I guess you would call this an update

I hate going a week between posts. The good news is that I am fine. The bad news is that my work laptop is not fine. It is as dead as a doornail. Hopefully, the tech people can save my files - yes, I am the idiot who hasn't backed up her files to the network since she started back to work. Oy.

We are well into toddlerhood here in our house. I am amazed each day at the changes in my boy. He has likes and dislikes (mostly likes, thank goodness). He is thrilled to discover new things almost every day. His poops really smell (thanks, solid food).

Is is getting boring for me to say that I still can't believe that C. isn't here? His life and my soul shattering grief feel like a distant dream. Then it all comes rushing back at me at the strangest moments. And because it moves away from me so often, the attack of grief it so unexpected that I almost don't know how to respond. For example, the other day I was reading through a list of current clients and happened across a person who share's C.'s name. Not really strange, considering that his name has been a traditional English language name for centuries. I have read his place in dozens of places in the past 3 years. And yet this time it almost levelled me -almost starting a torrent of tears that I wouldn't have been able to control (or explain, if someone walked into my office). And, as so often is the case, I sat there in bewilderment at the depth of emotion that I have trained myself to set aside for the majority of each day.

I am enjoying the PBS* series on Masterpiece showing film versions of the complete** works of Jane Austin. She has been my favourite author for years - I reread my collection at least once a year. This go round I am struck by the maturity of situation that I see in Persuasion. Simply, the main characters have a romance when they are young, are separated by well-intentioned meddlers, and have a second chance at love eight years later. I think this concept of the second chance is what I find so appealing. Anne, our heroine, now has the life experience to seize her opportunity at love without bowing to the expectations of others. She had to suffer greatly to gain this steadiness and resolve. And it turns out happily in the end (how could anything else happen in such a novel?).

I don't see particular parallels in my own life, other than the obvious suffering-one-dead-child-but-having-the-extraordinary-luck-to-raise-a-glorious-second-child thing (which I don't see as the same, what with not really getting a second chance - C. will always be dead, after all). I think what draws me to this story is the idea that we all should get second chances. I like that idea.

In her typical satirical fashion, Austin writes in the opening pages of the novel that if her character Anne had been afforded the chance to travel, meet new and interesting young men, and follow a happier life that the one she led in the intervening years, she would have forgotten her first love. The romantic in me (and admittedly, the bereaved mother in me) prefers to think that Anne would love Captain Wentworth eternally, regardless of situation. I like the idea that love, once nurtured in the soul of a human, can never be fully extinguished.

I am no scholar - so maybe my interpretation here is off the mark. But it is what I felt and experienced when I watched (then reread) Persuasion this time. And that has to count for something, right?

P.S. Isn't Rupert Penry-Jones (Captain Wentworth) delicious?

* I cannot explain why all of Western Canada has PBS Detroit included in cable TV packages, but we do.
** of course, the lesser early works aren't included

P.P.S. I can't comment on your blog, complicated mama. Wordpress hates me. Email me, okay?