Much Ado With My Manservant
It’s mid-afternoon in a stifling Sri Lankan heat, so hot that moving too much is unwise, yet I rise from my prostrate horizontal only-a-fan-makes-surviving-possible position on the bed and begin the ascent downstairs. I’m quiet, noiselessly shifting my weight step by step. I take a look down into the open plan room. The coast is clear for now. There’s no sign.
Sensing the opportunity I quicken slightly and make across the open floor. Many games of Grandmother’s Footsteps with drama students come to mind. Not now. Keep focussed. Stay grounded. One more flowing breath and I’m there. The kitchen is tucked away in the back corner of the house. I’ve almost made it.
As I reach the kitchen I glance across the hall to the open bedroom. A pair of feet protrude slightly from the edge of the bed.
He’s resting.
My senses sharpen. I shift all my attention to my breath, core, and feet. I make it to the kitchen and go straight for the kettle, unplug it and fill with water. Hopefully it won’t boil too loudly. I find the tea and strainer and a minute later…
I’ve done it.
But not yet. The cup’s hot, and I have to get back upstairs. I gamble on swiftness; even if he wakes now I’ll be half way to my room before he even notices. I’m up the stairs as if my dignity depended on it, and close the door.
Since arriving here my manservant, as I call him, has made me at least sixty cups of tea. This is the first from my hand.
Rosie’s father is the most divine angel of a man. He’s 75 years old, an ex-police officer, loves cricket (as does everyone here) and has been ‘assigned’ to me. Mainly his duties are to serve food which Rosie has prepared earlier, but they extend to making me breakfast, erecting a fan close to me wherever I am sitting, and putting a stool beneath me when I’m standing up putting on my shoes. He apologises in classic British comedy style fashion whenever he forgets something he feels he ought to have remembered, and says please far too often for me to remain comfortable.
During the weeks we’ve been together, we’ve become this classic comedic couple. There’s a lot of head wobbling. I find myself doing things to please him, like asking for more tea, and showing visible signs of pleasure and approval when sampling his spicy fish curry sauce in the morning with the toast.
Yet of the many relationships I’ve known, this one as stumped me. As soon as I move down the crease, my bails are off.
“Sorry” he says, as he quickly shifts, a wise old beaver, to plug in the fan he’d forgotten to at the start of the meal. “Everything ok?”
He always says this three to four times when he’s put everything on the table and I mindfully acknowledge three to four times back. It’s a practice for me to keep this stream of acknowledgements going without agitation. Yet this evening, after a diet of three curries a day for a fortnight (some wonderfully spicy) and while teaching teenagers in a school with hardly any working fans and in an incessant heat, I need to communicate to him that I’m not feeling very well at all…
The complexity of our relationship is not lost on me. His whole identity and need, for now, is shaped around serving me, and mine, after a few days of enjoying the newness, craves some autonomy and independence.
But it’s too hot to get to the supermarket, and even if I could, how could I ever start preparing food in Rosie’s kitchen? The whole family way of life here would be unhinged without good need.
I’m clearly here to be served, and I’d better get on with learning how to do that.
A delicious irony showers me as does warm rain. I’ve always taken care of myself. No-one else has really put food on the table, so to speak. I’ve recently spent a couple of long winters alone, allowing time to do it’s healing work, and so now I’m being unconditionally loved and cared for - and it’s simply all too much.
He brings me a small bowl of his ‘special sauce’ and we hold each other’s gaze. His eyes shine like warm blue diamonds, and I sense a deep sense of fulfilment in him. We dwell together for a few seconds in an unnameable presence. Perhaps I’m one of the few people who’ve met him there.
It’s always about love isn’t it? And love shows up in many different ways. Sometimes we have to suffer a little just to find it, and then, unexpectedly, there it is.
It was always there. It is always true.
We surrender to its embrace.
Yes, I’m the ex-colonial great white hope that’s will help his family kick start their guest house business, and yes he’s bound by his cultural shape of an identity-defining hospitality, yet, there it is. In giving we receive, and in receiving we give.
Love reveals itself when we are together.
