Soldier Sailor

by Claire Kilroy

We set out in life believing we will forge so many enduring bonds when really we are blessed with so few, no more than three or four if we are lucky, and one of mine was with a cat. The only bond she got to forge was with me and she gave that her all.

I cried over the onions and chopped the carrots. I cannot be the first woman to wonder how many vegetables I have peeled. That figure should be displayed on our gravestones: This woman peeled however many tonnes of potatoes, let’s hear it for Mrs. Whatever! And her husband? Well, he just ate them.

Upstairs, you cried. I waited to see whether my husband would offer to go. “This is delicious,” he said instead, though it wasn’t: it was healthy. “Leave him, he’ll fall back asleep,” he called when I was halfway up the stairs, to establish that it wasn’t him shirking duty but me being overzealous.

What struck me as the starkest contradiction of all was that, having navigated this much of life—the volatility of youth, of love and loss, the agony and the ecstasy—the closest I had come to losing my mind was during the period known as settling down.

And you know, men, men, men nod solemnly at that Blade Runner speech—tears in rain and fires on Orion—and they feel themselves part of a noble endeavour, believe they’ve experienced something epic right there with a beer on the couch. Here’s my ennobling truth, Sailor: women risk death to give life to their babies. They endure excruciating pain, their inner parts torn, then they pick themselves up no matter what state they are in, no matter how much blood they’ve lost, and they tend to their infants. Your fires on Orion and your Luke, I am your father. Tell me, men: When were you last split open from the inside?

We had not looked at each other for so long. We had not recognised each other for so long. In love there is always loss, Sailor. There is no way around this that I can find. There will be a last look. That last look may come sooner than you think. One of us will be left behind. These are the things you accept when you accept love into your life.