Most of the prisons we experience have nothing to do with thick walls or barred windows and doors. They are much more subtle. A hand that grasps your own a little too tightly, fingers interwoven with your own, unyielding in its intention. We enter these prisons freely perhaps not knowing what has been agreed to. All we understand is that one day there is no way to back out the door from which the bond was created.
Abby tried to roll over but was trapped by the arm of the man she called husband. Over the years she had tried to love him believing that in giving of herself and receiving of him, love would appear and grow. When was the day when she had realized it wouldn't be? Dan was not a bad man. He was a loving husband and doting father to the boy that was not his biological son. Each day he worked from before sunrise to late into the evening keeping the farm running. He had been essential in the management of the family homestead after her father's death. Abby's mother rejoiced in her son-in-law often offering her praise for all his unselfish giving to her daughter, grandson, and of course the land.
"Marrying Dan had been a necessary sacrifice," Abby thought. "And the guilt I feel is my sorrow that I can not love him back in the same measure."
Abby thought back. The day she had returned from Washington, D.C. had been sorrowful. Dan had sent her money for the bus ticket but it hadn't been in time to say good-bye to her father one last time. Her father, she had cherished him. He had doted on her, his only child. Dan had been there to hold Abby as she shook and cried, never saying a word, never acknowledging how her body didn't melt into his. And yet, Abby appreciated his presence.
He had been her confidant even though they had not been lovers. He knew Abby's dreams of university and had let her go to Stanford even as he feared that she wouldn't return. But she had returned . . . for her father, to care for him after the first heart attack.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment