THE CHINESE WIFE: The Life of Wry Lee

Well. It's official. I've got a reputation now of being unpredictable, of being a bolt-and-runner.  A day ago I was sitting at my table at home mid-afternoon, pondering.  In the next half hour I'd booked a flight to Hong Kong.  By early evening I was on that plane back home.  It all happened so fast I made my own head spin.  Although I must say I wasn't really surprised at myself.  It half amused me to coolly consider that my basic instincts, my true blue colours, revealed that I am impulsive by nature. Ooer. But the other half of me was turbulently sad.  Never thought I'd turn out to be a femme fatale; but there you go - that's how this cookie crumbles. 

Then again, if you read my life like a book, and followed the blow by blow, the roller coaster rides of love and loss like a bloomin' TV soap opera (I hate that) - then you wouldn't really be surprised either.  My existence since Year Dot has been one of control, or rather, being controlled so much that I am controlling - not just of myself, but of those who live in my world, whether they are blood kin or hapless strangers.  I'd been given constraints to live within by all and sundry;  I made everything fit into that limited framework, so life worked out.  If the answer has to be 4, then everything has to add up to be 4, even if it's only a 2 or 3, or a 5 or 6.  It's 4, or bust.  Reminds me of a story an old mentor once told in one of his sermons, about circus fleas.  Apparently circus fleas are trained under a glass dome.  An average flea can jump as high as the ceiling of that dome.  So people who come to watch this odd, microcosmic menagerie will find the inhabitants bouncing up and down to hit the dome ceiling.  And even if you take the dome lid off this miniature world, the fleas will still jump to that maximum height, but no more.  The irony is that in fact, an adult flea can jump hundreds of times higher.  But the greatest tragedy is that even their offspring, little baby fleas, will also only jump as high as the glass dome ceiling.  

Constraints. We can live in such a way that we never exceed the boundaries of what we imagine are our human limitations, so that we never dream of touching the sky.  

And having broken out of my glass dome so to speak in the past four years, I've literally raised the roof of my own expectations.  I've let go of so much that was considered de rigeur, that less and less is routine, while more and more seems a radical departure.  What is even more liberating is how I've let others fall outside of my expectations also.  I allow a bit of chaos to creep in, and it is refreshingly comforting that we can all just wing it and be a little messy.  I'm becoming increasingly convinced that when we haven't got things all sewn up so tight that we live in our own strait jackets, we then allow God's spirit some freedom to do whatever He wants to do with and in us.

That being said, my sudden absconding shocked even those who were close friends, and who had just about got used to my newly acquired chaos theory and habits.  Whoa.  Where you off to this time, girl?  You are full of surprises.

And the motivation to run?  Well, I wasn't going to hang about, to be left on Christmas Day - alone again, unnaturally. I'd had enough of that scenario for the past four years.  The first year was tragic.  There was a black slime, like oil slick, that creeped under the skin to weigh every part of me down so I was barely able to move for pain.  The run-up to C-day had been relentless because 'la famille abandonée' was still expecting to be served with the Fa la la la la spirit of the season: festive foods, Yuletide decs, gifts and party favours - the full works.  If anything, because of trauma to our situation, I had to deliver double indemnity to make up for everyone's loss. It wiped me out emotionally and physically to carry the pain of my brood as well as my own. But that well-honed knack to keep control took over; stiff upper lip and all that.  I must confess now that I had many moments that winter when I'd considered some immediate exit strategies to dramatically, but conclusively, end that pain.  But somehow I hung around, and endured the second and third Christmases: albeit each one a little more jaded, a little more wooden hearted.

This year, to self preserve, I pre-determined myself to be Scrooge.  I had enough work to do as an excuse to not send cards, not buy minced pies or goose fat for my Nigella roast potatoes, or to put up a single bit of tinsel to mark the season. I felt myself tense with more than a little acrimony as commercial after commercial droned endlessly on television like a recurring nightmare before Christmas. I tried not to notice how folks were spending the equivalent of the GNP of a small island in gifts tucked under their arms. I recoiled with distaste at Jingle Bell jingles and just about ran out of every store, silently screaming within. My nose turned up at the warm scents of cinnamon, fake pine and allspice everywhere I went.  Ducking my head down grimly as I elbowed my way through the frenzied shopping crowds, I squinted at the twinkly lights hanging high above me in the mean-hearted streets of London.  I knew I had a serious case of Bah Humbug.

To make it even more complex, against my better fatal instincts I'd dared hope a tiny hope. That the one person I wanted to spend this Christmas with, would spend it with me.  We'd come a long way, both of us, in the lovelorn department.  He was almost a confirmed agnostic in matters of love and committed relationship;  but then, he's a guy. I'd been living in "lorn" too much, was sick of it, and been waiting for all my Feast Days to be restored to me. I'd been good as good: brushed my teeth after every meal, washed behind my ears, did a serious load of selfless work for the benefit of broken humanity.  Maybe because I was that broken human just like they, and knew exactly what that was about. But somewhere deep within, there was a glimmer of hope for retribution and justice.  I was waiting for my silver lining to finally show in a vast expanse of sky that had nothing but puffed up black clouds for days on end. I've watched others with similarly hurt lives sail past on their treasure ships which have come in. I stood at my docks and scanned my own grey-lined horizon to watch for my galleon. Nothing came.

