Fighting Tiger

Yesterday the beautiful golden retriever who lives down the road was in the front yard. Jesse followed me along the fenceline and let me give him pats at each of the gates. I really want a dog of my own one day. There’s just something so simple and good about them.

:::…

At the bus stop on Wednesday (late for work - again) I was standing in the sun loving its weight against my skin. And across the park came an older woman I was happy to see.

Alison and I had first met when she was delivering the parish newsletter. She’d noticed that Minnie’s name had been taken off the delivery list and dropped past to find out what had happened to her. I guess that the routine of delivering newsletters has been punctuated by the disappearance of names as the recipients got older and moved out to nursing homes or passed away.

It turned out that Minnie and Alison had lived next to each other over on Northgate Street when Alison was a girl. Alison is only 88 years old, so Minnie would have been quite a bit older, perhaps in her 20s when they first knew each other. Once she got married (receiving an embroidered teacloth from my great-grandmother and Minnie as a wedding gift) she moved a few streets away to the house she still lives in now.

When I first met Alison, I truly appreciated that she cared about the people she’d encountered over her life and that she made the effort to meet me and enquire what had happened to my grandmother. I’d been hoping to see her again around the neighbourhood, so I was very pleased to talk to her again as we waited at the bus stop.

This time we talked about her three sons (I think that Geoff might be the son she feels closest to), her grandchildren (”half a dozen - just enough”) and how new things break, but that the carpet sweeper and oven she bought 30 years ago have never required repairs. Alison felt that the secret to why she was still so youthful in her late 80s was that she kept active.

“My son wants to buy me a computer. He says that I’ll find a lot of things to stop me being bored. But I’m not bored - I’m too busy to need a computer!”

Alison was heading into town to have her haircut, afterwards she was going to do a little bit of shopping and buy herself lunch in town if she was running late. I actually thought that her hair looked cool the way it was already and I secretly coveted the long string of wooden beads she was wearing looped around her neck.

It’s occurred to me lately that it’s very important to have people of all ages in your life. It reminds you of where you’ve been and where you’re going. You get taught wise things you don’t yet realise by your elders and little kids remind you of how to play and look at the world. Teenagers remind you that it’s important to be individual and to rebel a bit and middle aged parents remind you to be practical and to not waste your life.

The things that Alison told me are that I should keep active and interested in life, and that while parents want their children to be successful they’re most satisfied and proud when their kids are happy and have good relationships with their own family. The most precious thing that she shared with me about her own life was this:

“My sons are happy for me to keep on living in my house. It’s where I’ve lived for so long that I don’t know what it would be like to go anywhere else. Besides, if I moved, my husband wouldn’t know where his chair was when he came to visit me and we can’t have that you know, I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t talk to him.”