Various things happen when a woman reaches a certain age. There is a moment in her youth, when she unzips her make-up bag and wipes a sponge around a peachy cream in a silver compact, she loads a sable brush with beige powder and looks into the mirror ready to start her work. She scrutinises the face in the glass and pauses. She thinks "What is there to do?". She uses her thumb to flick the powder from the brush and the cosmetic dust explodes into the sunny morning light flooding the bathroom. She lets the water run warm from the tap, holds the sponge beneath it and the foundation runs in rivulets down the white porcelain and into the drain. She zips up the flowered make-up bag which came free in a glossy magazine she never read. Fresh-faced and perfect, she goes out into her day. There is another moment in a woman's journey when she unzips a larger and all together more expensive make-up bag. Rubbing at tired eyes, she fingers the duelling scar slashed across her cheek by the egyptian linen sheets. She gazes at her face and thinks: "Where do I start?" and then "How long is this going to take?"
I am at,indeed, past that "Where do I start?" moment at the vanity table. As the fine laughter lines begin to tell around my eyes and jaw, I begin to see my mother in my face. As she was when I was a child, plaiting my hair and tieing it with yellow silk bows, turning grey wool socks inside out, folding them back to slip over chubby feet. But as I begin to see my mother in my face, the real McCoy slips from me. I look at her carefully coiffed and greying hair, her hesitant walk and white stick and I think: "My mother is getting old. I really do not want my mother getting old. She never told me she would get so old. When exactly did that happen?" Now, instead of baking sultana cakes and folding vests, she wears elastic stockings on her legs, an electric whirli-gig seat climbing the staircase instead of her.
Last night she rang to say: "Daddy and I have had a little accident". It was late and I was lying, melancholy, on the sofa contemplating sleep. My husband again away in London. It was oblivion dark outside and the wind so strong off the sea that it had twice pushed open the frontdoor like a bar-room heavy. Eventually, I had snicked the lock to keep the rude wind where it belonged. "We wrote off the car" I heard her say, the gusts now knocking at the sash-window. "We're fine. I broke a rib, that's all, and your father is a bit bruised." They had been crossing a carriageway, given the nod by the driver of the car in the lane nearest to them but unseen by the driver of the car in the other lane. A classic accident. As she speaks, I play it out in my head. My father, ressured by the kindness of the other driver, slowly, oh so slowly, old man slowly, pulls out and across the road and whoomph. Slammed into by the other car, spun round and round in squealing, metal-shrieking fear. Twenty minutes on the side of the road waiting for the paramedics; panic attacks under a yellow airtex sheet in a metal framed bed in the accident and emergency cubicle. "It could have been worse," she said, cheerily. "Because I'm blind, I was relaxed when the car went into us and everyone was very nice." I should have been there. I should have draped them in foil blankets and given them sweet tea, held their soft papery hands and told them they were OK. I do not want them to go out any more. I want them to live in a wardrobe, safe from the mishaps of old age. I will bring them food in plastic trays, a torch and a wind-up radio. I will keep them safe from harm.
I am at,indeed, past that "Where do I start?" moment at the vanity table. As the fine laughter lines begin to tell around my eyes and jaw, I begin to see my mother in my face. As she was when I was a child, plaiting my hair and tieing it with yellow silk bows, turning grey wool socks inside out, folding them back to slip over chubby feet. But as I begin to see my mother in my face, the real McCoy slips from me. I look at her carefully coiffed and greying hair, her hesitant walk and white stick and I think: "My mother is getting old. I really do not want my mother getting old. She never told me she would get so old. When exactly did that happen?" Now, instead of baking sultana cakes and folding vests, she wears elastic stockings on her legs, an electric whirli-gig seat climbing the staircase instead of her.
Last night she rang to say: "Daddy and I have had a little accident". It was late and I was lying, melancholy, on the sofa contemplating sleep. My husband again away in London. It was oblivion dark outside and the wind so strong off the sea that it had twice pushed open the frontdoor like a bar-room heavy. Eventually, I had snicked the lock to keep the rude wind where it belonged. "We wrote off the car" I heard her say, the gusts now knocking at the sash-window. "We're fine. I broke a rib, that's all, and your father is a bit bruised." They had been crossing a carriageway, given the nod by the driver of the car in the lane nearest to them but unseen by the driver of the car in the other lane. A classic accident. As she speaks, I play it out in my head. My father, ressured by the kindness of the other driver, slowly, oh so slowly, old man slowly, pulls out and across the road and whoomph. Slammed into by the other car, spun round and round in squealing, metal-shrieking fear. Twenty minutes on the side of the road waiting for the paramedics; panic attacks under a yellow airtex sheet in a metal framed bed in the accident and emergency cubicle. "It could have been worse," she said, cheerily. "Because I'm blind, I was relaxed when the car went into us and everyone was very nice." I should have been there. I should have draped them in foil blankets and given them sweet tea, held their soft papery hands and told them they were OK. I do not want them to go out any more. I want them to live in a wardrobe, safe from the mishaps of old age. I will bring them food in plastic trays, a torch and a wind-up radio. I will keep them safe from harm.
