When I was tiny, I would sit in my gran’s kitchen and listen to her coffee percolator. Like my mum’s Mr. Coffee, gran’s percolator made incredible sounds, burping and hissing, and I could close my eyes and dance in this aural world.

My gran would be on the phone talking to someone and I could hear her voice rise and fall, her accent a lullaby.

When I visited, she always had a can of tuna fish for me. I sound like a cat, but I loved it. She would drink her robust Colombian coffee and talk to me while I forked tuna from the can.

Her lips were dark red from lipstick, her hair henna reddened. She always wore pencil skirts, never once did I see her wear pants.

There was no doubt I was closer to my gran than my mum, but my mum, for some reason always jealous of her mum, wrecked that. When you’re a child and the adults around you are dysfunctional, you have to pick your battles and sometimes you must choose the wrong one to survive.

It’s only after the passage of years that regrets fill a book.

end

194 words

S. Darlington