Old Words #1: Remember This.

For Miss Laura who wanted some old words up on here. They are old and thus now I think they are dreadful. However, we can't be ashamed of our roots now can we ;)

Remember This

“Remember this,” I said, "Right now, our kiss so that when we are old with dresses that match our shoes you won’t forget what we felt like."

You laughed in that polite-but-scared way and asked where I was going when we were old with dresses that matched our shoes. I said that of course I would still be here, or somewhere else with you but that our kisses might be different so to remember this one for I liked it, it felt nice – like that time in the pub when we hadn’t long met and you kissed me just because you thought I looked pretty.
“You won’t think I’m so pretty when I wear beige blouses with purple hats and have grey eyebrow hair.”

You said that I have had a grey eyebrow hair for a while now, you saw it shining in the light the other day when we were in the supermarket and you didn’t want to tell me in case I caused a scene and that no, you wouldn’t think I was pretty in beige and purple together, for I would look altogether frightfully strange. (You didn’t say the phase “altogether frightfully strange” at all really, I just like to put unnecessary words in your mouth when I tell stories about you. You probably just said “strange”, you’re more to the point like that.) You then asked, on that particular day, would I choose purple shoes or beige shoes for really it was that answer which mattered. I told you I hadn’t yet decided and that it would depend entirely upon the season and that obscure colour choices aside, we would feel differently one day and that I was scared.

“Scared how?” you asked, with the furrowed brow you use which I know means concerned but after all this time still makes me think you are annoyed with me somehow.

“Scared in the scared way.” I replied as I didn’t know quite exactly what I meant, only that I had a feeling. A feeling that one day you would kiss me and it would feel differently – like in the night I would have become an entirely different person to you. I told you that I imagined that it would happen gradually and suddenly all at once. (I didn’t know what I meant by that either but I said it. I think I liked the idea of an oxymoronic sentence, for atmosphere.) I told you that one day we would have babies and cats and a garden, with actual plants and “water features” and all these things would eat into our time to make fun of people on the TV and drink coffee in the night time.

You then looked at me strangely and said that if all I was going to miss were times to watch TV and to drink coffee at odd hours then children and plants really were not going to be an issue for us. Then you reminded me astutely that we have two cats already and that, despite all the pressure we do fine as we are.

“That’s what I mean!” I said, for I felt like I had an epiphany and I got very excited.

“Remember before the cats,” I said, ”Before anything grown up and scary, we would kiss like today every day and it was nice. But now we only kiss like this maybe once a week because we have to look after the cats and go to work and see our friends and bleed our radiators – I mean what was that? We had to bleed all the radiators and because we are so undomesticated we didn’t have a key or any sort of tools so we had to use the side of a spoon to do it and it took us like four hours! And then we had to buy a hoover when the old one broke and it was bagless and had a warranty. Then we had to find out what those words were and if they were good words. A warranty? I’m still not convinced we know what that means but we know that we’ve got one for a large amount of time and apparently we’re “very lucky” to have it. And then after all that we have to sleep and then we have no time!”

By this point I was getting very animated and quite shouty in the around-you-but-not-at-you way, so I stopped myself and noticed that you were sitting very quietly. I looked at you for a long time but didn’t know what to say so I just waited. Eventually you spoke, you were steady and quiet and very much like you in these sorts of situations.

“Do you want to send our cats away?” you asked.

“No”, I said, “I love them.”

“Do you want to send our hoover away?”

I pondered this for a moment and said, “No, I love it too. It picks up dust really well and is easy to clean out. All in all it was a fine purchase.”

“Would you like us to have no jobs and friends and wander the earth randomly together, just the two of us?”

“Well kind of”, I said, “That would be fun for a while but then we’d miss people and we’d need new jeans or some hats for the summer, which I would have of course forgotten to pack when we were leaving or something so we’d have to get jobs and then...”

“Then what are you talking about?” You said this before I had finished the sentence which I knew was going nowhere. By now you were doing the furrowed brow with the one swift head shake as you spoke, which meant you were frustrated with me. I knew this for definite because I was frustrated with me too.

“I just mean that now we kiss like today maybe once or twice a week but maybe if we had kids we’d only have time to kiss once a fortnight. Then what happens if our garden gets green fly one July and we only have time to kiss one day that month, or if kid number two gets a weird parent attachment thing (for he’d be the middle child and therefore have issues) and won’t leave us alone and then we won’t have time to kiss ever. So then one day we realise that we haven’t kissed for a whole year and in that time I’ve taken to wearing beige court shoes and eating Ritalin laced Snickers for breakfast and you have the kind of hair that doesn’t move in the wind and you’ll make awful jewellery choices like creole earrings with pearl necklaces...”

“Hold on,” you said, “Why do you get to be the basket case in this scenario and I have to be the PTA attending, golfing Mum?”

“Would you like to trade?” I said.

“Of course,” you said, “everyone knows that kids prefer mentally unstable parents to a supermum type.”

“Super Mum? With the ability to spot a dangerous kitchen utensil from 8 miles? That is you!”

“Hmm, I guess so...can I have super human strength too?”

“Like “The Hulk”?”

“No, not like “The Hulk”... on second thoughts you can be Super Mum.”

“Ok that’s fine with me.” I said, “I suit green better then you anyway and I think one of those golfing jumpers would be fun...”

“You can even get a green one since it suits you so much better.”

“You know what? I think I will. And you can get a tin foil hat...” I looked at your face and you were laughing. “I’m glad you find your impending insanity amusing,” I said, “I’m the one who will have to collect you when you wander into the neighbours garden and steal their macramé plant hangers.”

“How do you know that word?”, your eyes grew wide and startled.

“What word? Macramé?” You nodded silently, “ I watched a TV show and it had them on it, they looked fun. I figured we might need to know these things soon. You know, for when we are old ladies.”

I looked at you. I mean I was looking at you before but this time I really looked at you, in perfect focus and everything and I saw that you were smiling at me.
“What?” I said. Always ready to ruin the moment.

“Do you think we’ll be nice old ladies together?” you asked me.

“Of course,” I replied, “I’ll have a blue rinse and you’ll wear tights that bag around the ankles. We’ll fill all the clichés.”

“Can we live in a small town by the sea and all the local kids will make fun of us because they’ll think we are witches?”

“Yup,” I told you decisively, “And you can own a shopping caddy with millions of dogs on it.”

Your smile was quickly fading.

“Dogs we’ve never wanted or seen before...”

I could see the colour draining from your face.

“It really will be the shopping caddy of all shopping caddies...”

“I don’t think I want to be an old lady with you anymore.”

“Why?” I asked, “Is this all because of my choice of old lady accessories.”

“Yes!” you said, “you imagine all sorts of hideous “accessories” entering our lives for the next fifty years, it’s scary!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, for I really was. I never meant it to snowball into such a vivid picture of the rest of our lives, “How about we live for right now?” I said.

“Right now?” you said.

“How about I make us some coffee?” I said, “And you can go find some sort of overweight people running on TV programme or one where people eat really horrible things for money?”

“How about one with overweight people running towards horrible things to eat for money?” you said.

I smiled, “I’d like that.”

You smiled back, “Me too.”