20 May 2009

I have been reflecting a lot lately. Perhaps it's in my nature to do so, perhaps it's having time on my hands, and perhaps it's because the MS demands so much of me and thinking takes up so little energy. Probably a bit of each.

Anyway, I was thinking about what I got from my last relationship. I think I have already mentioned that it has made me more cautious - well, it remains to be seen if that is in fact the case, but let's say it have given me the intention of being more cautious in future, at least with regard to relationships. Time, of course, will tell.

But what I was thinking about were the positives that I can draw from what was, after all, a very positive couple of years. These I think are the things that will endure.

Teaching me to drive an automatic properly. This falls firmly into the 'old dogs, new tricks' category. I didn't realise it, but I drove the automatic like it was a manual. I've driven automatics before, and never thought much about it. Just remember to tuck your left leg out of the way and 'job done'. Not so. My main crime was not to lift off the accelerator when approaching a junction, apparently. I of course resisted. I've been driving for nearly 30 years. What can anyone teach me about driving? Pah! Well, she was right, and my fuel consumption proves it.

I also learned that there is someone more stubborn than me. Not that it's always a bad thing. It serves as a reminder of the fundamental difference between men and women that when a woman wants to let off steam about something, sometimes she is just doing that, not inviting a man's opinion or asking him to provide a solution, just a sympathetic ear.

It was nice to be needed for some of the more mundane things in life. Fixing the handle on the toilet, getting the TV aerial working, installing an alarm system, securing the back door where some scumbag had a go at digging into the lock, fixing the wheel on her son's car. The kind of things I have always enjoyed doing, but have been a rarity of late.

I was also privileged to be allowed to share in her children's lives. I know it requires an enormous amount of trust for a woman to have her kids in the same environment as a man who isn't their father, far less leave them in his care. It felt very special to achieve that level of trust. I know that changing a kid's nappy, or bathing him or reading him a bedtime story isn't everyone's idea of a good time, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it when my own boys were small, and nothing has really changed. Especially reading bedtime stories. Although I never quite got him to the stage of actually falling asleep to a story (but then my own younger son didn't fall asleep until I stopped reading), and more often than not I would fall asleep first - waking half an hour later to find he'd given up the fight and decided to call it a day.

So, all in all, it was a very positive, and in many ways humbling, experience. Aside from the warmth and love that was very precious, and made me feel good at a very vulnerable time in my life, it was a couple of years that I shall look back on with fondness.