'Parental love is potentially its purest form, and may be the most painful. Gainsborough, whose marriage was unhappy, adored his two daughters, whom he called Molly and the Captain. Their mother's flawed psyche was inherited by both girls and their father agonised over them all his life. Neither was to know happiness, and his many pictures of them show a sad foreknowledge of this. To leave those we love their independence, to accept that we cannot make their choices for them, that they cannot live by our own hard-earned experience: this is part of love. We have to allow those dear to us to chase the butterfly, however convinced we are that it is uncatchable. We can never give the butterfly of happiness to another: each must catch it alone. For some, it will be ever elusive, and love must work within that painful understanding.'
Thanks for sharing that. Really poignant and the saddest story of the impossibility of being able to save someone. I know this story so well - I lived it.
ReplyDeleteand this comes very appropriately after a neurologist has just diagnosed all Geoff's problems of concentration, inability to order things, hyper-activity and anxiety as being behavioural - ie stemming from problems in early childhood; difficult pregnancy and birth plus a catastrophic relationship between me and his father and his father's very ambiguous relationship with him, not to mention seesawing between three cultures. And as a mother you think "this is all my fault" and you know you've failed the lad and yet can do nothing to change what has been. So this text is a comfort to me- things are as they are and Geoff's story is his story, all I can do is continue to be there for him and offer a hand when he stumbles and not berate him (as the profs do) for things he cannot help. Let's hope he catches a butterfly or two, sometimes I feel he doesn't even know they exist. Ohhh mother Russia why did you beguile me so?
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