jmgoyder

After a couple of days of intense sleepiness, Ants was wide awake and alert today due to a visit from some favourite family members. It was magic!

Later, when it was just Ants and me, he mumbled something resembling “marriageable” and this was our conversation:

Me: What do you mean by marriageable?

Anthony: Well you know….

Me: So do you want to get married?

Anthony: Yes.

Me: But we ARE married!

[At this point Ants gave me one of his half-smiles]

Anthony: Yes, I know that.

Me: So do you want get married again?

Anthony: Not sure about the hundreds.

Me: Hundreds of what?

Anthony: Cameras.

Me: What? [I show him the TV remote]

Anthony: Yes, that’s it … for the wedding … hundreds ….

Me: So let me get this right: you want another wedding?

Anthony: Well, I have thought of it from time to time.

[So anyway I cracked up laughing at this typically Anthonyesque punch-line which of course got him smiling too.]

Me: I am not going through all of that rigmarole again, Ants – I hate wearing a skirt!

Okay, so recently I have begun to get a bit lazy with my visits to the nursing home to see Ants and other residents who I have become fond of. But, even a single day’s reprieve takes its toll in terms of guilt. Yes, I can do my own thing and not go into town, and be fine with that. But, after two days, it’s a bit like a ‘cold turkey’ situation. I miss Ants too much; I ring up when I can’t come in, to make sure he is okay. Most of the carers know now to tell him I will be in later.

In the past, Ants and I never had a hand-holding, smoochie-whoochie relationship; we were always quite restrained. Now, he holds my hand tightly (and the other day when he was unwakeable, he gripped my mothers’ hand when he was asleep – yes, I am a teensy bit jealous haha!)

Of course I will marry him again but only in a let’s pretend way. Why do I visit this man of mine so often, despite his illnesses? Because I love the way he loves me and vice-versa; pretty simple really.

During the two years that the young girl worked for the dairy farmer’s mother, she learned how to cook, and salmon mornay was a favourite dish. Melting the butter, whisking in the flour with a fork, adding the milk, getting the bones out of the tinned salmon … it was all rather magical for the young girl.

Eventually, she became quite adventurous in the kitchen and one afternoon, while the dairy farmer’s mother was having her afternoon nap, she cooked fish cakes for their dinner. It was the first time she had cooked anything without the dairy farmer’s mother’s supervision and she was very excited as she followed the instructions of a recipe book found in a secret drawer in the kitchen table.

It was a disaster! The fish cakes were thin and charcoaly instead of being plump and crispy. The dairy farmer didn’t say anything as his mother rose from her chair and declared that the meal was “DIABOLICAL!”

The young girl fled to the back veranda bathroom to cry out her humiliation, the dairy farmer put his mother to bed, and that was that … until the young girl accidentally allowed the simmering grapefruit marmalade to boil over the pot and into the precious Aga. But that’s another story.

Note: Not everything is funny in retrospect, but a lot is! I haven’t lit the Aga for the four years since Ants has been in the nursing home, but it is, nevertheless, a constant reminder of the various mishappinesses of the beginning of our relationship. I reminded Ants today and he gave me his slow half-smile: gold!