Titus 2 Christian HomeKeeper ™

All around her, Ethel hears the sounds of the nursing home: loud voices and chesty wheeze of her room-mate, Doris. The tea trolley squeaks, rattling the teacups and cutlery. Air freshener hangs in the air to blot out the odour of aging bodies with their bed for bathrooms. She pulls the bedclothes over her gray head, closes her eyes to her new home and slips into a world where all’s in the past and far easier on her mind….This is not Ethel’s home, for home was a whistling jug, and churning washer, a humming fridge filled with food, kitchen with clinking cups and rattling cutlery, where her brown hair would droop over steam from the iron, and the screen door would bang, and the toilet flush, where a bath was running, and a vacuum cleaner hummed after she washed her breakfast dishes in steamy suds. Where steaks were sizzling and pots were bubbling, and line-dried sheets waited to be folded, and apple and cinnamon were dinner’s desserts and lavendar handwash blended with pot pourri and roses out in the garden.

Where dogs yapped and tabby cats napped- there was her home of linoleum floors smooth on her feet, and blue rinsed sheets and blankets waiting to receive her from the smooth clean bathtub with soft white towels, her room with warm afghan draped over her rocker, her nightdress laid out on the bed waiting….

Where once her husband held out his strong arms for her- arms that timed her pains then rocked all their babies and paced the floor with colicky infants and still rose early and chopped all her wood, and laboured all day in the fields to support them- this was her home….

Doris can hear the soft muffled sobs and draws in her breath, lets it out with a sigh- no need to ask Ethel for she already knows, the reason is plain: like all of them there- she just wants to go home!

This word picture was written for my Aunt, who just wants to go home too.

© Glenys Robyn Hicks