Installment Forty-Six

If I could, I would like to sleep forever. No, not kill myself, just blissfully avoid being awake facing the latest insanity in my life.

And here I thought putting expatriate life behind me meant nothing interesting would ever happen to me again. I certainly got that wrong!

Two men have dominated my life, one of them real one just fantasy. By marriage and children there is my not quite ex-husband Martin; through unrequited love (that is, the boy/man who got away) is Gabriel Kelly. Both men are arriving in Ottawa in a few days.

Neither has met the other. Neither knows the other is on his way to town.

And I'm mad as hell at both of them!

Deborah broke this latest piece of lunatic news to me over lunch today. I knew something was up. She doesn't usually get much time for a mid-day bite and yet we lingered over our untouched plates for several hours. She had taken a sick day from school but ended up infecting both of us with madness.

"We are suffering from 'crazy man' disease," I told my daughter. "How do you like that pronouncement honey?"

"True, but I have a different strain of it, Mom. I have 'crazy fathers' disease: mine and Sean's!"

"We need a plan, Deborah. Let's run through it again, from the beginning. Why are they both coming to Ottawa? And how can it be that their visits are coinciding? Did we offend the gods? Should I burn incense? Maybe I can burn my garbage sofa and kill two birds with one stone! I think it's stinking up my apartment."

"We've been over and over this for hours now, Mom, and I don't see how any plan is going to help."

Sean, according to Deborah, had been as shocked as his bride-to-be that his father had phoned him for the first time in over a decade. That he did so before Sean could get to him first means whoever is his father’s friend who spilled the beans on where he was hiding out in Ireland, and under what name, had clearly snitched.

"...and before you ask me yet again, Mom, yes, he knows you are here. And yes, he knows that you and Dad are getting divorced. His decision to come here--to 'explain himself' was the way he put it--will become apparent only after he arrives."

"But what is your father's excuse for coming?"

"Brian wouldn't tell me. I begged him on the phone after Dad phoned. Brian is so sorry that he won't be around to see the fireworks. But he can't leave. He loves his teaching job and has already found another place to stay in Beijing."

Well thank God, at least for that!

"But we're supposed to just be patient while we wait for this pending drama to unfold? You know I don't do patience very well Deborah."

I was wrong about not sleeping. Clearly I must have slept long enough to miss the blue moon that rose with a pig sitting on a bicycle, ET style in its glow.

For in my crazy world, pigs can apparently fly.