All Those Years Ago
I’d say, above all else, there are two things I have treasured most in my life. Both relationships, both special and complex, have made an interesting little tale of my time here. One erupted in my youth and inexperience, the other mended itself as I sit in my rocking chair now. The first was made of romance and slow dancing. It became the settling down of a fairy tale life in a small but moderate terrace house just outside of Liverpool. My wife and I met in March 1958, and we were not quite seventeen when we fell rather stupidly in love with one another. I couldn’t really understand how a girl like Martha Smith had become so smitten with a boy like me. I was no prince charming, more like a prince inept. Reluctant and content was all I was to people. I needn’t bother with a name as you could just call me boring, although I suppose the gloom and tedium that drips from a name like Wallace is rather fitting, nonetheless. I’d hardly spoken to any girl other than my mother before I asked Martha to the town dance, and the fair isle vests I adorned also conveyed that. I waited for her outside the parish hall, wrestling my nerves as I looked for her to turn the corner and as she did, I felt as if I might burst from the weight of a night like this. She looked glorious in red and flowers grew from her chest when she smiled. A curious case of a girl with little to do except stare on and hope to meet someone else’s eyes in the distance. That night was over 60 years ago, but I’m reminded of it often during the quiet evenings where I look for her place on the settee next to me. She really did save me from myself, God only knows what would have happened if I had been left invisible. And I have to confess, I miss Martha most out of all the things I’ve lost along my way here. The seasons change too quickly now she’s gone.
The second relationship was a tad more tumultuous. Molly was born on the 9th of October 1965. She was a big girl, seven pounds, and arrived to us with a full head of raisin coloured hair. As Martha and I both possessed fair, golden manes ourselves, I was given a certain shock. The day Molly was born was also the day I found out her mother was in fact not a natural blonde as she so often proclaimed. From the very beginning, I was a rather lousy parent. I once handed Molly a lit candle from the dresser instead of the milk bottle next to it in a hurry. I’d put socks and dresses on her backwards too many times to count. I think the town folk used to think that I was trying to start a fashion trend with the frequency of it. Molly and Martha bonded in the way that mother and daughter do. They seemed to understand something about each other that I didn’t and I’m ashamed to say that my green-eyed heart couldn’t quite take the shift. A coldness engulfed my relationship with them, a distance I’d never known before.
Molly was a happy enough child, well-loved. Perhaps not loved enough, but my mind had been flooded with all sorts of ridiculous justifications for my aloofness since Molly was old enough to answer back. As a kid, she smothered me in attention and was desperate for it back. She would drag me to her ballet lessons so I could watch her routines on the bar, and she’d wave at me as I looked lost amongst the sickly sweet parents next to me. Molly was energetic in her efforts, but she didn’t have the grace of a dancer. No, she had the strength of one, like a faint flame trying to stay lit in a strong wind. A little English doll. I forget how much she used to really need me. Once she grew out of the tutus, she didn’t look at me with that sort of love anymore. She didn’t look at me at all. “Dad” became “Wallace” and family dinners were had in two separate rooms.
The silence between Martha and me was the worst. It seemed that dreams of our own had lent bad thoughts to the one we had together. She was far too lenient to my ways, and she tried for a long time to intervene and mend the lost bond between father and daughter, even as hers and Molly’s shrunk so long as she defended me. Martha understood the deepest parts of me. To her, and maybe only to her, I was just a shy, small town boy who could only manage one love at a time. Martha glued us back together once it finally became unbearable, but that only turned it from me versus them to us versus Molly and our daughter would grow to resent that. Molly would spend days in her usually bolted shut bedroom, where Freddie Mercury and Blondie became the rock ‘n’ roll parents she’d been starved of. She was the valiant type, not one to suffer fools gladly and she led a reckless life when she entered her teens. She tried to bury the cracks of it in her hand, balled her fists at the memories and mistakes, and lived out most days with a grudge in the back of her mind. She was her mother’s child, doing too much all at once, only to be left in passing with that unsavoury seed planted in her head that she couldn’t press ‘REPEAT’ forever. Martha’s parents blamed her rebellion on Elvis; we targeted Sid Vicious. She did love us, as we did her, but eventually the love just stopped being enough.
