My
beautiful mama (how can this be?) is 87 now. She is still powerful and
determined, something of a force to be reckoned with, and she always does her
best. It has occurred to me that if the day comes when she can no longer manage
independent living, and needs to move in with us, it could happen rather
suddenly. We’d need to be ready with a plan.
When
you come through the front door of our house, you pass our living room on your
left, a second smaller room (still on your left) then you come to the kitchen.
Beyond the kitchen is a room where in the old days the washing copper was
housed. On our watch it has become Alice and Hebe’s art studio where they make
their stained glass and ceramics, and refurbish church statues and bind books
and all the other things they do for a living and for love. Set into the studio
is a little shower room that also has a toilet in it, and there is an external
door leading onto a small raised deck for sitting out in the garden. The studio
had the boiler (US, furnace) in it.
I’ve
often thought that if it were not for the eerie green light from the boiler
controls and the bright blue light on the boiler itself, that studio could make
a lovely self-contained bed-sit, with its own ensuite shower room, external
door and garden deck.
Meanwhile,
above the studio, Hebe’s bedroom housed (besides Hebe) the colossal hot water
cylinder associated with our solar tubes. Its cupboard spoiled the look of the
room and severely limited her storage space.
Then
above Hebe’s room, in the attic, lives the inverter for the solar tubes, which
we are meant to check regularly but never have, on account of it being up in the
attic with no floorboards and no light. And having no idea what we were meant
to be checking on it anyway.
So
this brainwave came. If we created a kind of engine room up in that attic,
having a good access hatch with a proper stout retractable ladder, we could
move the boiler and the hot water cylinder up there. Then we could have the
inverter and all the other electronic solar gubbins checked periodically, Hebe
could have her whole room, not shared with a massive water tank, and the studio
could remain as it is but be converted in its use to a bedroom for my beautiful
mama in a flash, should the need arise. So we actioned this idea.
While
we were planning and mulling over all this, my eldest daughter Rosie and her
partner Jon were trying to sell their house and move to a bigger one that can
accommodate their brass instruments, harp, drum kit, conductor’s stands, sheet
music and all the etceteras that go with being professional musicians.
At
the same time, our household went through a huge wave of minimalism.
There
came a point when we were all sleeping on the floor (à la minimalisme, suits us
fine), but had one upstairs room entirely full of furniture (mostly beds!)
waiting to go on to Jon and Rosie’s new big house when finally their contract
exchange materialised; we had a bed in the second downstairs room in case
someone we know who is in prison needs to come and stay when he’s out on
weekends, we had scaffolding all round the back of the house (oh, I forgot to
mention; our roof has been leaking badly), and we had a swarm of carpenters,
heating engineers and electricians on every floor of the house.
But
that point passed. Now we are at a new stage. Here is our situation as of today.
This
morning I had to take my car across to Jon and Rosie’s to secure a parking
place for their removal van which comes TOMORROW (whoop! whoop!), but I had a
flat tyre so spent four hours getting that sorted out. The sorting out threw up
the information that I had two litres too much oil in the car (we don’t know
how this can have happened) and two other perished tyres, which had to be
changed. But after a lot of time and money had flown under the bridge, the car
did end up outside Jon and Rosie’s place, keeping a space for the lorry of
tomorrow.
Yesterday
Rosie’s dad brought round the drumkit and Rosie’s concert harp (very large) and
those are now stored in the back room with the bed (locked, if you are a
burglar reading this) for the possibly emergent prisoner. Jon and Rosie’s sofa
is in the living room and the rest of their furniture trembling on the brink of
leaving our house. That lorry is
booked for the day after tomorrow at midday, though the musical instruments
will be taken separately by someone who understands and loves them.
And
the building work? Ah, well. We have ripped out casing where pipes were and
unfinished works on every floor, the downstairs shower has been decommissioned
because the newly pressurized water system was incompatible with it, the roof
was finished ten days ago but the scaffolding is still there, our furnace has
been out of order for a week – the solar tubes are no longer working and we
have no central heating but we can at least heat the tank by immersion heater.
And where are the builders now? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou
hast thy music too . . . they are on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, drowsed
with the fume of poppies, while their hook spares the next swathe and all its
twined flowers. (No, I haven't gone mad. Keats Ode To Autumn) At any rate, they
are not here. We have waited in, but no luck. Nary a glimpse of a builder.
Gone.
Well,
no doubt they have got embroiled in some new big job, and we shall see them
back when they have lulled some other helpless soul into a false sense of
security . . .
At
least when they are here, they work
hard and work well – they are most excellent tradesmen. Except that day when
they had a massive row and the foreman sacked the carpenters; still, we won’t go
into that.
But
what this all made me think of is the passing of time – the inexorable onward
roll.
How
only a short while ago this building work was just a notion, now it’s half
done.
How
we waited what seemed an eternity for Jon and Rosie’s exchange to go through,
and now tomorrow is moving day.
How
for decades we in our household all thought a bed to be a non-negotiable
necessity – and now all of us sleep happily on the floor.
How
this house is in one heck of a mess right now, but the day after tomorrow the
stored furniture will be on its way, no doubt next week the builders will
finish off and the scaffold be dismantled, and we’ll be able to clean up again.
But
then, once all that lot’s rolled through, Jon and Rosie’s new house will need
some sorting out, so we can’t all relax yet.
And
then there’s my beautiful mama – once so vital and strong, herding sheep,
walking dogs, growing all our vegetables, raising chickens – and now we are
looking towards the day when she may need to be under our wing here, when her
life is ending.
At the close of next week I have a deadline for a book – I’m scrambling to get it completed
in amongst all the other things going on. But once that’s put to bed, there’s
another book to be written – the next in the Hawk & Dove series. And after
that? Who knows?
And I was thinking, isn’t there just always some emergency, some disaster, some
work in hand, something to be done and something to rejoice in? It all seems so
important, and you never know where the money or the time or the energy will be
found, but somehow you get there, somehow you do.
But
one day, it will all be over. ‘Come in number 5,214,837, your time is up.’ And when
that moment comes, and I look back, what will I care about? Not, I think,
whether the plastering got finished this week or next week, or if we were three
days or seven or twelve without central heating. I don’t think it will matter
too much if I got the book done for the deadline or it came in the following Monday.
None of those things that seem so important now will matter any more. But the
kindness, the love; the way we all pulled together and helped each other; the
way we rallied round, and laughed about it, and pitched in with some money and
helped with the cleaning up. Just the kindness. That’s the thing, at the end, I’ll
remember the most.
