In the 50s it was rarer than it is now to have great-grandparents living. From time to time I would see my G. great-grandfather, who appeared a prestigious, holy figure.
Aged six (I think) I came home from school for dinner and was told that he had died. I went out into the back garden, I had burst into tears which soon, and this surprised me, stopped as if turned off by a tap. What was the point of his living? I thought. To be my great-grandfather, I answered. What is the point of my living? To be his great-grandson, I thought. I noticed before I went in again that the pipes on the back of the house made a very ugly pattern.
(I stopped crying soon, yet when I went to teach at wretched BWS aged 25 the wound was still not fully healed.)
Saturday 12 May 2012
Providence
How nearly impossible this idea is to understand!
Things bad or very bad at the time (e.g. the end of my marriage)* become in retrospect to be seen as good, as if God willed them -- hmm!
*and perhaps even more the very difficult circumstances of my childhood which formed my character.
(The Portuguese say 'God writes straight with crooked lines.' Being so happy now means that having been so unhappy in the past, even not far off suicide in my twenties, matters less and less and less -- but not entirely not at all.)
Things bad or very bad at the time (e.g. the end of my marriage)* become in retrospect to be seen as good, as if God willed them -- hmm!
*and perhaps even more the very difficult circumstances of my childhood which formed my character.
(The Portuguese say 'God writes straight with crooked lines.' Being so happy now means that having been so unhappy in the past, even not far off suicide in my twenties, matters less and less and less -- but not entirely not at all.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)