I confided in my daughter as she was about to set off to work at 'the office' and I thought there might be some possible weirdness. The trigger for my unfortunate remark had been that I had just discovered that my husband had asked some people that I really don't like to stay for this weekend. He had mentioned asking them last week and I had said absolutely not as then I would have to clean and cook and look reasonably all right (out of pride) and anyway I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. That seemed clear enough but apparently not as he had then asked them.

'What do you think?', I said to her. 'Well, you were a bit over the top, I mean , you hardly need to get divorced but he was totally out of order'. It is so funny when you end up asking your children to sort out your life. The other two don't like it but she is very straightforward and practical and as the middle one I think she feels it gives her some status. She went in to work and obviously 'spoke' to Daddy, as soon afterwards he rang up, charmingly, and said he was going to buy expensive delicatessen food and bring it down so I didn't have to cook tonight. And the 'separate lives' etc. was as if it had never been. But it is there under the surface.

The problem is that things often end up all right after someone has 'spoken' to Daddy. That is one of the reasons that I had thought of very low level Asperger's syndrome. He so regularly and paranoidly gets the wrong end of the stick and when you go over whatever the situation was and explain what everyone REALLY meant etc. he is always surprised. The children used to joke that all his wrinkles came from a permanent expression of surprise at the world. I know that probably some massive percentage of academics have borderline Asperger's syndrome and it is no big deal. In fact if I knew I was right it would be worse as then he would have an excuse for behaving badly and I couldn't even criticise.

I am quite glad that I was moved to write all that depressing stuff as it obviously gives a 'rounder' picture. But I will leave it now before both my commenters feel that they would prefer to slip quietly away to somewhere more cheerful.
- posted by Iris @ 1/30/2004 01:27:00 PM comment