The birthplace of memories.

This week I went to visit my mother’s empty house.  Now aged almost 93, she’s moved into a full time care home.  She’s happy enough there, she’s well, thankfully and safe too and probably more sociable having lived alone for the last decade.

The house will be sold and the furniture, the pieces that are not destined for recycling, will either be shared amongst us siblings or auctioned off to help pay for her care.

It’s an emotional time of life for us all, the moment when you realise that a generation is transitioning.  It reminds you of your place in the process; mortality.

When I visited her in the house, I only saw her; I never really saw the house and her belongings.  Without her there to draw my attention, the stage she played out her life upon fell into view.  Battered cooking utensils, rigid teak furniture, faded rugs and sun-bleached photographs surrounded me, all pleading silently for rescue.

Items that had use, that were used regularly, that had purpose, sat idle and forlorn.  Time had stolen their utility just as it had stolen the youth of my mother and would one day would steal from us all.  New fashions and technologies that seeped unheeded around her slowly took the breath from her modest possessions.

The future, when it arrives, consumes all that it encounters and its only output is memories.  Mum’s memories will be of a good life, a long and happy marriage and a caring and healthy family.  I think to myself as I lock up the house and load a few dusty relics into the car that these, together with her unswerving faith, will give her comfort in her new home.

Don’t ever stop loving.

I’ve been writing this blog for a few years now and it struck me I haven’t ever written about love, sex or marriage.  Time to set that right.

I’d make a pretty poor agony aunt but I was inspired this week when Lovefilm sent me “Don’t Look Down”, an Argentinian film by Elisio Subiela.  It’s about Eloy, a sleepwalking, life-size pasty advert with a penchant for stilt-walking and his enamorata Elvira, stage designer, beguiler and tantric sex expert.  I kid you not.

Actually it’s a touching and well-coloured, boy-becomes-man story and entertaining too albeit a bit softcore in an Emanuelle kind of way at times.

The point is, relationships are complicated things.  Long-standing relationships bear scars and short-lived ones can bite deep.  Fundamentals like manners, courtesy, generosity and humour will always have a place but there is no ready formula for success nor is there an easy cure for failure; what might work today may not work tomorrow and vice versa.  This makes short term results unpredictable and long-term planning nigh on impossible.

Meanwhile, life changes us from young to old but not necessarily from foolish to wise. And as our Pasty boy discovers, sometimes all that stands between you and paradise is coincidence as he sleepwalks into his new lover’s bed and discovers the world of pleasures she brings him.

Love is not biology, it’s chemistry and as all chemists know that’s a subject which requires protective goggles and a sturdy white coat.

She leaves him in the end and he mourns her temporarily but, thoroughly qualified, he then gets on with the business of sharing his newly honed skills with a queue of waiting “chicas”.

Director Subiela’s final message is poignant and memorable: “In life you will always be saying goodbye – don’t let that stop you from loving.”.