29th December 2011 Thursday
Late morning - my husband and I walk along steep mud-rutted paths, wind roaring through the trees above us, rain spitting on our faces. I feel unsettled in this twilight time after Christmas - but still full up and humming with the last five days deep in the midst of my beloved family - all scattered back home now.
We played Monopoly a few times and word games - which my husband doesn’t participate in any more. A few Christmases ago we were playing a “Twenty Questions - Guess Who I Am?” game and at the end my husband asked ‘Who’s Mickey Mouse?’ He wasn’t joking. It was then I knew something was wrong - a slow bell tolling in my solar plexus. Today he asked me if I knew his uncle’s surname. And who is Charles Dickens?
Tonight I sit with my father in the downstairs lounge at his home. The chair is squashed up close to a big winking lighted Christmas tree. We count the tropical fish in the tank across the room. He says they look like elephants. I wonder what he’s seeing. I ask him about the visit he had yesterday from his great grandson who is six months old.
‘He’s the darling of everyone’s hearts,’ he says. ‘No-one can think straight in his presence’.
I know exactly what he means.
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