Sunday

No word from Bink since last Sunday: her brief text apologising for missing Mothering Sunday.

No response to my text on Monday saying we were nearby: would she like us to visit?

No response to my couple of missed calls. (I have to be careful: attempts to contact can “stress”.)

One response on Friday however.

I had sent a text to the person looking after her this week, inviting her to a concert. Alex has recently joined a City choir, and would be singing the Freddie Mercury solo.

I've passed along your message, but Bink doesn't want to go.

Along with a few other kind responses, throughout the week.

She knows you’re trying to contact her.

Hopefully she’ll ring you tonight.

I took her to the GP for a check up she seems alright.

All the old worries, round and round.

Bink’s life slipping away.

Will she never have a job, a lover, a child?

Ben thinks – if I’ve understood correctly (which I might not have done) – that I should give up. It is destructive, this obsession with helping Bink.

A mother is only ever as happy as her least happy child.

I can quite see Ben might be right. It might be what Bink needs. For me to let go.

But… really?

How many more years does she need? Of experiments with helping her more? Or less?

How much more of her life to waste...

There are some helps she has definitely needed, aren’t there?

My aunt never had a job, a lover, a child. The youngest in a warm, clever, lovely family of wonderful people. She died in her forties, one entire room in the house floor-to-ceiling with magazines and newspapers which couldn’t be thrown away because she hadn’t yet read every word.

Was that OCD of a kind?

The couple who now care for Bink are on holiday.

Perhaps it will be better when they get back.

Perhaps not.

I take a deep breath and look on the bright side.

We are much better off than we were a two or three years ago:

We know where Bink is living.
We know she is living.
We know she is not being abused.
She is off Lorazepam.
And Alex’s concert was fab. Alex was too. Perhaps a mother should be as happy as her happiest child.

(I’m sure fathers are! Consider some prolific fathers of old. King David. Priam. Bach. They didn’t let it cramp their style much, did they. Shakespeare, too.)

Today’s picture is of the sky.

Sometimes there is simply nothing to say.

PS [A couple of hours later.]

I have decided, even when there is nothing to say, there is always something to celebrate. A new hen has just started laying: look what I found after breakfast…

And it will be Easter soon…