Age

Age is a high price to pay for maturity Tom Stoppard

My latest offering for the Light & Shade Challenge

They say that age is a high price to pay for maturity & maybe it’s right, but Jesus, I just wish she would gain some maturity soon as this was getting tedious.

I wiped the snot off her face & the sick off her chin; I helped her stagger to her feet & got her back into bed. ‘But he told me he loved me’ she wailed

‘I know, I know’ I said soothingly. Wondering when she would learn that some guys would asay anything to get into her knickers.

‘All I want  to do is find Mr Right’ she sobbed, ‘Why does it have to be so hard?’ I’d given up suggesting she looked somewhere other than the local club scene, my remarks had been bitterly refuted, ‘What do you know, you’re middle-aged, staid, you don’t know how to have fun’ ‘You want me to stay home & knit like you’ she’d accused. Well she was probably right, I had no interest in going out, dancing & getting drunk & yes I could knit, but I’d rather go to the theater or a museum than a club.

I took a surreptitious look at my watch, bloody hell I had to be up in two hours to get ready for work, I sent up a silent prayer ‘Please let her fall asleep soon’.  I stroked her head, got her a glass of water & pulled the covers up to her chin, ‘Go to sleep, it will all look better in the morning’.  I sat with her until I was sure she wasn't going to be sick again & when the crisis of tears seemed to have passed, she fell asleep.

 At least when she’d been thrown out the club, pissed as a fart & screaming abuse, security had the sense to ring me. No taxi would take her for fear she’d throw up & put the cab out of commission for a couple of hours. But I had happily abused my position of editor of the local paper & run articles about clubs abandoning drunk clubbers once they were off the premises. The local clubs now would try to ensure the safety of those people who couldn't stay in the club because they were drunk or disruptive, especially the females!

 I had a shower & got ready for work. There was no point trying to get back to sleep, I had to be at work soon. I made myself a cup of coffee & sipped it in a leisurely fashion, keeping an ear out for any further noise from her room. I often wondered if one of us was a changeling, we had so little in common. I worked hard, paid my bills & took my responsibilities seriously. She was feckless, didn't have any interest in anything apart from the next drink, the next party, the next fit guy.

Still I couldn't wash my hands of her, she was my mother after all.