Ironing

Wednesday 22nd December

Day 245

Today we decide that Christmas will happen in our house as my sister is snowbound on their hill farm. I flurry around cleaning the house, making up beds, re-jigging the menus and trawling the isles in Sainsbury’s. Too late for a tree though. Or a holly hunting expedition.

Ironing always calms me and it takes a long time to smooth the creases out of our white Irish linen table cloth - a wedding present from my husband’s brother. And I wonder what it would take to mend the fissure which has slowly grown between them. A disease which hollows them out from the inside till only politeness is left - masking their longing for family.