Baskets and Cups

10th February 2012

Home for three days now. If I close my eyes I can conjure that other place, that other country which inhabited me for more than two weeks. I can still feel the hot wind flinging white sand into my skin, the rolling sea breaker churning me into its surf like an egg in boiling water, the red black dust clinging to my toes after walking in a graveyard graced with arching blue gum trees. Africa - my other home.

I felt tumbled in the basket of my siblings while we journeyed back into the Africa of our childhoods - and talking about him, discovered we all knew a different father - holding the handle of our basket - and weaving another - his own. For days we tried to capture him in words - to write a tribute to him - something to read at his Thanksgiving service - but how do you squash all that exuberant life into ten minutes?

Something else on my mind......My husband in our freezing kitchen half an hour after we arrive home from Heathrow.

Let’s have some tea, I say.

He puts the kettle on. The cat weaves between us, unsettled, mewing. I start opening the pile of post. I notice my husband standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking puzzled.

What are you looking for? I say.

The cups, he says. Where do we keep the cups?

I point at the cupboard. He opens the one next to it. And then the right one - and takes the cups out.

I carry on opening the post but my skin is tingling. This is new. A seismic shift just happened - in a tiny question. He’s only supposed to ask me Who? or What? What is about meaning - which I know he’s losing. Where is about location. Like where the cups live. What if the time comes when he doesn’t know where he is?

Who will I be then?