JANUARY
Sunday January 1st, 2:30pm
In kitchen. Emily upstairs. Cloudy overhead. I think it might rain.
Less than a day into the bright, sparkly new year and already I'm in the dog house. What have I done wrong you may wonder? No bloody idea. All I know is that Emily’s acting very strangely. I heard the toilet flush about fifteen minutes ago, but otherwise silence. I’m afraid to go up there.
This morning, while I was moping about on the sofa regretting my decision to keep drinking past midnight (not 18 anymore Harry) she went out, "for a walk". While we were having lunch, she said.
“Harry, what do you think about kids?”
“I couldn’t eat a whole one.” She didn’t laugh.
“I’m being serious.”
I explained that being a teacher gave me a skewed view on children. To me they are scheming, devious, annoying, obnoxious little urchins. Then she asked if I was ready to have one of our own. I told her to read between the lines. She looked mad and said.
“For Christ’s sake, Harry, you just don’t understand. You just don’t fucking understand!” And then she stormed out of the room and went upstairs.
I just checked the calendar to see if she was pre-menstrual and then made her a cup of tea as a peace offering.
4:30 pm
Having a fag by the back-door. Emily upstairs getting ready. It just started to rain.
It’s the first day of January and already this year’s looking as bleak and gloomy as Charles Dickens novel . I went upstairs with my peace offering and she was in bed reading a book.
Emily’s beautiful. Her Irish roots have given her a thick mane of dark, auburn hair, which over the years has been long, short and for a month a few years ago blond (a disaster I’m still being blamed for, but as I explained at the time, I’m not a professional colourist). Her lily-white skin is offset by her rosy red cheeks (which she hates, but I adore) and her deep, dark eyes, which can (and do) hold conversations on their own.
I placed the tea on her night stand and said in a really jaunty tone.
“There you go, baby, a nice cup of tea.” She didn’t say anything and continued reading her book in a miserable silence. Not wanting to take this laying down, I did. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what for, but best to apologise anyway. Whatever I’d done wrong, she was making it perfectly clear that it was going to take more than a cup of tea to fix. Perhaps I should’ve taken up a couple of biscuits.
Eventually, when the cold shoulder had become bloody frosty, she slammed her book shut, rolled over and fixed me with a Himalayan stare.
“Harry, I want to have a baby.”
“But we’ve already talked about this.”
Twice last year she brought up the subject and both times I gave the same reply. I’m not ready. I don’t know why exactly, but I’m just not ready to give up what we have. Maybe I’m being selfish, but I love our life the way it is. I love the fact that if we wanted to, we could spend the weekend in Dublin or Dubrovnik. Admittedly, the chance of us going to either is fairly slim, but at least we have the option.
“Well, I want to talk about it again, Harry. I want a family.”
“But...”
“But what? Give me one good reason why we can’t.”
Shit. She had me by the short and curlies and she knew it. At that point I should probably have told her how much I loved her. I should probably have mentioned that I definitely wanted a family one day. However, my mind was blank and so I said.
“Because what about our trip to Italy? We said that we would definitely do that before we had kids.”
“And we can, babe. We can go in the next couple of months, I promise. Just say that you’ll think about it, please?”
I took the easy way out and agreed to think about it. This led to a cuddle and a kiss. Women are so sneaky. Men are so weak. Why does starting a family scare me so much?
Dinner tonight at Steve and Fiona’s in Worcester Park. They have three kids and the audacity (or stupidity) to give them all names beginning with the letter J (Jane, Joseph and James) How mental is that?
This Thirtysomething Life: A Diary will be available to buy at http://ma2books.webplus.net/ next May.
Blog soon x
