The miracle of modern consumerism is difficult for me to grasp. I look about my sitting room – an entirely ordinary room composed of faux wooden floors, sofas, bookcases stacked with volumes of various depth, a television sitting somewhat accusatorily in the corner. I sometimes imagine the world as a giant hive, all hexagonal compartments thrumming with activity. It has a sort of Communist architecture to it, in my mind. The Department of Electronic Devices; The Bureau of Textile Production. Each corner of the hive (although “corner” isn’t quite accurate since my imagination had not leant any describable shape to this idea) is busy with materialising a product. This notion always occurs to me most strongly when I survey those parts of the house that seem to collect random objects as if by magnetic force: kitchen drawers with their dusty rubber bands and old, incomprehensible metal components to some long-discarded object. Where do all these bits and pieces come from, and what arduous process has brought them randomly together in my home? Who operated the press that made the cheap tin opener? All around the world, people have worked in factories, ships have sailed, planes have seared through the sky to bring these things to me, and I have purchased them without any consideration other than whether or not they make my home look pretty.
I am particularly good at feeling guilty. It is always there, vibrating at the back of my mind – the sensation that by virtue of birth I lead a comfortable, ordinary life. I am not wealthy, but neither am I poor. I am neither ugly nor beautiful (although there are rare moments when I appreciate certain aspects of my appearance); I am the mother of a young son and a younger daughter. A perfect blue-n-pink set. I was married to a decent, if somewhat emotionally distant man, with whom I am now separating (I am careful not to turn this mundane drama into the stuff of a Camille performance). There really is nothing to complain about, and I alway feel intensely petty and louche when I do.
On this particular morning, whilst I absentmindedly wiped crumbs away from about the toaster, I was considering the position of an intellectual woman (which I suppose myself, rightly or wrongly, to be) attempting to mother. Before having children I had thought that intelligence would be beneficial; after all, the children would be exposed to all the usual, desperate lessons; subject to witty rapport in their teenage years, and gently nudged in to things in their younger years. Now, though, I am not so sure. Often, at the local park, I observe the Other Sorts Of Mothers – usually young and probably poorly educated (I am careful not to make assumptions), often laughing racously on a bench whilst smoking cigarettes with conspiratorial girlfriends. It seems so easy for them – whilst I fret like some over-anxious hen over every potential stumble and scraped knee, these entirely different creatures garble on, scarcely aware of their progeny (who, more often than not are sucking on some luminous ice lolly with a somewhat despondent expression on their face). I have begun to think that a certain sort of bovine stupidity might make dealing with young children more bearable.
All of these concerns strike me as typical middle-class afflictions. The very poor worry about how to get enough to eat; the very rich worry about vague, incomprehensible things like offshore bank account rates and shooting parties; I worry about everything – and yet, nothing of consequence, at the same time. I stood in my kitchen on yet another grey, formless morning this morning whilst Girl Child battered the siamese cat jovially with bits of wooden train track (one of my many nods in the direction of supposedly Good Parenting – no plastic mass-produced nonsense for my offspring, no! Chop down what remains of the earth’s forests instead and fashion them into trivialities. Ah, guilt again, that familiar blanket).
Suddenly, I felt as though gravity had increased and pressed my forehead against the cool wooden countertop. I took a deep breath and shut my eyes as tightly as I could. I simply cannot understand these coils of sadness and guilt that wrap themselves around my heart and squeeze it tighter and tighter, like a Chinese paper finger-trap.
***
It was over in an instant; my marriage slipped out of my grasp like a bead of mercury disappearing down a flight of stairs, becoming more and more fragmented, until it had all but disappeared. It is very strange, inhabiting – yet somehow feeling foreign – in my own life. All the remnants of our years of cohabitation remain intact: the shoes carelessly tossed in the front hallway, my tendency to prepare meals that I know Ex Husband would have appreciated, the sudden crushing feeling in the chest when I wake from freftful sleep to find myself alone in what had been our bed. I really am not one for crying – at least, that is the public persona I have adopted. Even in my most private moments I have a significant amount of difficulty in summoning forth tears. It always feels bit melodramatic, a bit weak. I don’t question the value of the emotional release possible in such a display, but don’t seem capable of accessing that sort of disihinibition. I comport myself as though I am constantly under scrutiny. This plays out in my endless repetition of housework (”What if somewhere were to drop by?”) There is something meditative about ordering one’s house; I suppose there is some lofty comparison to ordering one’s mind to be made, rather like those Tibetan monks I saw on a documentary who take dishcloths and brooms and cleaned their monastery with a sort of maniacal zeal every morning.
I can see where this might take them.
