There was once, somewhere close to where you live, a young woman deeply in love with a young man. To bond their love, the young couple tied the knot and moved in together in a quaint, little cottage in a neat, small town.
The young couple’s life flowed happily, and was blessed with two wonderful children born two years apart.
The young family’s life ran its course steadily through the days and challenges of everyday chores.
In no time the children were tweens, all demands and no connection, and the couple had become, Mother and Father, or Mammy and Daddy depending on the circumstance.
Daddy was working a lot to keep the bills paid and the demands met, while Mammy had to give up professional work and instead support the family, as outside help was way too expensive to afford, and, as Daddy was paid more, it made sense for him to keep working, plus she was so much better with all that stuff, raising a family and keeping a house, as you call it.
Daddy worked a lot and, it seems, the women he worked with were much different to his wife, often he would tell her when she would bring up one topic or another.
‘You are so transparent, I can see right through you! Admit it, you are not happy to care for your family, you would rather be out there chasing I don’t know what futile dream … than care for us.’
This made the woman hurt so much, much more than he would have ever imagined.
She was just asking for help as she had started to feel herself fading away.
The children were self-absorbed and impatient. They needed everything and they needed it now. Often, when she spoke with them asking them to do their homework or tidy their rooms, they would look through her as if she did not even exist, as if she was see-through.
Slowly but surely, day in and day out, the woman gradually felt herself turn into a glass version of herself. She no longer had features or facial expressions, she no longer had opinions or demands, she was a transparent, see-through shadow, moving around the house, cleaning, washing, cooking and providing, without ever being seen or heard.
What the woman did not know, and what the people around her did not know, was that the woman was now made of fragile glass, and not of flesh and bone, and also they did not know, and could not suspect, was that the glass was getting thinner everyday.
An expert eye, watching this story unfold from afar would have for sure expected the woman to shatter and break into a million pieces, but, instead, a very different alchemical process took place and, one night, the woman made of glass, under intense heat from the inside consumed herself and turned the glass into heavy, obtuse clay.
When morning came, the glass woman was no more and, the clay woman got up and went about her chores without caring, without meaning, without love …
The husband noticed the change in his wife, and was startled by the lack of expression or warmth he was faced with.
The children also suffered when their mother did not kiss them good night, or wish them a good day in school. They felt the void left behind by her motherly care.
The woman now was very efficient and aloof, all her tasks were perfectly accomplished, but it was clear that her heart, her being were no longer into it.
Not surprisingly the family started to drift apart and down. The woman’s impact was a lot greater when she was transparent and see through, then now when she had become a cold lump of clay.
‘Maybe we should take a vacation …’, the husband timidly proposed over tea one evening.
‘You go, take the children. I need to clean out the shed.’, and that was the end of that conversation.
Daddy and the children did not understand what had happened to Mammy, where had she gone and who was this stranger inhabiting her body? Still though, the house was clean, their clothes ironed, the meals cooked, that was good.
‘Should we send her to a spa?’, the children asked their father.
‘I honestly don’t know … leave her she will snap out of it …’
And she did. Years later when the children were off to college. The day the second child moved out so did she.
The husband was shocked. I never saw it coming! She did not say anything! Who will take care of the house?
The children were baffled. Mother has lost her mind, leaving daddy like that! Who will take care of him?
‘One of his fancy work colleagues I assume! You know the non transparent ones!’, and she hung up the phone.
She had given herself to them completely, and now it was time to find out what she could give of herself to her own person.