I wrote this a couple of years ago..
Mum can't read much anymore. She finds it hard to see a photo when you show her one and relies on the light being good, really good to pick up any detail at all. She's 91 and has macular degeneration. As she puts it "Oh well, everybody's got to get something"
Her acceptance is one of the loveliest things about her.
On Sunday and Wednesday nights she calls for a chat. Sunday is to wish me well for school and Wednesday to see how I went.
Last night when she rang I was asleep on the kitchen couch. My husband talked with her and told her about his week. A teacher had fallen off a chair and broken his pelvis (the chair had been placed on top of a table and he'd stood on it to get something off the ceiling....) Another teacher had a turn in class after a student fainted. The student was dissecting a sheep's heart. The teacher is 4 or 5 months pregnant.
So Mum had these stories to retell when I called later but she had one of her own to give me too. Mum relies on a regional service which supplies talking books.. She can't read the catalogue so the bag that brings her fortnightly tapes is mostly hit and miss.
Yesterday when she opened the package out slipped Patrick White's The Tree of Man.. For two hours she sat in sunshine in her lounge room and listened..
A marvellous story, she said.
Did you finish it? I ask
Oh no. There are lots of tapes to go.. I'll listen to more tomorrow.
I was 19 when I discovered Patrick White..
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