Marian

Marian woke every morning at half six; her internal clock never let her down. She was out of the bed and into her baby blue fluffy fleece dressing gown and blue and red striped slippers in seconds before she made her way towards the loo. She had a very small bladder did our Marian. As she went to wash her hands, she found a pair glasses in the sink. She went to put them in her dressing gown pocket but realized that that particular dressing gown had no pockets, so she put them on her head.

 

Marian made her way to the kitchen to make breakfast. As the porridge was cooking, she got the tablets ready for her and her husband. The tablets had a press all to themselves; it was the small upper press right beside the microwave. She took out both blister packs the chemist put together every week, sat down at the wooden kitchen table, and punched out the window for Monday morning. This was so much easier than getting it in bottles and having to read labels and all that nonsense. Marian herself had to take two big white ones and a small yellow one. She couldn’t take the white ones whole so her granddaughter, Nel, who is on a lot of tablets herself, gave her a blue pill splitter, which to Marian was priceless. The amount of times she cut her fingers trying to half them with a knife were too many to recall. She put them on a tissue beside her tatty teddy mug and then punched out her husband Aidan’s Monday morning window. He took two green and yellow capsules, one round pink one and two big blue ones. Marian did the same with the blue ones as she did her white ones and halved them. She put them on another tissue beside his favorite black Batman mug. The mug was courtesy of their grandson Pete who was a Batman fanatic.

 

Marian stirred the porridge and when ready took it off the heat. Her next job was to get Aidan up. Marian woke her husband the same as she did almost every day for the last 65 years. ‘Breakfast is ready love, time to get up!’ She whispered in his left ear. He was deaf in the right one. He would smile back with a toothless grin and say, ