Two years ago she moved in with me, and ever since, our home has danced to her gentle rhythm.
My names Alice, and my mum is already 89. Two years back, she came to live with me, and our house has flowed quietly with her patient and orderly pace ever since. Each morning, just before eight, I hear her rise from bed and softly chat to our elderly, twenty-three-year-old cat, tending to him as if he were a helpless infant.
Then Mum prepares her own breakfast and steps out onto the terrace, cupping her tea as she calmly welcomes the day. Once fully awake, she reaches for the mop and, must keep the old hinges greased, as she says, sweeps and scrubs the whole house (nearly 2,600 square feet of it). If the mood strikes, shell whip up something in the kitchen, tidy the cupboards, and maybe do a series of gentle stretches.
Afternoons are reserved for her: skin creams, fixing her hair, her little daily ritualschanging with the day. Sometimes she hauls out her cavernous wardrobe and begins sorting: this pile for me, that pile for the charity shop, another to sell online. I tease her:
Mum, you could have invested all this and be living in a manor by now.
She simply laughs:
Oh, I do love my bits and pieces. Anyway, itll all be yours one dayyour sisters no taste whatsoever.
For pleasure, we take walks together along the riverbank nearly five times a weekfive miles each time. Once a month, Mum meets her friends. She adores books, and is slowly but surely making her way through my library. Daily, she calls her elder sister, whos now 91; her sister visits us twice a year.
Aside from the cat, her greatest joy is her tablet, which I got her for Christmas. She reads up on treasured authors and composers, keeps up with alternative news, watches ballets, operas, and concerts. On certain nights, I hear from her room, though its long past bedtime:
I should be asleep… but someones got Pavarotti playing on YouTube!
Mum and her sister really must have won some sort of genetic raffle. I keep a phototaken two years agowhen she dressed up specially to fly on a plane.
I look dreadful in that picture, shed say.
And, as ever, I reply:
Mum, most people your age never even get a chance to look like that, or live like you do.
Living with her, Ive realised that I want to be just like her This woman quietly inspires me to keep moving forward and to treasure every day.
