Bonded Slave

Wifie’s away. She flew off this morning to visit some relatives in Melbourne. I miss her already – which is odd because it’s an ordinary working day and I wouldn’t normally see her until I get home in a few hours’ time. It’s just knowing that she won’t be there that is creating the anticipation of loneliness.

She and I have been together for almost two decades. It will be our umpty-umpth wedding anniversary next month. We’re still very much in love and I suppose, after all this time, we will be for the rest of our lives. As with so many other aspects of my emotional life, the bond that ties me to my wife is a deep and mysterious thing, lurking in the deepest and oldest recesses of my being, accessible to consciousness only in its effects, and completely beyond my control.

I suppose I’ll go home and potter about, listen to Blondie and the B-52’s and surf the Web – the usual things a fifty-one-year old does these days. I’ll be at a loose end – for no particular reason. Silly. But I’ll be off-balance. There’ll be something missing, like that thing you know you’ve forgotten to bring and you just know you’ll need it when you get there.

Bonding with someone is so strange! Something to do with evolutionary imperatives no doubt – it creates a stable environment for raising children, or it prevents social upheaval in small communities by reducing sexual adventuring, something along those lines. But to me, the mere phenotype, the helpless puppet of my DNA, all I can do is drift around the kitchen feeling uninspired and hoping the week goes by quickly.

The upside, of course, is that when it’s all going as Nature intended and both of us are in the same time zone at the same time, it’s pretty damned good and I’m quite happy to hand over the reins of my soul to my genome.