The Tangential Age

Her tiny feet totter along the precariously uneven ground beneath her as she struggles to balance two cups of tea in one hand and a plate of cakes in the other , I count the steps for her as I watch carefully- one, two ,three- yes, she's made is down into the garden safely. She is old now, small and shrinking, fading fast. Her bright colours of youth hiding in her memory.

The slanting right shoulder seems to struggle to keep the cakes level .I want to get up to help her ,but I don't want to give that phase reality yet. She puts the tea and cakes carefully down on the table then sees a robin . 'I got them some fat balls now where did I put them.' She shoots off faster than her feet can carry her, first in one direction, then the other , she halts briefly then carries on up the steps to the kitchen and in minutes returns triumphantly with the bird food . She blithely darts from one activity to the next, as if her very existence depended on it.

She joins us briefly to eat cake and have tea. Its such a beautiful day and the four of us sit contentedly together, my son, my brother, my mother and me. Bits of cake get stuck in the creases around her slightly twisted mouth, not twisted by the ravages of time, but the surgeons knife. I gently point this out and the pieces are swiftly dispatched.

She is a soldier who rarely complains and always performs her duties, a constant reliable bed rock for the rest of the satellites in the family to orbit. Where we gain our strength, our understanding of love and sacrifice. I watch her decline as I see my own inevitable future .