I love these anonymous submissions. I feel like a spy working both sides of something, caught up in a cause I’ve got no idea the true nature of.
When I was reading this email, I couldn’t help but picture the writer sitting at a wobbly cafe table in the south of France somewhere, ripping cigs and cranking coffee. But then I thought about it a little more, and I figured it was written from a Panera bread in Indiana, with a nice cup of broccoli cheddar soup sitting on a sticky table. Then I thought, England, York perhaps, somewhere cold and grey.
All this is to say, I’ve got no damn clue. I would make a terrible spy. What I do know is that this is a beautiful piece, and it made me really sad in that way that makes me really happy sometimes. Nothing says Sunday like marital bliss. So, here ya go, ya toe lickers.
I’m probably never going to get through to Sir Knowitall Judge.
Although married to him, his wife didn't acquire the title. Her names Mrs Brainwash.
It troubled Mrs Brainwash a little bit before the baby arrived, but it was quite well knotted into Sir’s eccentricities. She’d always struggled to find the anxious-to-please sort of man very interesting—too much like her simpering self. Sir Knowitall Judge had a sort of healthy contempt people who willingly inhabited their own caricatures. He disliked the ill-informed impropriety of modern man. He also abhorred the ill-informed illiberality of primitive religion. And gracious, he certainly knew it all—chivalry, the reformation, the enlightenment (respectively: good, good, some good bits but).
The trouble with this headstrong fact bullet of a human being might glibly be termed autism, but any such feeble diagnosis begs the question of why he came to see the world the way he does.
And then it also begs the further question of what Mrs Brainwash must do, now the small bundle has arrived with functioning ears and a tiny, pliable mind.
Sir Knowitall Judge lives in Mrs Brainwash’s head already, as inner critic, scorning the very notion that there’s anything for Mrs Brainwash to worry about.
He isn't racist or homophobic. No. Not exactly... but this is where Mrs Brainwash’s other headfellows, the zeitgeist chorus, begin to wail discordantly. Then a little tiny squeak, possibly Mrs Brainwash herself, pipes up with a meandering soliloquy about love and connectedness and mercy. It trails off as the wailing crescendos.
And there’s another profoundly unhelpful presence there too, unspeaking the most silent violence on the market. “Hi, God, it’s me,” she mutters nervously. “Mrs Brainwash.”
It's quite a crowded house.
Seven years pass.
Still married, still crowded, inside and out; there are now multiple small brains in the house. And the Zeitgeist chorus has grown, Mrs Brainwash’s love for her children, and for Sir Knowitall Judge has also grown. I think perhaps even God has grown too. Her head is getting bigger, her heart is getting bigger, her soliloquy meanders on.
The brains are asking questions now. Sir Knowitall Judge answers them, and takes great pains to put them through their paces with letters and numbers and information. He dotes on them. They are his world. They amaze him. Just occasionally a snarky little thing pops out. Mrs Brainwash admonishes and counterbalances. The small brains don't seem to notice. But then the small brains know where Mrs Brainwash discreetly hid the cookies, so..
Seven years pass.
The biggest small brain is medium sized, and filled with love and optimism and fear, and, I suspect, a jumble of voices, much like her mother’s.
The middle brain is at the football with his dad. He isn’t as talkative as he used to be.
The littlest brain is helping Mrs Brainwash make a cake. Mrs Brainwash will later cut a very large slice for the middle brain and try to get him chatting freely through the crumbs and jam.
Mrs Brainwash cries and her tears flow straight into the cake batter.
Mrs Brainwash really loves her family.
Thank you, Agent 999 for your heart!
As always, send your tales of love and loathing to daisycashin@gmail.com
Fill me up!
Could be England - due to the phrase “at the football”. Dark and perfect for your stack.
I have been through a few marriages myself and this poem spoke to me saying various different things.