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Show 717 doing Wishes. Subconsciously I waited for someone to spell me in the deepening r u t s of daily r e s p o n s i b i l i t y . I waited for someone to share the feelings and thoughts that Brian was unable to share with me. In the beginning, I had Jtfnever intended to share him at all, not even with his own mother. Now, I was almost certain that I was sharing him without my consent. Time, which had been the mothers' measurement of my f a t h e r ' s love, was also my yardstick, and our time together was decreasing inquality and quantity. Sometimes when I telephoned him at work and found that he wasn't in, my heart ached with a premonition of loss. I wondered if he was seeing someone else. I put my hands against my temples, trying to push away the image of him with another woman. I told myself I had i t coming, after the interlude with the r a p i s t . Then I could not accept even this r a t i o n a l i z a t i o n and told myself, instead, that^men are by nature polygamous, and I thought how much plural marriage had to recommend'it. To be able to lean on 'the other woman' for support instead of regarding her as a threat or a direct hit on one's i d e n t i t y -- what balm that would be! To arise with a gentle prodding to meet the challenge of being one's best self each day, instead of awakening to depression and starting breakfast with shrewish, suspicious words to try harder for excellence, not for the sake of narcissism but for the good of a l l . . . . t o join together as children with a loving parent, the r i v a l r y r e s t r a i n e d and kind, the limitations °nevil c l e a r . . . . Most of a l l , there would be such comfort in knowing t h a t the arms which held Brian - i f indeed, there "ere other arms to hold him - would hold me, too, in an eternal embrace of s i s t e r l y love. It would not be easy, it |