He read out an article to me about a convent retreat in Whitby as I prepared supper yesterday. It sparked a longing in me that I spent part of my morning walk trying to decipher. I have always had to suppress a need to be saved, to be protected, wrapped up, and mothered. She couldn’t do it, well not when I became sentient and thought beyond her. It wasn’t her fault. Her mothering had been absent. And in turn I have been absent too. But hearing of those nuns, of that ritual of silence of routine and quietude got to the core of me. I’ll take you, he says, and stay somewhere nearby. That’s kind, I say. But it wouldn’t work. I need to be away from it all, and you, my love, would bring it all with you. One day. One day I will find it. That mothering.
