On 6 July 2021
Another petal is nearly complete, and I definitely feel like I’m improving my embroidery skills. I still need an eye test and new glasses though.
Mum is still in hospital, having rehabilitation to get her mobility back after falling and breaking her wrist. It’s a slow process, given her frailty and also her difficulty with short term memory which makes it tricky for her to learn new ways to do things.
Two bonus pics today. The first is a bowl of pears poached in Madeira… somehow there’s always a bottle of Madeira at the back of the cupboard and it’s the perfect match for pears. And the resulting ‘pear juice’ is the best treat to take in to hospital for a rehabilitating mother.
The 2nd bonus pic is of my maternal grandmother’s childhood home. Gran went back there during the war, with her daughters, including Mum. They lived in the Gardener’s Cottage when the main house was handed over to the Norwegians who turned it into a temporary hospital. Mum tells a story of the day she jumped into the water tank, and nearly sliced her foot in two on a broken jam jar. She was carried, foot held high, up to the house where it was stitched back together in this operating theatre.
I’ve also added a picture of the X-Ray in the Servant’s Hall, as it is described in Gran’s old photo album.
Looking at what else was going on in my life, I see that this was the day I had the interview for that internal job I went for. I had hoped to hear back from them by the end of the day, but heard nothing, so by the evening was fairly confident that I wouldn’t get it. My manager (who would continue to be my manager) was goin on leave at the end of the following day, and had assured me that they wanted to make a decision before she went on leave. Having put myself through the application and then the interview process, I had come to realise how much I disliked aspects of my current role and wanted the change. I also knew that my head was all over the place, and the practicality of it all meant that if I got the job, they would have to recruit someone to take my role, which I’m not sure was desirable for anyone – our team had been under-resourced for ages and we were all looking forward to a full team.
By the end of the following day I still hadn’t heard back from the interview. I sent my manager a message wishing her a good holiday before she left .. and no mention was made of the outcome of the interview. I should have asked, and in different times I absolutely would have, but I was so broken, so low.. I had lost so much of myself these last few months.
My brother and I went down to the sea that afternoon. When I look now at the pictures I took, the sea and the coast looks glorious. We look like husks.
***
If you want to catch up on how we got to this point, this series of posts starts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation.
Shewolfinthevalley 
2 Responses to “The operating theatre”