The Tranlucent Cloud of Eric's Dilemma

    Mary is always worried when Eric gets away on one of his uncountable trips for bread and pleasures. Mary is his Mother after all and he gets away frequently. Now Eric thinks he can be Mary's therapist. Lured by the charms of his mid-life changing discoveries Eric is becaming a preacher of change and Mary loves to be his devout follower. She likes pretending to be in need of advice. She enjoys playing a woman at peace with a man. She reviews her special part for all those times' sake when she couldn't deliver as the wife she once was. Now Mary believes her fault in it to be the reason of all the sufferings she will yet have to face. She has no money either. At least not much. Edward left her with a modest pension after the divorce that felt like a long labour concluding thirty five years of pregnancy for the gloom of disilussions. Once mostly dependant on her husband's income now she is being condamned to her sons' whims of generosity. All due to Mary's memory for wrongdoings that brought her pain. She remembers them all and she cherishes them just the same. But she was broken apart many times... Never did her father fall short on generosity lecturing his family with the authotity of a horse whip. So she learned to obey. She cooked for nine. She worked the field since being six. She was even a servant at sixteen. The mouths were too many too feed. How she cared for the baron's son bedded with small pox!

      Mary met Eric's father at the shipyard. She was down here. He was up there. Drawn by innocence still smouldering thickly or by recklesness fortold she would fell for Edward's charms. His toungue of silver soon started to rattle for a daughter! It was during her pregnancy that she realized Edward's having already long been away with other women. The cheapest tobbaco and poisonous thoughts of the unforgiving and revange never left Mary during her debut pregnancy. Eric's brother's coming to this world removed Mary's hopes for happy life with Edward for good. Unable to divorce her husband for the pious that she was and for how much she cared for what they say, Mary felt forced into the cold of being a wife trapped in marriage and a mother of children rejected by a father longing for offspring of opposite sex. Whatever the waves brought she would face in only way familiar to her - fighting her husband's lies while beating the kids into integrity of which no capital failiures at school and regular church attendance were the elements of key. But this was how Mary loved her family. What Mary struggles with is the solitude occassionally peaced by companionship of her yet another boyfriend's. Eric is ten years younger then Mary. Yes, her boyfriend's name is Eric too but this one she calls Ricky. She already let Ricky go a number of times but he keeps coming back at her resolve's ritual softening. For the first time Mary enjoys cock. Besides Ricky knows his ways around the house as well. When the season gets right he likes to show the kind of a handy man he is always with his pint of bourbon well at hand. But Mary has no illusions. What she tries to share with Ricky is far removed from his capacity to comprehend the woman of such sensitivity. It is the perspective of a lonely life that made her practical. 

       Now Mary is blaminmg Eric for the ungreatful firstborn that he is, for his disrespect that she finds blatant and ourageous. This is where we get to Eric's true dilemma. Eric's father, Edward, grew up without his own old man whom he lost to tuberculosis at being himself just two. Naturally Edward had no clue what being a role model should really be about. Brought up without Edward's manly guidience through the honorable and tough, Eric has always been hovering in acrid fumes of doubt.  

-Is it really man's job to contain woman's nature regardless of the blood hierarchy? 
He lectures his own mother after all.
     Mary knows well about her son's therapies that's why she gets to enjoy being around him out of curiousity. Can the tiny steps he takes toward self-improvement bring herself closer to managing her own problems? But she really likes making people guilty of her own disappointments. Today, with Eric gone far for long and Ricky away for a few days Mary is finally reaching. Her melodramatic expression fed back with the usual biterness stands for the spirit in which Mary hisses to Eric her "all the best" at new year's wishing time.    

-Give up your fucking hope, son. You'll never change!