Love Hearts Pierced With Feathered Arrows...

One of my favourite ever stories when I was growing up was The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. I remember sitting next to my Mother in the armchair in our lounge room and her telling Me the story of the Sparrow who would not fly South for the winter, but instead chose to stay behind and help the statue of the Happy Prince, who was too selfish to see that the Sparrow needed to leave in order to live.

He kept asking the little bird to pick the precious stones out of his jewelled eyes and out of his sword, and to peel his gold paint off in generous flakes and then take them to the poor and hungry peasants below them in the streets- like the little Match-stick Girl who had lost all of her matches down the drain- and the exhausted seamstress; who sews through the night to earn extra money for herself and her feverish child.

The Sparrow does this for the Happy Prince, right up until the day that it is too late, when the Prince wakes up to find his little friend, dead and frozen at his feet because she had stayed behind too long- because she loved him too much...

I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere that I haven't bothered to learn yet. But I'm not that bird; and I'm not dead yet. I can still fly away if I want to.

Maybe I'll fly firstly to the Lookout- and see if Our initials are still there on the lover's bench; alongside the hundreds of other scratchily-carved love hearts pierced with feathered arrows- and if it Is still there, then I'll really know that it really was Meant To Be. That We were supposed to be together; my Hubby and I.

Maybe it was only supposed to last until we had our kids- because that's all we seem to have to have in common, really, except for drugs and alcohol, a point that people often make when they meet us. But regardless- we are still together- and sometimes we laugh that we've got the longest running relationship amongst all of our friends, especially when all those 'more suited to each other than us' couples- those that are more suited than We supposedly are- break up or get divorced.

Maybe we are suited to each other. Not many people would put up with either of us for very long. I'd have a hard time hiding my feral moods from a new partner lomg enough to keep them interested, and drinking with his mates at the pub would be more of a priority than his new girlfriend would be, so she'd get sick of him pretty quickly. Probably. And then he'd come back to Me. Probably.

Maybe he just wants me to stay, like the Happy Prince wanted the Sparrow to stay...

And now that I've forgotten what I was going to say, let me start again.