A Different Normal

Daffodils in a December that is too warm....

it doesn't feel quite right......but nothing is as it used to be.....

Camellias.... and too soon surely

snowdrops 

at Knight's Hayes in that in-between time after Christmas and before NewYear.

Vaulted symmetry at

 

Wells Cathedral in Somerset.

Tree Cathedral in Exeter, Devon.

I just do normal things today....

buy extra large eggs in the farmers' market....

share the comfort of coffee and hugs with glorious women...

stand at the kitchen counter with a stick of celery and a smokey oily wedge of salmon staring at the geraniums still flowering in my winter garden....

find a clip-on plate guard in the shop for people with disabilities. I don't pay VAT on it as now I can give a name to the illness - 

the  long mouthful of the illness.

MULTIFOCAL MOTOR NEUROPATHY WITH CONDUCTION BLOCK

 which leaves a confused taste on my tongue.

I want it to be short and simple and clear cut -

 this is what it means

this is what you have to do

this is what you can expect.

Instead I have only more uncertainty

more ifs ....if  the treatment works ....if it doesn't

then what?

Should I sell the car or not? If he could drive again....

The passion to KNOW hurts more than any awful future I can imagine.

 But there is nothing to know. So at half past three I drive to The Mede and collect Robin from his day with the lovely carers and the old men and we stop at Waitrose to buy Omega 3  Flaxseed oil ( good for the nerves) and to stretch the time into the long dusk.

Every day he asks me,

Anything to do tonight?

I usually say,

We could make a cake.

Tonight I wake him up before supper in time to make the cake. But he says,

 Could  we do it tomorrow?

I've already mashed the  two overripe bananas so I make it anyway while he sleeps on. I put a pizza in the oven at the same time - one I assembled earlier - using left -over puff pastry from  the Christmas en croute, the base smeared with pesto and then layers of water bomb tasteless tomatoes, spring onions and orange peppers, garlic chips and the grated heel of a slab of Manchego cheese.

Later we sit on the sofa with trays and with his Nork he pushes the salad leaves and the black olives against the clip on plate guard and gets them up easily so he doesn't have to ask me to help him.

This is my normal now. It will be a different normal soon...but I don't need to know that as the clock ticks to midnight.... and in this silent moment nothing is wrong.