Somewhere Over the Sea Read Online Free
Author: Halfdan Freihow
light that I will never forget spread across her face. First naked disbelief, then pure shining happiness.
In the years that have passed since you came to us, I have many times thanked God it wasnât you who was with me that day. Had you been the child I suddenly abandoned in the care of a strange woman, only to reappear so suddenly and unexpectedly from the sky, you would have plummeted into a deep and painful crisis. It would have been impossible for you to adapt, to accept such a gross breach of your deep-seated need for contexts, for predictabilities, for time to grow accustomed â for things to be, as you put it, the way they usually are.
When you were the same age as Victoria was that day on the runway, Gabriel, it was even difï¬cult for you to accept that you were served spaghetti for dinner instead of the meatballs we had talked about at breakfast. Even though you liked spaghetti a lot better.
YOU WHO HAVE TAUGHT me about contexts â not just how they simplify and make life easier and more comprehensible, but also how they add a reliability to life, a unique, rhythmic beauty that is the very foundation of long-lasting love â you are also more than any other the one who has astonished me.
Time after time I have thought: Good God, heâs going to do it, heâs breaking his own rules, heâs daring to do the unplanned, the unprepared, heâs deliberately seeking out that which is not as it usually is.
Iâm not referring to occasions when you donât understand social rules and conventions, like the time you stood behind me in the supermarket queue desperate to pass water, and were hurt and ashamed when I turned on you with anger in my voice because you had dropped your trousers to your ankles and stood there urinating in neat circles across the chocolate display. Or the time you walked out of the electrical goods store with Mom, your hands behind your back. She wondered why, and you proudly produced a portable Cd player, exclaiming, when you saw her eyes darkening:
â Yes, but no one saw anything!
No, no one saw anything, Gabriel, but then neither had anyone explained to you that stealing is wrong even when no one sees you. You know quite well that youâve done something you shouldnât have when someone ï¬nds out about it; but actions that are not discovered and reacted to, actions that go unseen, you somehow donât recognize as being fully real. Not even when they are good: I often suspect that you do not know, until someone tells you, that youâve been kind or clever. It is often said of people like you that they live in their own, closed world, but that isnât quite true. To an even greater degree than others, perhaps, you discover yourself only in interaction. Without all the rest of us to reï¬ect your actions and your individuality, you are alone in the loneliest sense of the word.
No, I donât mean these or any of a hundred other situations. We gave up dwelling on such scenes a long time ago. Mom and I have since ceased to worry about scowling recriminations, vociferous complaints, rude accusations, nasty remarks . . . about how ill-mannered you are, how impolite, what bad parents we must be . . . poor child, imagine having a mother like that . . . isnât it terrible the way some fathers neglect their children . . . but, my dears, shouldnât he be in an institution?
Only on those occasions when bigger boys or adults let their ignorance affect you directly, on those rare occasions when they dare to hit you, or curse and threaten you, only then do I react, explosively, in furious outbursts that make most people back off. Then I feel, with an almost joyous fright, that I become dangerous, that I could hit, damage, and hurt. But most often we laugh it off, Mom and I, over a glass of wine in the evening. Over the years we have seen and heard so much insult, so many prejudices and ignorant remarks, that weâve developed a kind
In the years that have passed since you came to us, I have many times thanked God it wasnât you who was with me that day. Had you been the child I suddenly abandoned in the care of a strange woman, only to reappear so suddenly and unexpectedly from the sky, you would have plummeted into a deep and painful crisis. It would have been impossible for you to adapt, to accept such a gross breach of your deep-seated need for contexts, for predictabilities, for time to grow accustomed â for things to be, as you put it, the way they usually are.
When you were the same age as Victoria was that day on the runway, Gabriel, it was even difï¬cult for you to accept that you were served spaghetti for dinner instead of the meatballs we had talked about at breakfast. Even though you liked spaghetti a lot better.
YOU WHO HAVE TAUGHT me about contexts â not just how they simplify and make life easier and more comprehensible, but also how they add a reliability to life, a unique, rhythmic beauty that is the very foundation of long-lasting love â you are also more than any other the one who has astonished me.
Time after time I have thought: Good God, heâs going to do it, heâs breaking his own rules, heâs daring to do the unplanned, the unprepared, heâs deliberately seeking out that which is not as it usually is.
Iâm not referring to occasions when you donât understand social rules and conventions, like the time you stood behind me in the supermarket queue desperate to pass water, and were hurt and ashamed when I turned on you with anger in my voice because you had dropped your trousers to your ankles and stood there urinating in neat circles across the chocolate display. Or the time you walked out of the electrical goods store with Mom, your hands behind your back. She wondered why, and you proudly produced a portable Cd player, exclaiming, when you saw her eyes darkening:
â Yes, but no one saw anything!
No, no one saw anything, Gabriel, but then neither had anyone explained to you that stealing is wrong even when no one sees you. You know quite well that youâve done something you shouldnât have when someone ï¬nds out about it; but actions that are not discovered and reacted to, actions that go unseen, you somehow donât recognize as being fully real. Not even when they are good: I often suspect that you do not know, until someone tells you, that youâve been kind or clever. It is often said of people like you that they live in their own, closed world, but that isnât quite true. To an even greater degree than others, perhaps, you discover yourself only in interaction. Without all the rest of us to reï¬ect your actions and your individuality, you are alone in the loneliest sense of the word.
No, I donât mean these or any of a hundred other situations. We gave up dwelling on such scenes a long time ago. Mom and I have since ceased to worry about scowling recriminations, vociferous complaints, rude accusations, nasty remarks . . . about how ill-mannered you are, how impolite, what bad parents we must be . . . poor child, imagine having a mother like that . . . isnât it terrible the way some fathers neglect their children . . . but, my dears, shouldnât he be in an institution?
Only on those occasions when bigger boys or adults let their ignorance affect you directly, on those rare occasions when they dare to hit you, or curse and threaten you, only then do I react, explosively, in furious outbursts that make most people back off. Then I feel, with an almost joyous fright, that I become dangerous, that I could hit, damage, and hurt. But most often we laugh it off, Mom and I, over a glass of wine in the evening. Over the years we have seen and heard so much insult, so many prejudices and ignorant remarks, that weâve developed a kind
Readers choose
Greg Iles
Elli Buchanan
Eve Jagger
Lara Bergen
How to Talk to Anyone
Marie Hall
Space Pirates' Bounty [Strength in Numbers 2]
Tim O'Rourke