Relay: Growing Pains
The weekend had been beautiful, Saturday morning typically lazy. Slow to arise, the leisurely making of fresh juice before stepping into the light and crisp November air and into the village, where steaming coffee would be poured at Mary’s and carried to the Square, where a park bench and laughter and fond reminiscence awaited.
Everything was different on Sunday — or it wasn’t, until it was. Suspicion, accusation and recrimination, the dull ache in the gut as another glass of wine was drained.
Outside the dark and lifeless house, the raindrops fell on the car’s roof like ten thousand million bits of shattered glass. Inside, the odd burst of sharp words would slice open the dreadful silence, and their hearts would race, and he would feel a little less alive, like before.
You need to learn to forgive, she used to tell him. You have to let go of the past. If you don’t, you will carry that anger into every relationship. You cannot have a happy, loving relationship if you hold on to resentment. Learn to forgive — it’s easy.
He was dismissive, even scornful. You’re not a damn therapist, he would say, shutting down the conversation until she was afraid to mention it anymore. But over time, and then trauma, he came to understand that she was so perfectly right.
Coincidentally, or not, they had listened to Edith Piaf on the gray and rainy Sunday afternoon. Non rien de rien, non je ne regrette rien, ni le bien qu’on m’a fait, ni le mal, tout ça m’est bien egal. No nothing, no I do not regret anything, neither the good that was done to me, neither the bad, I have no care for it.
As the days grew shorter and the nights long, the relationship deteriorated as he, blissfully oblivious, went about his own days and nights. And then she was gone.
Until she was back, a goddess in the doorway at 5 a.m. on All Saints’ Day. They were together again, until they were not, and then they were, and then they were not, and it was like sailing through a hurricane, and he felt sick and could not sleep or eat or concentrate and did not feel alive very much at all.
But then he understood, and their fates aligned again and everything fell into place, as in a miracle. I forgive easily, she said. Balayer pour toujour, je repars à zero. Swept away forever, I restart from zero.
Every day is a new day, she told him. I didn’t think it was possible, but you are now everything, and so much more, and I have never felt so grateful. Non rien de rien, non je ne regrette rien, car ma vie, car mes joies, aujourd’hui, ça commence avec toi. No nothing, no I don’t regret anything, because my life, because my joys, today, it starts with you.
He noticed that the rain had stopped falling. And in this newfound softness he wrote to her.
Pour mon seul et unique amour
Je veux me donner entierement a toi
Quand nous sommes éveillé ensemble
A la fin de la journée,
Quand notre amour est fait
C’est seulement le début
Du reve que nous revons ensemble
Dans la nuit
Quand le reve est proche.
Pour mon seul et unique amour
Mon coeur se réveille
Et je t’envoie ma lumiere
Et notre chambre sombre est lumineuse
Comme nos ames seront bientot unit
En chanson je professe mon amour
Toujours, l’amour éternel
Merci Catherine
Pour me montrer le chemin.
Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.