A Story ... Has A Sturdy Sense

Few People, Very Few, Have A Treasure, And If You Do You Must Hang Onto It. You Must Not Let Yourself Be Waylaid, And Have It Taken From You.

Things Have Changed, Ofcourse. There Are Counsellors At The Ready. Kindness And Understanding. Life Is Harder For Some, We're Told. Not Their Fault, Even If The Blows Are Purely Imgainery. Felt Just As Keenly By The Recipient, Or The Non Recipient, As The Case May Be. But Good Use Can Be Made Of Everything, If You Are Willing.

She Could Not Explain Or Quite Understand That It Wasn't Altogether Jealousy She Felt, It Was Rage. And Not Because She Couldn't Shop Like That Or Dress Like That. It Was Because That Was What Girls Were Supposed To Be Like. That Was What Men - People, Everybody - Thought They Should Be Like. Beautiful, Treasured, Spoiled, Selfish, Pea-brained. That Was What A Girl Should Be, To Be Fallen In Love With. Then She Would Become A Mother And She'd Be All Mushily Devoted To Her Babies. Not Selfish Anymore, But Just As Pea-brained. Forever.

As A Matter Of Fact She Does Not Know To This Day If Those Words Were Spoken, Or If He Only Caught Her, Wound His Arms Around Her, Held Her So Tightly, With Such Continual, Changing Pressures That It Seemed More Than Two Arms Were Needed, That She Was Surrounded By Him, His Body Strong And Light, Demanding And Renouncing All At Once, As If He Was Telling Her She Was Wrong To Give Up On Him, Everything Was Possible, But Then Again That She Was Not Wrong, He Meant To Stam Himself On Her And Go.

Children Of Course Are Monstrously Conventional, Repelled At Once By Whatever Is Off-center, Out Of Whack, Unmanageable. And Being An Only Child I Had Been Coddled A Good Deal (also Scolded). I Was Awkward, Precocious, Timid, Full Of My Private Rituals And Aversions.