Stroking or Stroke?

13th October 2011 Thursday

A Random Blog Day

I wake in the night with a tummy pain - did I undercook the borlotti beans? The nearly full moon is as bright as a car headlight in the early hours darkness.

This morning my husband says he’ll come with me to the market but winces when he jolts his ankle carrying heavy bags full of veggies - and he limps the rest of the day.

When I bring my father back from the clinic he says he’s so tired he will sleep for the half hour till he has to go down for lunch. His door bell rings.

'I’ll send them away - whoever it is,' I say.

'No, I don’t want to lose my friends,' he says.

His visitor says, 'I have half an hour to wait for my bus so I thought I’d come to see you.'

He talks about his bees and how it hasn’t been a good year for honey. I can see my father is white with weariness but he encourages him, asks him questions he knows the answers to. I strip his bed and put the roast beef in the freezer, willing his friend to leave.

On the way home I stop at my mother’s grave and cut the straggling grass edges with a pair of kitchen scissors. And polish the brass plaque with Silvo but it doesn’t make it shiny. The bunch of artificial sweet peas are splattered with dry grass cuttings - surprisingly sticky and resistant to my attempts to clean them with wet tissues.

I put the big bowl of garlicky roasted tomatoes on the table for lunch. The pussy cat squeaks, winding round my legs.

My husband says ‘I’ll comb him,’ picking up the brush. ‘I mean brush him - but I want to say brush him with emotion....

‘Stroke him?’ I ask.

‘Yes, but I can’t remember the f******* word,’ he says.

He looks like he wants to break something.

I wonder if he knows any of the other meanings of stroke - like the rupture of an artery of the brain. Or a sudden unexpected occurrence. Like losing your vocabulary. Out of the blue.