The Last Thing On My Mind-With Folksinger Tom Paxton’s Signature
“Last Thing On My Mind” In Mind
By Guest Writer Lester Landry
Eric Long didn’t know exactly how it had happened, didn’t
know how the whole blessed thing fell apart after so many years together.
Didn’t know that his sweetie, his “sweet pea” his pet name for her, his Mona,
was so radically dissatisfied with their lives together the night that she laid
out her future plans, future plans that did not include him. Had to take some
journey of discovery to find her spiritual being Mona called it. He could never
quite figure out what she meant by that since the “spiritual,” that New Age
business that she lived by and for and he was leery, very leery of, was totally
foreign to the way he operated in the world, the world of hard-boiled radical
anti-war politics and taking heed, being guided by in fact, the notion that
this was a dangerous world and watch out, watch your back (and she fragile and
defenseless against the villains watch her back as well, maybe watched it too
much and smothered her ability to breathe on her own). Could never quite talk
the same language with her on those issues where to use an expression that she
had come to use more frequently to describe their relationship of late they
were like “two ships passing in the night,” could never get the idea that she
was drowning in some Mona-made sea, that she was unsure of her place in the
sun, and worst of all not sure of who she was. For him who knew exactly what he
was about, well, maybe not exactly as it turned out but at least for public
consumption he appeared to be driven by a set of specific tasks and
orientations and so could not follow her on that path she has set for
herself.
Funny the night in question was their “wine date” night, a
time they had established a couple of years before as a way to be together and
share whatever there was to share, usually day to day stuff and not such a
decisive split. That too had been predicated on a prior series of
misunderstandings and falling apart that was only staunched for that precious
moment by his willingness to join her in couples counselling (That
“willingness” subject to his understanding that he was under the gun and that
if he had not done as she had asked then that first lowering of the boom would
have been the last and they would now have been separated for about two years
now.)
Although at first he was as leery about this process as he
was about the more outlandish and bizarre New Age therapies he actually had
come to as he called it see that this was significantly different from what he
had expected and had embraced the process whole-heartedly what he called “being
in one hundred per cent” (they had unsuccessfully done the procedure many years
before both agreeing then and now that the counsellor was not particularly helpful).
The thrust of this new procedure was that it was less driven by trying to
figure out what in their mutual troubled childhood pasts had made them both
attracted to each other but also too scarred by those experiences to let the
past slip away against their love for each other. So the counselling would
spent each session looking for “today” ways that they could relate to each
other and hence the “wine date” idea. Simple but effective since they previously
either had a going out date or they did not really relate to each other in the
vast amounts of time over the previous few years when both have effectively
retired from the workaday world. Eric found the sweet wines a way to relax (a
problem that as we shall find was the crux of what went south in the current
lowering of the boom).
Oh sure Eric as he told his friend Peter a few days later
when the initial shock had worn off a bit he and Mona had had their problems
over the previous few years but they were supposed to be working on getting
closer like with that wine date business. For several years before that they
had definitely been drifting apart, had become in his term “roommates” and hers
“ships passing in the night” until one day on U.S. 5 just outside of San Diego
he had exploded at her in the car telling her they couldn’t keep going on the
way they were going, something had to give. The underlying reason for his
outburst though was that he had kindled up a relationship with an old high
school classmate whom he did not know in school but whom he had met on-line
when he was searching for information about his high school class reunion that
was coming up. In the back of his mind he was half-way ready to quit the whole
thing himself. After that incident it had gotten pretty heavy with that old
classmate but when push came to shove, when he was confronted with the thought
of total separation and good-bye with his sweet pea he had backed off. The
price for that thought, the price that he was willing to pay to stay with Mona was
to go into couples counselling in which he gave what he thought, and more
importantly she thought, was good faith effort to reconcile their differences,
her grievances against him. That was the source of the wine date idea provided
by the counsellor as way they were to make connections in a quiet and cozy environment.
Eric thought when Mona lowered the boom on him this time that a lot of what was
driving her as much as her need to find her own path in life was deep and
unspoken continued resentment over that “affair” with the old classmate.
The couples counselling went on for about a year until
around the time they had gone to Paris, a place that she had never been to but
had desired to go to since she was a young girl like a lot of romantic young
girls sniffing the wonders of that town. They had had a great time there. But
about a week after they came back Laura lowered the boom on him the first time.
She wanted out under similar conditions to the latest episode. The result of
letting him stay was for him to go into individual counselling which he agreed
to do. He committed himself to a year in her presence but the year had not been
up before this fatal night. That separation had been the last thing on his
mind. Once he thought about Mona and his loss despite his good intentions Eric couldn’t finish his story to Peter that night
and maybe ever ….
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