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Until we got here, I had no idea how hungry my children were for air and soil. What does Joan of Arc say in Shaw’s play? “To shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers nor climb the hills; to make me breathe foul damp darkness . . . without these things I cannot live.”
I don’t know how to untie us. We are bound in a way that gives me no other option but to thrash around in some ugly pool of disbelief, wanting to believe, then flashes of forgiveness, until I have no more thrash left. Like an eel, caught in a net with no more fight, I expect I will resign. That seems like the natural course, even if I resent it. I still thrash. I still thrash.
Being a family is like that, I thought. We’re always coming in and then going back out like the tide. The real question is, can you bear the mud flats in between?
