Breakfast Lunch and Supper

9th May 2011 Monday

For breakfast with my now retired sister, I slice strawberries, a quarter pineapple, an orange, a banana and mix them with the perfumed pippy juices of a granadilla. My husband has two slices of toast. He says he’s feeling loose-endish - not enough to do in the office. I practice my new resolution of not making lots of suggestions, of not feeling guilty that my day is full and busy, of not going into the scary future of what our life will be like when there is no office to go to. I get up and clear the plates instead.

Lunch is left-overs from Saturday’s non BBQ - cold baked salmon fillets with garlic mayonnaise and my nephew’s new potato and radish salad. I mash up one of the salmon pieces with lemon and cream cheese to take to my father who is eating fish and cold roast beef for his breakfast these days. We decide not to eat outside - the sky is full of black clouds one minute and clear sunny blue the next. My husband says he’ll go to the allotment.

My father walks very slowly to the car. He says he’s as weak as a kitten. His face is parchment pale. For once the doctor’s surgery is nearly empty and the nurse calls him in early. She pricks his finger and tests his blood - his warfarin levels are perfect. False alarm then - he was worried his change in diet would affect them. Back in his room I make him a cup of tea, wash up the dishes in the sink, kill a fly with a copy of the Guardian Weekly, and put away his clean washing. I leave him setting his clock to wake him up in time for his supper.

My husband doesn’t like to have a meal before he goes to his choir practice so I eat crisps and drink a glass of white wine, watching the last episode of ‘Exile’ on iplayer till he comes home. He makes us poached eggs on toast and we watch the News. When he says he’s depressed I notice how much I want to cheer him up, reassure him, offer advice. Play down my own terror of apathy. Instead of just listening.

‘What are you most afraid of?’ I ask him.

‘Losing you,’ he says.’ When you are stressed you try and control me, and everything else.’

I say I could change but he doesn’t believe me. So I feel like a butterfly, pinned to a board, my wings quivering.