I am a fusspot. I fuss too much. I want perfection, order and control. He is forbearing. He doesn’t have the same need as I have but he tolerates mine. But sometimes, just sometimes he snaps. It is fair enough. I push him too far. I know this. He loses his temper, I slink off, a dog with a its tail between its legs. I am sorry. He is still smouldering. We do make up. I am sorry and he forgives me. It will happen again. I try to temper it. He doesn’t know all the times I keep my mouth shut. How can he?
It struck me yesterday as I walked how much this arthritis in my hip has sapped my strength. It’s a slow drip sort of discomfort with real pain at times. My walking is slow, measured and a bit of a chore to be honest, yoga practice is the same. I just keep going on, what else can I do? And I am mindful that an operation to alleviate it is not a promise. It may not happen, and if it does it may not make it better, it might even worsen it. I have to accept it all. He told of how the Cambrian News were reporting on the orthopaedic department’s trial with a robot who mends hips. He was excited, I am more, what is the word, sanguine or is doubtful? I don’t want it but I want to feel stronger.
I caught a glimpse of a group of people leaving C block last night. They were clearly going out for supper (or at least that is what I imagined was the case) for one of the women had a bouquet of flowers in her hand. It prompted me think about when we used to do the same. I never looked forward to it, nor indeed enjoyed it much when there. I loved the conversation but there was much awkwardness around food, and being tired and wanting to be home and safe. The book I’m re-reading had a paragraph where the main protagonist had just seen a opera and it standing in the foyer afterwards watching the audience mill about getting taxis, putting on coats and so on. She recognises that she suddenly feels very lonely. How I know that feeling. Too well. I’ve been to those theatres, those occasions where the drama is over, the dream is spent and it is cold and wet outside and there’s that journey home….
Do I mind this now interior life? Do I miss the metropolis? He mentioned a review that was in the paper about the new Vermeer exhibition in Amsterdam. He wanted to go. Shall we? he asks. Oh, yes, now that I could and would do. Shall we?
I heard his phone go after I’d got into bed. The caller’s voice was loud, cheery. It was one of our elderly neighbour’s son calling to ask if he could go down and turn off her TV as she couldn’t do it. He is always so obliging. I call him the boy scout sometimes. He loves to please, to be of help. And I adore him for it. Don’t be too long, I call out. He is away over 15 minutes. It isn’t just her TV apparently but another gadget that amplifies her phone for her. Fixing it is beyond him. She uses his appearance as an opportunity to have a moan. And why not? This time its about the carers’ practice of giving her a bed bath each morning. At my age! she says to him. What do I want with a bed bath every day? I can see her point, though I’d want it. Her body is old, fragile and it must abhor all that jostling and rough use of wet flannels. They mean well. And her indignance mustn’t make their job any easier. But they seem kind. I’ll never forget watching one of them brushing her hair so lovingly.
Ah, the kindness of strangers, like the artist on Instagram offering me those encouraging words. He didn’t have to.
It’s not real, he says whenever I get too caught up in a drama that we are watching. I know, I know this but I cannot help being sucked in. As I have been with Sanditon 2. It’s a terrible mish-mash of Austen-esque melodrama, flying off into ludicrous plot-lines but I am still caught up, particularly in Esther’s plight with the threat of Edward’s attempt to gaslight her. He is too much. A real arch-villain with his raised right eyebrow and smirks. And then there’s the artist – a beautiful man but again stretching the bounds of reality. Ah me. What a show. I want to end but I also don’t. Rather like life after all.
They’ve fixed the water leak on Llanbadarn Road, finally.
I endeavour each morning, when that darkness is most heavy, to concentrate on the small, the sensual and the pleasurable. There’s the rather saccharine but not unpleasant smell of my banana-scented bubble bath; there’s the bath itself, slightly hot as it thaws away the cold of me; there’s the music from Radio 3, sometimes divine other times not so, and the warm sweetness of my breakfast baked apple. Yesterday it was the taste of Assam tea. I usually drink Lapsang Souchong – I love that hint of smoke – but yesterday I tried the Assam. It was dark, rich and strong. Lovely. I thought of her and the pot she usually has of it in her garden first thing. She takes such care of things – in her slow, measured way. She isn’t a rusher like me. I think of her often when I want to be more mindful. I fall short, always.
