Plaints and Poetry

Coming home today from shopping with Buddy Boy, my husband noticed an item I had purchased and inquired as to what it was for. I answered, honestly, that it was intended as a birthday present for an online friend of mine. At that point the shit hit the fan as we exchanged heated and emotional words wherein he expressed very strong disapproval of my relationship with a young man less than half my age while I tried to reassure him that we are merely friends, good friends, but nothing more than that. After all, there is a distance of five time zones involved, and I am literally old enough to be his mother.

I am distraught. I love my husband. I don�t want to jeopardize our good relationship. On the other hand, I also love my friends. I have so few people in my actual social circle I really enjoy spending time with that my online friends are very important to me, be they male or female, young or old. That�s one thing I really like about this medium, it breaks down all those socially constructed barriers. Hubby�s jealousy I feel is misplaced, but for him it is real. He keeps likening it to a situation where he might have an online female friend, half his age, whom he spent much time talking to and mailed presents to. How would I feel about that? I have to admit, it would bother me. However, the possibility of extra-marital mischief arising between a middleaged man and a 25-year-old girl is much more likely than between the opposite combination.

On top of that, I got the comments my recital student put on my evaluation form in the mail today. I wish I hadn�t read them. They were awful. This was a girl I thought liked me. Possibly I�m more upset about this than the other, but everything works to undermine me today.

Instead of continued griping, I will leave you with a poem by the Eastern Townships poet Ralph Gustafson (1909 � 1995) dedicated to harri3tspy:

The Sun comes out

The rain came down in buckets and pails.
First the sky slate in the west,
Three splotches on the slate in the garden

Then the downpour. Green glistened,
The delphinium went to ground, the ground
Ran pure dirt, the air streaked.

Ten minutes� worth of pluvian Zeus.
Then, stop. Green glistens, leaves
Levitate, water gurgles.

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