‘Gold Leaf’ by A.T. Boyle
Under that carapace of convention you dreamed in colour and shape and pattern. You wore bling in later years, which sat cheerfully against those still necessary beiges and greys
Your utilitarian conventions effectively ran our family of seven. Effectively too. At the point you gained freedom from the grown-up us you might have chosen to range further, perhaps travelled solo like me in America and Italy, somewhere entirely different you could have amazed me with.
I was the changeling who rebelled against convention while growing on its vine. As you know well enough, I rebelled against neat, conform, comply, what a woman must do. If you had been born at a time when I was born, we might have found the language to chat like the sister I never had. We might more often have been able to articulate the under the surface for us both. When sitting silently on adjacent chairs, we might have talked in that way we rarely did, motherly role dispelled, sympathetic equals. We might have seen the emotional awkwardnesses, a common desire for self-protection, as the unnecessary barriers they were.
Like you said in the hospital waiting room, sitting close, masks wrapping faces (last time I touched your hand alive; I never touched it dead and I’m, glad), I imagined there was much wonderment to be seen inside your mind. Whereas usually there’s too much waiting around between consultants and tests, where even with family we are bored, stuck for something to say, you laughed warmly, indulgent like a mother. Rebuffed me too, that edge of reality in your voice. Here I was going for it, overtly praising your creative skills, the imaginative you, perhaps accepting what must have plainer for everyone else to see, that you were frail and you laughed. I saw that you wanted to believe it, deep-down you did, but it was no match for your born (or was it learnt?) modesty. In any case it was, genuinely, more of an irrelevance to you than it was to me ‘You give me too much credit’ you told me then, and more than once. But I could tell you liked that I did. That I believed in what was less valued by others.
Those few times I put you on the spot, when the atmosphere was right, surrounded by family, when I pushed you harder, you held the room, drew us in like compelling storytellers do, soaring above the rest than the rest. Wear you picked out The spontaneity and flow of your journey.
I was lucky to have the matching silver earrings and brooch, your gold wedding ring you wear in that photo (the jewellery box was picked through). I’d much rather se the earrings swing on your ears as you told your story, seen the gold ring (minimised over the years to match your reducing frame) as a. Most important, I’d much rather be in that room again with you, hearing the easy flow of your voice, taking us to the place you imagined in that moment and the next that we hung on. In the shadow of louder storytellers and warblers, when it came to spontaneous flights of fancy, though rare, you excelled.
(Copyright: A.T. Boyle, 2022)
Twitter: @papercroissant
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