Lucky Dip Number 10
Click the CLOSE button at the end of the poem to return to the 'Lucky Dip' page.
Rhona's Love
She was a single mum and so absorbed in her autistic son that her email address used his name rather than her own. Why did Rhona listen so intently as I played Steph Macleod's track 'Man in the cold' with its haunting line 'It won't be long until I'm homeless too' while the others there took so little notice? When Rory tried to play a song in competition she quickly took her phone from him. The incessant rain had ceased by the next morning and we sat outside for coffee in that quiet rural setting where raindrops clung to long blades of grass and insects flitted from flower to flower in a maze of movement. She entertained us with a story of once working with young people and of her subterfuge to calm them when sailing in a storm for she had a way with words and there was humour in the story as she told it. It was later after dinner that she poured out her heart to just two of us with tears welling up in her eyes and when we rose from the table we embraced. I do not know why she had been homeless and in some way neither did she for she was a graduate and thought in despair 'how have I come to this'? I know it wasn't because of drugs for she had tried them just once and had seen creatures crawling out at her from the crevices. Carefully dressed while being interviewed at one time for a place to stay she had almost been rejected "for this home is not for people like you" they said to her and she collapsed on the floor in a flood of tears. Was it before then that she had felt more safe sleeping on the streets than in hostels where some people would inject you in your sleep? She went back to her home town after being advised she would be given more priority there but she had moved on before acquiring the first place she could call her own. A wave of relief swept over her as she locked her front door and felt safe for the first time. She had taken whatever jobs she could find and while working in a bar she met Rory's father who later "didn't want to know" and left her to bring up her autistic child alone. Rory was the centre of her existence and nor would she have wanted it any other way for "he teaches me" was all she said as in admiration I watched them together. This is a narrative with names changed and places disguised to preserve the trust she placed in us when sharing her story. But identified or not it is a story that deserves to be told for Rhona's love for her child was selflessly given while that for his father was so betrayed. |