A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming. ~ Madeleine L'Engle
God, Mother and Ivo
"Your mother was a Methodist!" I declare, a bit triumphant at my newly-honed deductive reasoning skills.
Ivo looks nonplussed. "My mother wasn't religious but I suppose she was born Church of England. We attended the Catholic Church with my nanny in Venezuela and I visited a mosque once or twice in Baghdad with my Arab nanny. What in the world are you talking about?"
"Oh." I am at a loss. "E.P. Thompson's mother was Methodist. That's why he spent nearly 900 pages railing against Methodism in The Making of the English Working Class." There goes my theory.
Ivo looks thunderstruck – either because I have read E.P. Thompson or because I remembered what a classmate said about his upbringing or because he has absolutely no idea what I am talking about. Very likely all three, I think.
"I was trying to figure out your intense dislike of religion." And then, softer, "It was a joke, Ivo."
Ivo doesn't do jokes. He's far too serious for such things. I wonder if all scientists are this way or if this is just his own idiosyncratic nature.
But then – he wasn't always this way. Before, when we first met. On our honeymoon. The nuclear reactor outside his window that kept his euphoria in check while he wrote a reassessment of the geological structure of the Isle of Man. That was before he knew me, devil that I am. He was light and easy and happy then.
Before I ruined it all.
"I didn't know you lived in Venezuela and Baghdad," I say softer still.
"You never asked." Short and a bit cold. It's a reminder that I am so taken up with myself I have cared little for his existence.
"Tell me about it," the softness is genuine now, feeling. This is a side of Ivo I have never seen, the little boy of whom Isabel occasionally speaks. It must have been marvelous, knowing him then.
It's a side of him I desperately want.
"I hardly remember attending religious institutions. What's all this about?"
So much for intimate moments. "I told you, I am trying to reconcile your hatred of the Church and denial of God."
He slams his newspaper down. Now he's just irritated with me. "If I have expressed antipathy towards that institution it is because they are so determined to blinker their followers and deny scientific fact. Bishop Ussher once said that his God hid fossils in rocks to trick man."
"Didn't Bishop Ussher die in 1656 or sometime around then?"
"Not much has changed," he snaps.
Clearly I've lost the moment. But won the battle. He picks his paper back up but I can tell this talk has agitated him and he is having difficulty concentrating.
I eye him thoughtfully, chewing on my pen. "Your mother was a prude!" I'm just playing with him now.
"Right!" He stands abruptly. "I'm going in to the office."
I laugh quietly. It will make for a good existential comedy at any rate.