And then one day, out of the grey and the blue, he came. Doesn't disaster and benevolence arrive equally unexpectedly in life? We sit in the aftermath of a storm, knee deep in debris, winded and ashen from the onslaught and declare, "Where the HELL did that come from?"   So it was that as my man and I stood but a breath apart, gazing at the other in wonder, we said to one another,"Who would have thought this was possible a year ago when we first met?"  He'd shaken his head and added, "Never, in a million years."  But we did happen, and I'd begun to loosen my stranglehold on my own insecurities, to let another into my bruised, disbelieving heart.

We are an odd pairing: disparate in age, in world view, in lifestyle.  And yet, of the same heart in terms of justice and righteousness, of matters of decency, and in our common sensitivities to intense beauty - be it in words, the natural world or higher human thought and behaviour.  In fact, considerations of age difference, religiosity and common expectations of 'the norm' were shown up to be mere fluff in our reckoning.  Because we see the eternal in one another, we are not bound by notions of time.  Because we connect soul deep, no religious constraints can limit our evaluation of what is credible and relevant.  Surely, this is liberation, and an antidote to the kind of control that I'd known and been kicking up against.   For his part, nothing of his life has been conventional because he'd run from it at an early age.  We are rebels both, with a cause. 

Yet the course of true love never did run smooth.  I find that I had not entirely ditched my habits of ritual, and he still bolts at awkward moments when he cannot deal with the remnants of my traditionalist self.  Like at Christmas.  Give me time my love, to let go of Christmas! Unwittingly I'd defaulted to seasonal affectedness and hoped for a couple of days together, when the rest of the world gathered with their nearest and dearest.   I wouldn't roast chestnuts on a open fire, cackle Fa la la la la, roast gigantic birds too large for ovens, or expend more than can be afforded in order to lavish love in the deep mid-winter.   I'd gone as far as being an undecorated household, and even dared dismiss the annual treks to panicked Tescos or Christmas morning worship.  But the Other Half had other ideas of whom he would be spending time with, and it wasn't me.

So I made tracks.  Those moments felt so odd.  During the entire process of hunting for a reasonable flight, of desperately getting in touch with family back in the Orient to secure some sort of bolt hole accommodation for a few days, whilst mentally determining exactly what to pack - I felt a zing of electricity running cold in my veins throughout.  It was almost an out-of-body experience to book passage, mutter incoherent prayers of desperation, hold back the tide of grief from bursting the dams, and keep my head together to register a payment card's umpteenth integers - just to get through to the other side of a seemingly interminable dark tunnel to some sort of light, and air to breathe.  I realised I was holding my breath a lot until my heart pumped so hard,  it rattled against my ribcage in sharp pangs.  

I threw things into an empty suitcase, took half of it out again, threw some of it back in.  Chucked in some food gifts which were part of the feast I'd hoped to share with my beloved, now just dead bits of non-perishables.  Every other minute I thought of something else I had to do:  trash to take out, seasonal gifts to give to the concierge downstairs which would now have to wait.  Work matters still crept in via email and text, which couldn't be left, so there was a constant interruption from packing.

I finally sat down, to text a stinging few words, hoping to register protest and heartbreak in heavily loaded simplicity.  "I am flying out of the UK tonight."  Sat, and waited for a response, trembling.  Almost immediately an alarmed "Where are you going?!?" flashed onto the mobile microscreen.   I wanted to say "Away."  But didn't muster the courage to be sharp tongued, so told him where I was headed. And added, "I will not be left alone at Christmas."  Annoyingly, he came back with a "Good idea."  What? It is, is it?  I kept quiet.   The silence lasted an eternity.

It is always in the early days of courtship that a couple is telepathic, and hears the other's unspoken words across the miles.  I heard him panic, through a haze of busyness at his work desk.  I could not help it:  I always caved in first and softened in my stance.  "What are you thinking my darling?  I can hear you thinking..." I poked onto the keyboard.  Two hours later, he replied with an uncharacteristic term of endearment.  "Sweetie, it's been crazy busy here all day.  I'm so sorry I cannot see you off at the airport.  But we will see each other when you return. "

All I saw and heard, was that he called me Sweetie. 

Nothing more was said, until I'd checked in and sat in a wine bar to kill time before the flight.  I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and hadn't touched alcohol for months on end.  But at that moment I  felt I needed something strong to douse the trauma of my impromptu escape.  I gulped a glass of white wine, as though I enjoyed it, and felt it take effect almost immediately.  The spread of substance induced warmth in the pit of my stomach did not bring comfort, only the beginning of depression, and probably indigestion later on in the night.  "Have a lovely time." he wrote when I told him where I was and what I was doing.  In the fug of mental and emotional confusion, I knew I'd forgiven him yet again for another let down.  I bought duty free perfume. And gifts for the family.  Retail is never therapeutic for me any more so no amount of spending brings any catharsis at all.

In the wee small hours, at 30,000 feet above sea level, I considered the tock of the clock at midnight when it brought us into Christmas Day.  Here I am again, alone at Christmas, sitting in a stupid plane, heading to the worried bosom of a brother's household; and leaving behind a puzzled beau, shocked by my impudence.  It wasn't until we spoke finally on the phone that he explained how overworked he was on the last day before the holidays, how he'd slept till noon on Christmas morning and woken with a migraine from sheer fatigue.  He'd meant to be with me all along, but just wasn't sure if it was all going to be too late for the plans I'd made.  Arrghh.  Such a waste, of time, of expense, of unwarranted heartache.  

My only consolation was that we were both miserable without the other, six thousand miles apart, and spending yet another Christmas in solitary.