Week Twenty - A Day in The Life -  Warm Front

Hi, this is Paul. Things are changing so rapidly around here that my head is spinning.

I was still trying to figure out what was the matter with Francesca and why she seemed to be distant and aloof with me, when the catastrophe of the air conditioner fell upon us. The worst thing in all this is that we had to get the two sets of parents involved, mine and Francesca’s, which is always a bad thing, as I see it.

With my parents, I have to walk on eggshells around my father, as I have done all my life, and listen to my mother because I feel sorry for her, she seems so lonely. This makes me feel ill-at-ease.

I have tried all my life to find something that could get my father and me closer. When I try to have a conversation with him, he seems to be put off by my presence. He looks at me with condescending eyes, as though I don’t know what I talking about, no matter what the subject. He seems to make an effort to stay involved, but you can clearly see he’d rather do something else that doesn’t involve me. He is so closed up it is impossible to guess what he is thinking. When we are together, I have to make all the efforts to keep a conversation going.

With my mother, I have to listen, because she likes to have the stage all to herself. She lectures, instead of dialoguing. Most of what she talks about is inconsequential, irrelevant to me. I wished she would talk about something that matters, like what happened when I was a kid and she divorced my father, married someone else, divorced him and re-married my father, all in a two year span. It was very chaotic and unpredictable for me, but nothing was ever said about it by either of them, no explaining, no preparing us, and no getting us to talk about how we felt about all these changes.

Francesca’s parents are not much easier to be with. His father is critical of me. He doesn’t have to say anything, I can feel it. I felt it from the first time when I met him, when he asked me a list of questions about myself, my education, my work, etc. and I knew my answers were not what he wanted to hear.

Asking them for a loan was one of the most difficult – and most humiliating – experiences of my life. We cannot keep at a good distance from them if we cannot make it on our own and need their help. It is a no win situation for Francesca and me, and there is no way of getting away from it for the foreseeable future. What a prospect!

The good part in all this is that Francesca seems to be happy again with me. Her previous aloofness seems to have lifted, I hope for good. I don’t know why this happened. Perhaps we banded together because this was such a stressful situation and both of us needed each other’s support, as we were getting it from nowhere else. Whatever the reason, I like it. Our emotional and physical closeness is what makes all this bearable and worthwhile.