She is undoubtedly a good woman.
She was looking out for me as I walked towards her front door. “It’s been so long,” she said, “that I wasn’t sure if I’d recognise you.” She’s rake thin. A child-woman. Tall with unaccountably thick ankles and feet encased in rather unexpected navy blue plimsolls, she wears her hair in a style akin to Shirley Temple with a row of curls along the bottom. A pink metal grip hold some of it away from her face. And her voice is child-like too – quiet, understated and high. I like her. There is goodness there. Her husband death three years ago doesn’t appear to have destabilised her. She is pragmatic, clearly. She keeps going. In her eighties now, she still walks everywhere, though she admits to finding the last bit of the hill up to her house challenging. Her thinness is due to her diet. “I’m gluten intolerant, so I live off toast and jam.” She can’t stomach fresh fruit or vegetables, she says. She bakes cakes with a special flour. “David used to say that it cost a pound a slice.” The cakes are for others. The students. She meets them at church and invites them round, one, an American even has a key. He stayed with her for months when he was recovering from cancer. “There’s plenty of room,” she says. Such openness puts me to shame. She talks about gathering for coffee after the service on a Sunday and used the word fellowship. It sounded so incongruous. She told me she loved to hear the liturgy. “The language is so beautiful,” she said. One of her daughters was training to be a priest. “I don’t hold with the use of the word priest,” she said, “to me Jesus is the only priest.” The daughter, the smiling one who lives a couple of houses along from her, gave up half way, the Welsh Church was too political for her. She’s a canon however and still ministers to others. “You’ve told me nothing about yourself,” she said, as I got ready to leave. As I said in reply, she is so much more interesting.
Bless her and keep her.
