Not At All Mundane

 

Jean was in a new blue dress yesterday, as bright as the morning sky. Her hair and makeup had been gently 'done', and it became clear that whatever medical issues she has had, they have not deprived her of her style.

Jean has always liked clothes. Not the kind you might wear out into the garden, but clothing that makes a statement, if anyone is there to hear it. My first glimpse of Jean in 2018 prompted me to ask her where she had gotten her scarf. It was a combination of creamy colors, with caramel at its base. A dear friend had brought her a box of things she wouldn't be needing anymore, and she wanted Jean to have them. 

"Why wouldn't she be needing them, Jean?" a little bit afraid of the 'why'. There was a silence, as Jean thought about her friend.

"She was dyin'..", Jean said. "It were Eric's wife, 'y know. Me and she was friends."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear about that.."

Soon we ate the fresh strawberries which I had purchased on Fore Street along the way. Audrey got out some vanilla ice cream, and we had ourselves a jolly pre-lunch tea-snack. Pennie was there too, and when she asked Jean what she had been doing, Jean said, "Puzzles, mainly; readin'; lookin' at me fish.." 

Audrey had bought Jean a fish tank this year with a plethora of styles and varieties inside it, squiggling around in the water. Audrey knows a large amount about these fish, and filled our brains with all the details she had learned through research. Where they originated, their life expectancies, everything! We were a rapt audience. And then Jean's other daughter Lilly began to show us all the puzzles her mother had 'whipped together'. It was true, no one is as fast as Jean. A particularly difficult one has shells, and then there was a Hercule Poirot puzzle that you could solve while you fiddled with the pieces. 

Are you as excited as I am about these things? It might seem mundane, were you to scrutinize it for its high intellectual content. The other half of the population would probably think it lightweight. But I find such a delight in chatting with these remarkable British women. Such kind friends, opening their lives up to an American lady who cares, and who climbs the hill every year to discover the status of Jean's puzzles, her books, and her fish.

See you along the way!

the SconeLady