Elvis And The Echo of Me

14th November 2011 Monday

The house is cold when I come back from my father’s tonight. I pull on my Ugg boots (or rather my cheaper M & S version of Ugg) and several jumpers. My husband leaves for his choir evening and Elvis and I make supper. I turn up the volume of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’

I get so lonely I could die

and start chopping the red chillis and ginger. I take time out to dance to ‘Hound Dog’ -

You ain’t nothing but a hound dog

crying all the time

and strip off a jumper.

The leeks and peppers start sizzling in the pan and I shoot in broccoli florets and the slightly tough kernels of the last allotment sweetcorn, while Elvis croons ‘Love me Tender’

I’ll be yours through all the years

till the end of time.

I stir the pan, swirl in garlic and pak choi, soy sauce and toasted sesame oil and sway and stamp my boots on the kitchen floor to the rhythm of ‘Jailhouse Rock’

Let’s rock, everybody, lets rock.

And while the vegetables in my pan meld and soften into our supper and Elvis thrums in my belly, I hear the faint echo of a woman calling to me. A young woman dancing to her own tune. She hadn’t seen a catheter bag strapped to the thin white leg of her father, she couldn’t imagine explaining to her husband what a drainage survey is. She didn’t know it was the little details that break your heart - and sustain you too.

Like the smile on my husband’s face when he lifts a forkful of stir fried vegetables to his mouth and asks, Is this the sweetcorn I grew?

I say ‘Yes.’

And it’s enough for now.