Didn’t have time to look at the prosery prompt yesterday, but this morning it made me think of the premise of Elsa Morante’s novel, L’Isola di Arturo, Arturo’s realisation as he comes out of boyhood, that his father’s marriage to a poor Neapolitan girl was a sop to respectability, and a front for his homosexual adventures.
Mother love
She always knew, that much is obvious now, the things my father got up to during his long absences. Though ‘knew’ is probably too precise a word. His longings and desires, what drove and embittered him had no echo in my mother’s constrained, traditional upbringing, which was mine too, until understanding dawned, and I broke away from its traditions of suppression and oppression.
Yet despite time and distance, her face follows me, dark-eyed and full of love, the same gold earrings because it would never have entered my father’s mind to buy her anything pretty, the embroidered headscarf, hands busy with work that always found the time to caress and comfort. Sometimes I feel that I am haunted. By how much our mothers do, not know, is surely how we should judge them? She loved me enough for two. That’s all that should matter.
The Four Swans 