I, Priestess (3)

I, PRIESTESS (3)

My step-mother was a lazy cow. 

I'll tell you a tale from a far-away land; as much as I'm able. (Perhaps I still misunderstand.) 

As I remember:

A boy and a girl who'd yet to do harm; they were pretty and charming cack-handed disarming. Serious curious quite bright and still humorous; they met every day with a light-hearted optimism. (A characteristic that is life-affirming).

They loved each other, and their mother and father. The boy was my brother. The sister was me. If petitioned in the years prior to 1973 we'd have said we were happy as happy as can be.

So, here's to stupidy ignorance naïveté. (Will you wait while I crack open a good Pouilly-Fumé?)

My father and mother didn't much like each other. They quickly divorced on the grounds of infidelity. The result: bad-feeling, court orders and alimony. 

My father married again. 

I remember, clearly (every other Saturday), my father watching Grandstand: Benson and Hedges and a glass of whisky balanced precariously on the arm of his green-upholstered chair.

(We never ate properly while we were there.)

And, our step-mother was nowhere to be found. Each alternate weekend she faked 'flu and went to ground.

My brother and I spent our formative years playing poker for Tic-Tacs and cans of stolen beer.

He was cleverer than me, and his game was strategic. More often than not I was miserably defeated.

Hungry as hell, that's how I learned to be - in future years - such a gracious loser. After all, tell me.

How on earth do you fight back when you love the person who's beating you?