On Ageing. Part 1.

There are several thousand combinations to end up at deep sadness. And this is where Madeline found herself at approximately 12.30 pm. Just before the sun hit its highest and most cruel chord. Just as the rice softened and gave into the boiling persuasions of water. Just as the carcass of the animal became food in her grandmother's large iron pot. Mixing with vinegar, mustard, oil, and juices to become vindaloo that would be eaten with sharp sialoquent smacks. The sadness was a spiralling road. She had no time for it in the morning. There were dishes to be prepared and planned. There were people to be sent to work and socks to be divined from their hiding places. No, there was no time for sadness while she chopped the vegetables and the herbs for lunch. She had to focus on the rituals of cooking or her nose would be after the missing ingredient like a bloodhound at a duck hunt. And proudly hold it up like a trophy until it jangled her better judgement so much that she had to throw all of it down the gutter that ran from behind the kitchen into the banana grove.

It was the sadness of having one's purpose close shop for the day. While other women sat down with their needles and wool or their painting or their books, Madeline sat with her hands entangled in an octopus embrace on her lap. Arthritis left her only with her nose. Every afternoon, arthritis led her by the land down the rocky terrain down to sadness. Every afternoon until the day she was buried with her hands in an octopus embrace on her black satin, ruffled chest.