Dark water

‘Is she asleep?’

‘Nearly, she’s in the half way place, gone into her own world. [Silence] Do you know what I mean?’

‘Yes, yes, of course I do.’ [Too quick to be convincing]

‘Where are you going? What are you doing, I've just settled her.’

‘I won’t wake her, I’m just going to see her.’

‘No, no don’t, she’s been on the go all day, I’m tired, leave her, you’ll wake her.’

'You said she wasn't asleep. I'm just going to say goodnight.'

Inheritance of loss

Little did I realise my dying mother’s need when she tried to press upon me her old sewing machine. ‘It’s good you can use it, I know you have a new one but this is strong, it works well and see Bruno stripped it down, it runs like new.’

Like new, unlike her, ‘Here take my sewing machine, I must know it goes on because it represents the self that was lost in my migration from southern Italy,’ she was really saying. The seamstress, once respected, who supported hungry post-war siblings and parents marked out as different through her design skill and use of technology. And, as difference often does, made her a target for a narrow-minded rural community who vilified her for her stylish clothes, her vivacity and her desire to escape.

The arrival of this sewing machine in our house, a symbol of her being from which my childhood clothes emanated, partly restored some reputation. But often she’d lament her loss of past status, unable to start her own business due to fear, ‘I could have been somebody but your father said “no Lucy, the authorities, we don’t want to attract attention…”’ But of course that is exactly what she did want.

I have to keep it.

Had we but world enough, and time

Ha, my friend writes about cashmere. Well why not? This time last year my mother was alive with still some pleasure to be had from life and from buying cashmere. The expense justified by the redundancy of a lifetime's self-denial. Why postpone the cashmere and all the luxury it represents when the body's spirit craves soft warmth? She never wore it. She took mine instead. Her's wasn't enough. She wanted mine.

Let youth embrace crisp fabrics, sharp and sparkling. Age requires brushed cotton, washed linen and cashmere soft enough to kindly fold itself around about, cradling not crackling wisdom's edges. Buy the cashmere. In every colour - there's an art to it.