Chapter 9

My Mother's story

This is my mother's story, as she told it to me after our reconciliation. So I would be able to fill the gaps in her life story. She told me everything I did not and should know.

When I met your father, I was just a newcomer to the big city from the distant western lands. He, he was a dream come true, the man which all women, from their earliest childhood, dream to get.

We met and fell in love, it was like a fairy tale, he was older than me, but it didn't matter to me, as I was madly in love with him and him with me. Our first time together was full of thunder and lightning, we were like ancient Olympic gods clashing, we were Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, Apollo and Artemis, Jupiter and Juno.

Then reality reared its ugly head in my parents' refusal to accept any part of my new life. They didn't accept my pregnancy, didn't accept my love for the man who was going to be my husband, they refused to accept my unborn son, because he had been conceived out of wedlock, Worse than anything else the three of us were thrown out of their home. We were cursed in their strict compliance with the laws of a god they said was all love and forgiveness.

Despite their predictions, our marriage was very happy in those early years, but unfortunately we could not have any more children. That was perhaps the biggest shadow of our marriage.

I did not talk to my parents again until you were eight years old; I wanted you to know your grandparents and for your grandparents to know you, since you could not meet your father's parents who had died years ago in a multiple car accident. Your father had no other family and I wanted my child to have some kind of family reference. Dale agreed with me but he let me be the one who handled the matter, only forced by circumstances would he speak with my parents again...

I was apprehensive. How would they receive me after so long an estrangement. What would happen in my first trip to my parent's after so many years was a mystery. How would my parents receive me? And you? Would they be willing to love their grandson? I was no longer the girl who had gone to study in the big city. Today I was a woman of sophistication; with different concerns and values than what they had taught me. Above all things I wondered: how were they? Had they aged well? How was their health?

When we arrived at the ranch they were both waiting on the porch. Our appearance must have been a surprise for them. From the car emerged a tall and slender woman, elegantly dressed in the latest fashion: hair in the latest style, makeup, manicure, pedicure, the works. I looked more like one of those fashion models in magazines or on TV that the pregnant girl that they had driven from her home several years ago. I do not know what they expected of their daughter, I'm sure it was not the vision of elegance and sophistication that appeared before them.

And you, my son, tall for your eight years, handsome, with dark hair, and dressed elegantly, wearing an affectionate smile, you went to your grandparents and greeted them as if you had known them all of a lifetime. Your words carried emotion when you approached my mother, kissed her on the cheek and asked, "How are you dear Grandma", while turning around to shake my father's hand with yours and asked, "And you, how are you Grandpa"

The polite attitude and gentle presence of their grandson seemed to melt some of their icy attitude toward us. None the less, the first few days were very uncomfortable, especially for me. Their arrogant attitude, their belief that they were so pure in their righteousness that they were beyond good and evil and that I was still a sinner made my stay with them very uncomfortable. So after a week with them in the ranch I left you, with whom they had bonded very well, to pass the summer and I returned home and to your father, who truth be told, never badmouthed my parents or told me "I told you this would happen". In that moment I loved him more if that was possible.

From then on, if you remember became customary for you to visit your grandparents during the holidays, almost always alone, I would put you on the plane and your grandparents would go to meet you at the bus airport. I was very glad the way you three bonded.

Your holiday visits to your grandparents continued until that terrible day when you left the house and me forever. After that afternoon in which I flirted shamelessly with you half-naked, and you reacted trying to caress my breast. When I responded by venting my sexual frustrations and cursing you, I lost you forever.

After the first eight or ten years of our marriage, Dale was working less hours and had less time for family life, he wanted more time to study the new developments and read the technical journals of his profession,. Oh, I know he still loved and worshiped me, and he truly loved our son; but it wasn't enough for me. I loved him just as I had the first day I laid my eyes on him at that dreadful autopsy room, but the years had diminished his interest in sex, so our love sessions were less and less frequent; in the meanwhile, I was in the prime of my life and I wanted to make love, or at least have sex every day, whatever.

Because of our social position and the academic position your father held, I had to be the perfect wife, I couldn't flirt even as a joke, I should act with prudence, and of course any extramarital affair was unthinkable if I wanted my marriage to survive. And I did want it to survive. But I was sexually frustrated, very frustrated, and I could not argue that Dale had not warned me before our marriage. He did warn me that this could happen. Perhaps this was what led to the subconscious and unintentional flirting with you, my own son, which led to the events that destroyed our family or at least destroyed me.