There’s no doubt that my exterior world (and indeed, my exterior self) has shrunk, contracted, become smaller. And I don’t really know how I feel about this. Have I made it happen? Do I feel happier for it? There is much that I miss. Like travel or should I say escape? And the joy that comes with that – like those first steps on the Millennium Bridge as we make our way towards the Tate Modern and London in all its murk and glory pans out on both sides. Or being in the hot sun of Italy and Spain and lazing on chairs or sunbeds like lizards. Or just being on the move anywhere but here where all my fears and dreads live and flourish. And yet, here is where I have chosen to be and the grounding and my bed and my love are what keep me safe and sane. And I am grateful, profoundly so, to be fed, dry, warm and safe. And there are small joys, like that smell of toast yesterday morning when I went down to collect the parcel outside the front door, or the aroma of coconut from the tea lights I was burning at breakfast. I drink these in. I must and do. I know how fortunate I am and how sorrowful so many others are. I feel for them, always.
They’ve taken such a long time in coming that I wasn’t sure if we’d see any blooms, but they’ve started. A soft, white form is beginning to show on one and a tip of the same on another. I think you are supposed to grow them outside. I have them on the windowsill in the shared hallway downstairs. It was a blatant act of selfishnessness, I wanted to see them. The hyacinths have gone. What a pleasure they were while they lasted. The smell was luscious. I’m not sure if I will keep the bulbs for another year, though I do hate to discard anything with the potential for life. We shall see. For the mean time I will leave them where they are.
I’m struggling to work out why it is that I find her difficult. I suppose it is something to do with her lack of acknowledgement when I send her what she requires and the hoops I have to go through to get her to respond. Is is just about ego though? Is there more to my struggles with her than feeling like I am unimportant to her? After all, do I really care what she thinks? There’s a sharpness to her that challenged me from the start. She blows hot and cold. It’s a microcosm of that other relationship in which I was also an outsider. I tried too hard, I suspect, but there was no script. As there isn’t with this woman. Must I just accept that we do things differently? Is that the way toward grace?
Life, I’ve come to realise is mostly a cobbled-together affair. There is nothing clean, neat or orderly about it. Ah, we make grand plans when we are younger, imagining that everything will be seamless and smooth and oh, so beautiful. It is not, and can never be so. We are messy beings, internally and externally and we encounter others who are equally so. It makes me sad. I cannot make it all better. I cannot solve things. I cannot make peace with her, or with her or her, or indeed, him. I don’t have any answers just this day to day trying, of picking up dust and fluff and trying to make it all pristine. He is the only thing that makes sense, that sometimes can be pure beauty to me. The rest makes me want to weep. I don’t understand why there has to be so much pain, so much despair, so much conflict. Do we all carry the germs of it all inside and the outer world is just a reflection of that inner fighting? I don’t know. I know less and less. We do what we can, fail and then fail better.
It was a word she used to describe the clearing up of a mystery. He said it was the wrong word. I think it might be the right word to describe what seems to be happening to Smoker (2). Or so it seems to me as I catch glimpses of him through his venetian blinds. I try not to snoop. I look for his light to come on, in his bedroom first and then his kitchen downstairs. It’s usually about 6.30am. I see him stretched across, or on the edge, of his unmade bed (usually black sheets) reading his phone. He doesn’t seem to smoke out of the window anymore. Perhaps he has given up and my appellation for him is no longer apposite. Anyway, his room, and indeed his clothes and hair are becoming distinctly disorderly. There are dirty clothes left on the floor, the clothes rack is still up and still heavy with those perpetually drying clothes. Is it all a sign of unhappiness? Is he missing his children, or is he just lost? Or is it all none of my business? I feel an affinity with him, though I don’t know him at all. And the narrative I spin for him is all mine. I hope I am wrong. Truly.
