Sharing love and rituals
| VIEWS | ELEANOR MARGOLIS |
ELEANOR MARGOLIS EXPLAINS HOW DIFFICULT CHALLENGES INITIATED HER NEW PARTNER INTO HER HOME
“Via tragedy, Leo was fasttracked into my family”
In June last year, I went on a date. We got drunk and I kissed her outside Peckham Rye station. Just over one year later, I watched as she helped my sister shave my mum’s legs.
This would be a lot easier to write if “the shaving of the mother” was a Margolis family initiation ritual for new partners. The reality is less bizarre, but more harrowing. My mum had been in hospital, in intensive care, for about a month. In a bid for a glimmer of normality (in the ends, rather than the means), she asked – as her mobility was very restricted – if one of us would shave her legs. My sister arrived with a razor and got to work. My girlfriend, Leo, who seemed as unperturbed by the situation as the most hardened Margolis, offered to help. She ended up standing with one of those cardboard hat-shaped puke receptacles full of water, so my sister could clean the razor between shaves.