‘You promised.’
‘I what?’
‘You promised me that you were different . . . ‘
My mind stretched and stretched, contorted, and looked round corners.
I’m reminded of a recent yoga class: ‘it’s like elastic,’ Gretchen, the teacher, said, helping my leg to swivel dangerously at the hip.
‘And it might break,’ I retorted.
‘No, no,’ she said laughing, ‘I can tell – then it’s like concrete.’
What had I promised? I don’t really make promises. I don’t talk in that way.
Later I paid attention as she talked to her daughter and noticed how they used/shared the language of promises.
‘You promised,’ her daughter informed her.
A use of language I found frighteningly absolute.
And she might tell me, ‘I promised her . . . ‘
An exchange of promises in which the word promise (I think of and compare the command on a bank note, I promise to pay the bearer . . . ) was only spoken in retrospect, when failure had intervened.
‘You promised.’
The tone used in these two words managing to convey the hurt of disappointment and the accusation of betrayal.
But me, not part of this exchange of promises, would respond:
‘No I didn’t – what are you talking about.’
In all this the parental and the divine are close by. The parental obligation to give the child everything she desires; a God who is obliged to shower good things upon us.
What are the words I use?
I’ll try. I’ll do the best I can. I’ll have a go. And of course, I can’t promise, but . . .