jmgoyder

The first time she cried in front of me, I didn’t see it coming and I wasn’t prepared. Inna was in her 80s, she had broken her hip before I met her, she suffered bouts of pneumonia and had to be hospitalized on occasion and she was sometimes a tiny bit confused.

It was after her shower which I had learned how to help her with. She was standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a towel around her, staring at her reflection and frowning at what she saw. I was used to her frown, to her sternness, to her abrupt frankness, so my teenage heart did a somersault when she began to weep. “I am so old and so ugly,” she said through her tears and I gave her the first of many hugs. “No, you are beautiful, Inna – you are beautiful,” I said.

Almost immediately, she broke free of my embrace, wiped her eyes and ordered me to get her clothes. I did so immediately, my heartbeat fluttering in a way it never had before.

I adored her. I admired her stoicism. I wanted to be like her.

The Aga was fuelled by kerosene, not wood, and it was Husband’s pride and joy. He had only had the Aga for about a year when I first came into his life.

Inna said I had to be very careful with it and she showed me how to use the hot plate (on the left), the simmering plate (on the right), the hot oven (at the top of the bottom) and the slow oven (at the bottom).

Here is a picture of what it looks like now – no different from what it looked like then, because, over the decades, Husband has polished it and trained Son and me to do the same!

I had never seen such a beautiful thing so when Inna suggested we make some grapefruit marmalade on it, I readily agreed. She showed me how to chop the grapefruit up into chunky bits the way Husband liked it and she showed me how to proportion the sugar and water and we put it on the hot plate to boil. Inna didn’t warn me that it might boil over when I settled her down for her afternoon nap.

It boiled over and so did Husband when he came in from the dairy. This put a slight halt to our romance!