December 2013

I read the letter for the tenth time as we sat in the waiting room. From:-

You don’t want to see mistakes like that from your doctor. If you can’t trust them with their spelling, why should you trust them with your health? Thank God we weren’t there for an operation.

— I’m sorry, we made a little mistake when we stitched you back up. Some of your parts went back in the wrong order.

And what was this about ‘Old Age’? We’re not old, Lena and I. Other people get old, not us. I remembered the question I heard on a radio talk-show once – it had stuck with me for years: ‘How old would you be if you didn’t know your age?’ Exactly. Age is all in the mind.

I noticed my knees doing that shaking, trembling thing. They were nervous.

Lena wasn’t nervous though. Leaning back relaxed in her chair, her gaze was fixed on the only splash of colour in the room, a huge landscape photo on the opposite wall. A lavender field. Purple. Dense. Intense.

— Pretty, yeah?

— Uh-huh.

Isn’t lavender supposed to have a calming effect? It wasn’t working for me. 

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