It was all very sad by the time adulthood rolled around. We barely spoke once she left for university; the occasional letter and cheque was sent but even those lines of communication withered away by 1995. And that’s what was so terrible about it. There was no explosion of emotions, no great betrayal or tortured affair that would excuse the silence between us. Just dust gathering upon a relationship the two of us had never truly formed. There was just an empty feeling left with me. That feeling of a loss of connection with someone moments after they left, because they only waved instead of waving and smiling. Or because they chose to sit two seats away from you instead of one. A feeling of losing a connection you never truly made. You don’t talk about it, you don’t draw attention to it, you barely even look at each other. I mean, how could you? And as the years caught up with me and I sat in my sadness like an old toad on his lily pad, I wondered which is worse? To lose the love you cherished before, or to realise that it was never truly there to begin with?
I found that even as Molly began to grow, and her tantrums came through full force and with fists to walls, the chances to rebuild were only further destroyed. The naivety she had as a child to my neglect singed out and she became more aware of my inadequacies as a father. With Martha by my side again in the years leading up to her 18th, anger flew from her eyes to bite both of us. She had asked me once or twice to see her artwork from school, each time I just shrugged and told her I was busy. I don’t know why I did that. My mother had her own theories about my glitches in how to love; she thought I could only give to one person at a time. First her, then my childhood dog Sandy, and finally Martha. I seemed to be missing a heart when Molly came along. I’d given it up to Martha in our younger years and lost it completely when our pairing was joined by a third. I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive the part of myself that took away the closeness of mother and daughter. Blame is a tricky bastard, and guilt is even worse. Especially if you can’t quite stand the sight of yourself whenever you think about it.
There was one occasion in the winter of 1979 where Molly waited for Martha to slump up to bed. Back then, we rarely shared one as the warmth in our marriage had turned to frost years before. Molly tiptoed down the stairs to find me in dim light with a hand around a glass of whisky, sighing loudly. Every night ended with the huffs and puffs of failure in those days. “Wallace…” she said quietly, and I turned to her and stared. “You should be in bed, Molly. You have school tomorrow.” She ignored my weak protests, knowing that once the alcohol was out alongside me, I had no spirit to fight. She reclined on the sofa next to me. I didn’t say a thing, and for a time, neither did she. We just sat in the darkness, letting the velvet smoke from the extinguished fire surround us. Finally, she put her hand on top of my own as it rested on the armchair. “Why don’t you speak to me, dad? Why aren’t we close?” I hadn’t heard her call me that for what seemed like an age, and I gulped as I heard the hurt in her voice.
I didn’t know what to say to her. I had no justification for my coldness. I thought of angry retorts I could spit out to stay in keeping with who she thought I was. “I was out there providing for you, sorry I couldn’t hold the skipping rope!” I thought of the silliest of ones, too. “You know this whole family closeness ordeal was only invented in the 70’s to sell board games… Our dynamic is completely normal for the time, Molly.” But I couldn’t bring myself to believe any of them. And so, I just simply said, “because this is just the way I am,” and I followed it with a slug of whisky, not once looking at her. A chill had entered the room through those words, and I heard a sob come gently from Molly’s lips. “Mum said that too. But do you know what I think? I think you’re scared. I feel sorry for you.” And with that, she removed her hand from the top of my own and wandered back upstairs in silence.
