Writing Memories: Pins and Needles

My daughter on the phone: “Oh my God Mum! I can’t believe you did that.”

“It didn’t really hurt. It was just that some blood had hardened in the hole so I couldn’t push my earring through.”

“Oh Mum! I feel faint. What were you thinking?”

“Well, I’ll go to the pharmacy tomorrow and get someone there to re-pierce that ear for me.”

“Which you should have done in the first place. Pushing a needle through your ear? If I’d done that when I was a kid you would have told me to go and get it done properly.”

“‘Well, yes. I suppose I was a bit impatient. We were going out that evening and I was annoyed I couldn’t get my new ear-ring in because the hole was blocked, so–”

“Watch it doesn’t get infected.”

“Don’t worry. You know your mother is a toughie.”

Memories of my father trying to gouge a verruca from my foot when I was eleven. Clamping my lips together knowing that any squeal would result in a slap and a ‘Don’t be so bloody soft!’ Eventually though, he had to give up and take me to a chiropodist, who cursed under his breath when he saw the state of my foot.

I suppose incidents like that, of which there were quite a few, did indeed make me tougher than the average bear. My tough little bear, he used to call me in his better moments.

Not so tough, though on the day my lovely Nat couldn’t find a street we were driving to that we’d driven to hundreds of times before.

As I pulled out the GPS, memories surfaced of Nat navigating the streets of New York decades earlier. Navigating the streets of every country we’d travelled in. He always used to say he carried maps in his head and if he needed to find the right direction, he simply lifted his mind above the car, looked down on the streets and visualised the right route.

The sixth time we got lost while driving somewhere local he muttered under his breath. “I’ve lost my maps.”

I waved my phone. “That’s what technology is for.”

He shook his head.

Several forgotten names and ‘what day is it today?’ later, we were lying in bed after our cup of tea and he was ‒ as he had done every morning for the past fifty years ‒ lightly drumming a tune on my belly with his fingers. He said he always carried music in his head.

But on this particular morning when I asked him what the tune was, his fingers stopped drumming. A minute later he said so quietly I could hardly hear him, “I can’t remember.” Then, “Oh God! I’ve lost my music.”

We lay in silence and I reflected on all the losses we’d dealt with over the years and the sort of losses we would encounter in the future. But all I could do now was hold him close and kiss his warm cheek.

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