14th June 2011 Tuesday
A dear friend comes round for a cuppa and delightfully we stretch it into lunch. I ask my husband to make us a jug of pink elderflower cordial, while I put the salads on the table.
He pours a long glug of the deep, magenta rose coloured syrup ( the one I made with jam sugar) into the jug and flips in half a tray of ice cubes.Then I watch in frozen horror as he adds a carton of prune juice from the fridge. Then the fizzy water. He stirs it with a long spoon. It is the color of weak mud. Or pussy cat sick.
Our friend stands in the bright hot garden enjoying the newly planted begonias the colours of sunsets. I stand at the sink and take some deep breaths. This could be my snapping point. I feel heartbroken sick at the loss of the elderflower, its unique perfume, the glorious short lived beauty of it - the point of it - it’s clear pink colour. Now it is brown. I say nothing to my husband.
‘It will taste delicious,’ whispers my friend.
But I can’t bring myself to drink it.
Later we laugh about it and I can see how it is exactly the same as the proverbial ‘not putting the cap on the toothpaste.’ It’s the little things that get you. I’m not heartbroken about my husband turning my pink elderflower brown. I’m shattered by the muddying of our lives now. Losing the roses. Living with prunes.
Except. Except today my friend helps my husband to see that he is a healer. And for me that has the perfume of an elderflower summer, the sound of ice chinking in a long glass. The taste of hope.
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