I couldn't tell how I would react on seeing him again.

The mind remembers all sorts of things that the heart forgets day to day.
But when a heart's memory surfaces it comes as a flood that washes away
niggling concerns and the blither and blather of petty negotiations with
oneself over this or that worry about how things might be.  When he came
through the gate, with his goofy hat on and his great big smile, my heart
swelled to bursting to see this man, my first-born child.  I was so happy
that I cried.  Ah.  He was such a lovely baby and such a dear,
tender-hearted little boy and he's stuffed around and messed up but now,
after everything, he's turning into a fine man.

Janice