Things

Oh dear, I’ve misled you into thinking that I'm Anne of Green Gables. Or maybe I mean Pollyanna. My ten happy things are indeed aspects of life for which I am, and ought to be, grateful. And they do make me happy. But I’m actually a bit melancholy these days from time to time. The trouble with having nice children who have always been sweet and loving and funny is that they leave such a void when they go. But would I have preferred rude, charmless offspring? Or not to have had them? No.

I suppose it’s just the sadness that inevitably comes with life. Willy Loman complains that the mortgage is paid off and “there’s no one home”, and his wife Linda says, “Life is a casting off. It’s always been that way”. I’m amazed at the insights that Arthur Miller had into getting old and feeling unfulfilled – and he wrote “Death of a Salesman” when he was 33.

If this is what I’m like while we still have sweet, loving, funny Daughter 2 at home, what am I going to be like when she goes? You won’t want to read my blog then. And of course she must leave and make her own life too in due course.

Three nights a week I go up and sleep in my mother’s house to keep her company. I’ve done this for over two years, since before my father died. She’s 87 now and very active for her age, but she does tend to pour out her worries on to me, which is quite understandable but not cheering. I never particularly want to leave my own house, with Mr Life, Daughter 2 and the catlets, and set out into the dark to hear her views about bankers and her anxieties about her roof.

And yet, and yet, and yet… there are good things too, and we’re warm and well and fed and neither too hot nor too cold. I need to count my blessings. I know this. And most of the time, I’m counting away. Life's all right really.