In Sickness and In Health

[rhythmaning]

Oh dear. Today was meant to be a day to celebrate – the start of something new: the first day that my wife wasn’t going to work, because she is now working parttime so she can spend two days a week painting rather than teaching.

She was very excited about today. Sure, she spent much of yesterday painting, and the day before as well; but yesterday was a holiday, and before that, the weekend. Today she would have been at work, but since she has now gone parttime, in a job-share with a colleague returning from maternity leave, this was her first day painting – not a holiday, not a weekend, but a day painting.

And paint she did, she said; until in the afternoon, she went down with a migraine. When I came home, she was lying in bed in a darkened room; really, really unwell. And there was nothing I could do to help her – except be as quiet as possible.

It isn’t much to ask – just be quiet. But I don’t do silence well: when I am home, the radio is on, or I have CDs playing, or… I can be quite loud – noise is something I am good at. So I was wearing my walkman-radio whilst I cooked for myself, trying not to bang pans or plates; and now I am sitting wearing headphones, listening to the hifi. (It is lucky that when I got the headphones – which I rarely wear; the last time was a long while ago, when I wanted to listen to some music whilst my wife wanted to watch some programme on tv – that I deliberately got cans with a long flex, so I can move around the whole of our spacious sitting room unhindered.)

I took up cat-duties, cleaning their trays, feeding them, playing with them – and shushing them when they whined to be fed, played with, and let out onto the stair (they don’t go outside, though they could; we spent a long time last year trying to get them into the garden; but they like to leave the flat, wander around the common stair for a bit, hiss at the neighbour’s cat; and then after half an hour or so, they wander back in, and demand a treat).

It is hard, though, not being able to positively help her feel better. It is a long time since she last had a migraine – a few years ago whilst we were on holiday in Lewis, as a huge storm blew in off the Atlantic; and there was nothing I could do then, either. (Indeed, I think I resorted to listening to music on my walkman, reading so as not to disturb her.)

So instead, to celebrate my wife’s new start, I have found a couple of images of her paintings, which I have put on Flickr. These are old paintings – they each hung in our sitting room for a long while, and I am very attached to them. (Ages ago – when I started writing this journal – I promised my wife that it would be anonymous: hence the reason I haven’t named the artist!)


This picture was painted near the Famine Village in Inishowen, Donegal.





This was painted at Borve, on Lewis, looking west over the Atlantic.