Being with... a genius?
One grey rainy morning while preparing two oatmeals for breakfast, stirring aromatic oats with brown sugar I turned back from the cooker to ask if he wanted bananas in his porridge. Always concentrated on self development he said "sure" without even getting into the idea of having bananas in his oatmeal, because he was too concentrated. I put two steaming bowls of otameal decorated with banans on the table. "It's ready" I said, "hope you like it, I added brown sugar". After several seconds he finally moved his laptop to the side and said "Oh, I like maple syrup in it instead".
35mm film by tina_levyz. Analog photography, Shanghai.
"I added just a bit so you can still have syrup in it as well" I said, kissed him on a cheek and passed maple syrup. It was nice having breakfast together, even though couple of days ago he wanted to cook pancakes for me. If only not these all projects which have to be finished.
It is not easy to be with a genius. He is not a genius, but he is always selfdeveloping, he is always striving.
It doesn't mean they are not loving, it doesn't mean they are not willing to give. They do need a woman to take more steps towards them while they are still thinking about something else while making theirs 3 instead of 5.
Pushkin's wife was the one helping him to keep space in his head for writing, while she was taking care of everything else.
Elsa Einstein was the one and only wife taking care of him like a mother while he was working on his theories.
Maybe it's women's fault to take a mother position and accept complete absense of their belowed. Not physical absense, but mental absense is the worst while the person is taking physical space but is never actually there. That's why in most cases texting brings people closer than randomly shared bed at night, because emotional connection can be much stronger than physical.
Sofia Tolstaya was almost a servant to her husband, rewriting his manuscripts. A loving servant who put her life for genious' benefit.
Anna Dostoyevskaya kept Fyodor away from gambling and losing himself in alcohol.
All these women remained as unnoticed shadows of famous works of their genius men, unseen, in many cases even unknown.
There is an explanation to this without further romanticising unions of this type. Underloved women were trying to deserve attention, love, completely losing the line where taking care becomes serving. These women kept fighting for men who were completely absent and unable to invest in their families.
Almost a century ago by results of war, lack of men, female position in society this type of relationships can be justified. But today, in the age of equality, even though women naturally can't be equal to men, chosing equality in loving unions can be a quite big and strong step towards achieving certain level of emotional equality progress.
We finished our oatmeals and I put empty bowls into the sink saying"thank you for breakfast, I have an appointment soon, so I need to hurry". Then I turned back to look at him and hear what he would say to that. He wasn't present anymore.