Soft black leather slip-on shoes, with a single gold buckle on each. They pad softly on the tiled kitchen floor, before reaching the thin wooden chair. The embroidered pillows covering the seat and back are years old, from when her hands could still hold the needle.
Those hands were nimble long before I came to be, her nails yellowed, but manicured, cut perfectly just passing her fingertips, the crescent moons at the base rising to high into her nail bed. The blue veins protrude from the crepe-paper skin as if the paper folded, never to be smoothed out again. The creases of her wrinkles, the dark spots, like tea stains on a page of a book; her hands tell stories she herself has forgotten.
Her foundation, slightly too orange, the lipstick on her ageing teeth, the eyebrows that seem to fade more and more each time I see her, the pencil lines becoming increasingly clearer as the hair itself thins. Evidence of a beauty that once was, and still is.
Her clothes in sepia tones, knit cardigans with gold buttons to match the shoes. Tailored trousers, ironed with a fold down the centre of each leg. With each visit, that fold seems to become more shaky as her hands struggle to hold the iron as straight as they once did.
As she lowers herself onto the wooden chair, it is a vision of faded tones. The terracotta tiles that fade to off-white walls. The clothes are a spectrum of autumn despite the summer sun. Behind her, through the glass doors tells a story of life. The vivid greenery that gives life to her just as she gives life to it. The oxygen they secrete seemingly going straight to her lungs, each bud that blooms gives her a lease of life. The garden truly was the recipient of much of her love and attention before the stone steps that weave between the flowerbeds got too tall: before the uneven ground wasn’t navigable with the stick that can no longer leave her hand – she now admires it from her chair by the window longingly.
We sit, sipping tea from bone china cups. The same cups we have drunk from for years. She, with her mug painted with garden shears, manicured hedges and flowers. Me, with mine: plain and white and slightly tanned in a ring, three-quarters of the way up the inside, a mark from the endless cups that have been sipped, the line never too close to the top, as the shaking hands allow an increasing amount of liquid slosh to the tiled floor.
“You look well dear”
Creative Non Fiction Writing at Reading 