Looking back now, with old age and regrets in tow, I often wonder what I would have said if I could have gone back to that moment. Ripped the veil between past and present to tell her exactly how right she was about me. I would start with I’m sorry. So very, very sorry. Because the truth is, there were many things I should have done and many sentences I should have said. I should have reached out a little further. I should have skipped along with her. I should’ve gone to the school shows, played with her in the summer, hugged her tight when she’d had a bad day. I should have done a lot of things. But I didn’t. Because that is the way I am, and I am beyond sorry for that too. My realisations and regrets came too late, and by the time I was man enough to speak them, we hadn’t heard from Molly for several years. If there was any chance for a reunion, it had passed. If there was a chance for forgiveness and loving, it had passed. If you create a distance from the start of any relationship and keep it there throughout, there is no recovery. Maybe if it had only been built up in Molly’s teens, it could have been restored but it was easier to let it fade away. I didn’t want to trouble myself with the inconvenience of a broken relationship. I couldn’t do anything except wish her well. I’m pathetic, I know.
But I digress. The pair of us continued on in the house we purchased 47 years prior. There were two new kitchens installed since her departure, along with a reupholstering of an armchair from the chicken curry incident of 2003. We had a happy, peaceful life after Molly left and perhaps, undeservedly. I do think that the Molly-sized hole that was left in our world helped soften us both into a secluded appreciation for what we still had. Martha and I regained the love we had in our youth and we began to feel colourful in each other’s company again, the sort of blending of souls when we both thought they had wandered off years ago. I think the best part of falling in love all over again is seeing the small changes it makes in you. The loveliest parts of them soften down any hard edges you had before, and you find yourself looking at the world very differently. And it’s a feeling of ease; you’re finally at peace with whatever mess controlled your life before. It wasn’t even about sex or romance, I just forgot how much my soul felt at rest when I was around her. All the noise turned down and nothing else mattered at all.
Alas, the harmony could not last forever. Two years ago, Martha began experiencing some scary episodes. I would find her clinging to the banister, eyes twitching, and her forehead furrowed and knotted in confusion. “A trip to the doctor will sort this right out, my love,” I told her as we made our way to the local GP office. We had entered the building chattering but left empty, with no words to share with each other. We got the scan done the following Thursday and the diagnosis the week after. I wouldn’t be able to tell you how it all made me feel, but there was a fuzziness in my head and that sick feeling in my stomach that you get when you’ve eaten too much. I had swallowed the revelation whole, bones included. After that first meeting, we didn’t scurry away to fret about how unfair this all was. We took it in our stride and went home to prepare. We got out photo albums and address books, writing small scribbles on the back of each photo so that Martha would remember their role in her life. For the next 5 months, she woke up and flipped through the photos of friends, family, and Mittens the cat. It was easy at first, worse over time. Frustration got to her more than anything. She knew these people, she loved these people, but all that didn’t matter when she was 75 and dying of stage 6 dementia. She was going to die, but worse than that, she was going to die alone with no memories of anyone to take with her. Tell me now, is there a worse way to go than that?
She passed on the 27th of July 2017, and there was little left of her by the end, just a sad portrait of a woman who had lost control of her own mind. I didn’t have time to grieve. I had her funeral to take care of. Where to have it, who to invite. Even if I sent out a letter to Molly, I wasn’t so sure she’d come and if she did, how successful that would be. It would be like a meeting between two ghosts, two decades on. But I did reach out to her, and she replied that she would attend. I guess the wounds had been sewn up enough over the last few years that we were both willing to have them slashed opened again. I thought Martha would have rather liked us to reconnect over her casket, no doubt chuckling up above at the absurdity of how we were brought back together. But I was barely alive and barely bothered to welcome more pain into my life from the other woman I loved. There hadn’t been a day in the last five weeks where I hadn’t sobbed a little. It was getting bad again.
