I have brought my mum and step-father to Kephalonia for a week. Specifically, to Assos, a tiny fishing village overlooked by a Venetian fort. Exquisite. I have come here three times before, by myself. During the precious May half-term week when, pre-pandemic, my Ex took the boys to Albania to visit family and I had some rare time to myself.
This year, I decided to come a week earlier. Cheaper. Let him get the kids to school for a week. Let me have a week at home to myself while they’re away during half-term (fingers crossed - passport issues - another story), when I get back. My Ex has never had to get them to school, ever. I have covered pretty much every school day, every school holiday, every INSET day, every sick day. I have taken unpaid leave, additional unpaid holiday, part-time work. And every day they have gone to school with just about everything they needed. Needless to say, I left last Wednesday leaving a pile of clean school uniform, topped up lanyards, bus money, games kit etc etc etc. Some of you may sense where this is going.
The topography of Kephalonia is not unlike Corfu or southern Albania. Not surprisingly - they’re all located on or near the Ionian Sea. Thanks to my step-father having the balls to drive on the right in extremely curvy conditions, I have seen more of Kephalonia on this visit than on previous visits. And the memories the landscape has inspired have left me reminiscing about so many hot days spent lying on rocks by blue waters. Laughing, sweating, eating watermelon and washing the juice off in the sea. Unfolding patterned tea towels with bread, cheese and a tomato for lunch. My Ex carrying an octopus home to his mum aloft a long stick, with tens of friends and relations in tow, like a bizarre snippet of AA Milne pageant.
Being me, I am still working through the happiness, sadness and guilt these memories inspire.
Out of the blue, yesterday, watching my step-father grind up to the island’s highest point in second gear, which took the best part of an hour, my executive coach crossed my mind. The distance of geography creates a mental space within which I like to consider where my life is ‘at’, and what my next steps might be. Which might be why I felt her presence.
The alchemical mysteries of the universe had conspired to make her contact me at pretty much the same time I was thinking about her. An email, with a quote she thought I might like: ‘What do you think that love was for?’ Wow.
I don’t know. Really, I don’t know. It can’t have been just to have our kids. Surely?
What I do know is, that it turns out the kids have both missed several days of school while I’ve been away. If I could bottle the hurt and anger I feel, at the calls and texts I’ve had from the boys, their dad, their school, in this precious piece of time and beach, I would. The untruths, the confusion, the hassle, his inability just to get his kids to their place of education on time and in one piece.
This is why I left him. Why I ended that relationship. This is why the guilt I feel is so unnecessary. Perhaps, if nothing else, it took twenty years of that love and seven more on top, since, to work out that I don’t actually owe anyone, anything.
So what next?
