Storylines
Time has marked me.
Furrows line my brow. I contemplate them, stroking them gently, each one telling a tale.
I am their canvas.
They are my storylines.
I wonder, sometimes, if I could iron them away. Smooth my face back to some earlier version of myself. But perhaps that would be erasing the evidence.
The evidence of sixty years.
Today, I feel every one of them.
I feel the cold to my bones.
Not the usual Cape Town cold I grew up with in the Southern Suburbs, but an iciness that takes me back to Tewkesbury, more than a decade ago. The kind of cold that settles into the walls and refuses to leave.
The kind that requires down jackets and knee-high fake-fur boots.
The kind that leaves sleet on windscreens and soup pots full.
Central heating!
Pah.
Our Cape Town homes are ill-equipped for this kind of torture.
I hug my hot-water bottle to me like a long-lost lover. It is squishy and pot-bellied and jiggles when I squeeze it.
A poor substitute for a warm body.
I raise my white mug to my lips and slurp the almost-scalding coffee quickly.
My fifth cuppa, and it's only 10:42.
Two orange bars glow accusingly from the heater.
Mikey hogs it.
Georgie sits on top of the TV cabinet like a sphinx, staring down at me with what I imagine is ancient wisdom.
Or perhaps he's just dumb and thick as a ginger plank.
I can't decide which.
My fleecy PJ bottoms send me pink hearts and subliminal messages about love and sleep.
I have very little energy for either.
Being sixty has its drawbacks.
Rain pings steadily against the patio doors. The cold seems to deepen without warning. Wind lifts leaves and small branches from the garden, twisting them into tiny whirlwinds before dropping them again.
I have too much time on my hands.
It is a strange thing, time.
So generous.
So brutal.
An eternity when you are waiting.
A heartbeat when you are not.
I stare at the clock on my taskbar, willing it forward.
5pm.
I want 5pm.
I want him home.
I am greedy for personal contact, having been divorced from love for years. Thousands of kilometres separated us. Thousands of kilometres of air, ocean, clocks, schedules and ordinary days lived apart.
Love, it turns out, has its own geography. It requires proximity. It wants nearness. It wants the warmth of another body beside yours. A hand reaching across the bed. A shoulder to lean against. Someone whose face you can touch without a screen standing between you.
Perhaps that is why I am so conscious of the cold today.
The hot-water bottle warms my stomach. The coffee warms my hands. But neither of them is him. And I miss him with an ache that is both physical and ridiculous.
Love asks a lot of its believers.
Time and proximity are its currency.
Connection.
Touch.
Want.
It wants the things that cannot be sent through a phone or carried across an ocean.
And yet—
Me?
I am willing to pay the bill. I'll leave a big, fat tip if that's what it takes to keep love sitting at my table.
I will cross oceans for it.
I will rearrange my life around it.
I will believe in it even when there are reasons not to.
Perhaps foolishly.
Perhaps bravely.
At sixty, I know enough to understand that those two things can sometimes look remarkably similar.
Only time will tell which one I am.
I've been acquainted with time for more than half a century now. We've had our disagreements. It has taken things from me. It has given things to me. It has left its fingerprints everywhere. Most visibly, perhaps, on my face.
I look again at the furrows in my brow.
I stroke them gently. They are mine. Every line a place I've been. Every crease a person I've loved. Every furrow a loss, a laugh, a foolishness, a beginning, a goodbye...
Proof that I have lived.
And if time is willing to give me another few years, I'll take them.
I'll take all the seasons. I'll flow with the passage of time and let it mark me.
I'll take all of it.