The funeral was one week after and landed on a sunny afternoon with only a few dangling clouds over the chapel. It felt overly sweet and serene, as if in another world, a wedding or late summer fair could have brought us all together on that day also. I stood by the casket for the service, shared words and retellings of events in Martha’s life. Many came, and I knew they would because Martha was well-loved. She was not a bad person, just a conflicted parent who had married a lousy one. Molly didn’t show up till 4pm. She wandered in hesitantly, dressed in a smart, black blazer and pencil skirt. I recognised her, but realised there was something very different about her now, too. She looked contained and stout, not the boisterous girl I had once remembered, and I wasn’t expecting such a change. I knew her as loud. A girl who was desperate to shout about who she was to strangers on the street. Her fights with us when she entered her teens were coated in a shield of arrogance and denial. She tried, really tried to fix the parts of her that screamed ‘ordinary.’ It consumed her, especially when she would look in the mirror and see nothing but grey. Martha and I did not share the same frustration. We lived as typically as one could, because even in that simplicity we could get nothing correct, so we decided to stop fighting for black and white and instead settled into the monotony. I think Molly had finally done the same.
I remember her spotting me, and me giving out a weak smile as an invitation for her to walk over. Instantly, I became paralysed with the thought of how terribly this interaction could go. I wondered if she thought the things I thought she did. I clung to the wallpaper as if hoping to be swallowed as she strolled up, dissecting my face and body, comparing it to how it was the last time we saw each other. All at once, the years of fault I thought I had successfully repressed infested my thoughts again and I imagined myself as the bad guy in every story book. The man who steps on cats’ tails and casts thunder clouds as he walks down a path. The man who the flowers boo when he strolls past them and the man who children run from when they see him coming. I can’t help but feel sick at the man I have imagined. It’s a nonstop zoom, zoom, zoom sort of destruction I’ve got up there. We came face to face finally and let out some tired breaths before one of us realised we had to speak. “Hi Wallace. I’m sorry about Martha.” I think I let out a whimper at her words and she adjusted them quickly, “I’m sorry about mum.”
I nodded lightly and gestured to the catering table, hoping if we both downed some whiskey, the words would come easier. We were imitating intimacy, playing the role of grieving father and loving daughter but soon enough, the lost connection slowly crept out. At first, there was a tentativeness about our words to one another, a pause or two to really think about what to say or how to respond. We had two decades to prepare the speeches or I’m sorry’s we wanted to recite but it’s a lot easier to be angry with someone who’s far away. Saying what you mean to a face you’d dreaded seeing, but also sorely missed, is virtually impossible. It was a silent acknowledgement of each other’s feelings and anger, and a silent swapping of apologies. We realised the funeral was not the place to shout out our more painful feelings. We’ve talked it all through since, but that day was the day that we accepted our chance to move on and we moved on rather well. There was nothing but glistening honey in our interaction. We combed through bad times we’d had together and apart, and felt a warmth between the words, knowing that they just belonged to yesterday now. It was over. The dark, sinking feeling that pierced our chests to think about was now soft and pink. We were at peace with the parts we played in the losing of it. That was a happy evening. Oddly enough, I remember it as fondly as the night of the dance with Martha because it seemed to tie the last mess of my life up neatly where another one had perhaps begun. Molly forgave me and that’s not something I ever thought I would know. This is a person who had experienced the worst part of me. The worst of my flaws, the worst of my cruelty, but loved me anyway.
She moved into a semidetached house outside of Essex seven years ago, and has three children now: Tom, Jamie and Robert. I remember joking to her when she told me of her brood that she was lucky she had all boys, since girls were always very tricky for our family. She chuckled at the remark. I feel good that she made a life for herself out of everything, but I will take no credit for it. Molly could survive a hurricane if it came her way. I was merely a gust of wind against her resilience. She moved me down to Essex with her not two months later and I was reluctant to go at first. It was a painful departure from my home and the north; I never did like change, I suppose. I’m set in stone – made of it too. I took about as much of that house as I could with me. Molly had to make me empty my pockets of folded pieces of wallpaper I had stripped off. She let me keep a kitchen tile or two though. It’s been very good here since I left. My body has perhaps not been as kind as it once was, and Molly worries for me now like I did for Martha, but I’ve never felt healthier in my life. My heart is full, and I can breathe again – must be the universe’s cruel joke. I tell her, if I can make it till spring, I’ll be okay. I’ll grow with the flowers and won’t that be nice?