Is Brie A Fish?

5th January 2013 Saturday

My ribs ache from coughing but I make a stab at normality today. Wear clothes instead of pyjamas, put on mascara, eat breakfast at the table with my husband. We start to make a list of THINGS TO DO IN 2013. I suppose we used to call them goals. We talk about holidays and money. My husband writes down all the countries he wants to visit. He says he doesn’t want to die with regrets that he never went to New Zealand or Japan. Even if he won’t remember the names of the places he’ll remember the experience. I say I don’t want the experience of not having enough money for a proper care home for him.

Because that is the difference between us. He wants to buy an experience now. I want to save the money - to buy the time of someone who may need to feed him and dress him in the future  - not a very far away future, not an 85 year old future - because I don’t know if I’ll be able to bear to do it myself.

So there is nothing normal for me in our conversation today. I can’t find any pleasure in making plans. We break out for a very late baguette lunch in a cafe by the sea. Driving home the sky is streamed with gold and pink behind an abandonment of haphazard cloud. Mozart’s Magic Flute fills the car with glory and tears - his and mine. Mine are for my mother and my father. And because I’m sitting next to the man I love who doesn’t know that Brie isn’t a fish.

This is my normal now....  what I’m trying to escape from. I just keep forgetting.