Soothe

Driving home from work, listening to a discussion about infidelity on the radio.

The pundit speaking is a RELATE counsellor, working for a charity providing relationship support.

He says that, in his experience, men and women cheat on their spouses for similar reasons, to help them to get through the complexity of life. He says that, if you watch, when a child falls over and hurts themselves, their mother or father runs over and comforts the child. Because children cannot soothe themselves.

But as an adult there is nobody to soothe your hurts, you have to soothe yourself. As an adult, you have to find a mechanism to cope with the hurts that life inflicts. One of the things that people use to patch themselves up is sex.

I'm not sure if I agree with his theory about infidelity.
That explanation seems a little simplistic to me. Low self-esteem is at the root of most infidelity? Seems almost a little . . . pedestrian, a little dull.
But what would I know?
I've only ever had two relationships. I'm kind of a dunce with these things.

But I was thinking about soothing. The need of the child to be comforted, the need of a parent to soothe. Something deep within the most basic recesses of the brain. Need seems almost too weak a word.
To brush away tears.
To hold those small limbs close to your bones.
To mutter those strange nonsense words, that parental babbling that bestows strange nicknames and sings funny little songs.
To mutter the even more nonsensical, "Mama's here. You're safe. Nothing will happen to you. It's okay now."

The first time I uttered words like that in earnest, it was such a terrible lie. But I wanted it to be true, so badly. And the instinct to tell that lie is a strong one.

I still tell it. To Jessica. Mama is here and she will save you, protect you. Chase the monsters away. I only wish I could. Shut down the noise of traffic whilst she sleeps, dim the sun that shines in her eyes, run my finger over the scars left by the many lines that were plunged into her veins and erase them.

My mind runs riot. A private education. A pony. A castle. A crown. A twin sister.

None of which I can provide. But perhaps the fact that I wish to provide them is more to the point. I don't think anyone wishes ponies and crowns for me. Perhaps my own mother. Still.


I couldn't soothe my daughters after birth. They were thrust out into pain, light and noise before they were ready for even the most delicate touch. Their cries went without response. Their hurts were simply left to ache. Comfortless. I find that very difficult to think about now. Very painful. Their little bodies flinching. Their attempts at cries.

I don't know if my presence helped Georgina at all. Love can do many things. But I don't know that it can overcome pain, I know that it can't overcome illness and death. I did love her. I do love her. In a world that appears to be infinitely more confusing than I suspected that is about the only solid fact I have left.
And I can only hope. That it was a comfort to her, to be held at last. To hear a familiar voice.
As I held on and she let go.
Perhaps it was a relief for both of us.

Being an adult I should have, supposedly, developed the ability to soothe myself. To produce some mental equivalent of sticking my thumb in my mouth.

I suppose I had, to some extent, prior to this.
When I was upset, I had my little surburban dreams to dream, to soothe myself to sleep with.
Of houses I would decorate. What colours the walls would be. The items to be placed neatly on shelves. Stacks of ironed sheets. Cool tiles.
Gardens that I would plant.
Strangely, even children that I would have.
That one is no longer on the soothing dream schedule surprisingly enough.

Sometimes I try and manifest these dreams into physical being. I purchase coordinated bed linen with a matching cushion cover. I buy one of those air fresheners with three separate scents that clicks over over the smell is always noticeable. I plant a pink lavender. But these articles lose their sense of perfection the moment they touch my clammy hands. They know something is wrong in my house.

I don't often dream of children these days. We all know how that one ended up. Nothing soothing to be found there.

Sometimes I imagine that I am a child again. That I can appeal to my own parents. Or to the large fuzzy benevolent God of my childhood. I shrink my limbs. I shut my eyes. I can almost hear my parents putting out the breakfast dishes downstairs. My father's voice reverberating. The kettle boiling. The smell of the early 1980s.

But there is no true comfort there.
Maybe some things simply cannot be soothed. Too painful to patch up with even the most far fetched sticking plaster.

From as early as I can remember, my mother used to sing Leonard Coh.en songs to me.
These songs run through my childhood like a steel wire.
I don't know if it is because they remind me of children or because they remind that I am not on my own.
I always used to play 'Sis.ters of Mercy' to myself. When I was upset.
I don't know what it is about. According to the You Tu.be commentators, possibly nuns? Or prostitutes?

But I think it is about something more graceful than that. More graceful than religion or sex.
I don't think that the mercy he is singing about is something embodied in a profession. Or even in a person.
It would take a great deal to be a true sister of mercy all of the time. But perhaps we all can be, albeit transiently?

I think there are some around these parts.
A comfort.

'Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.'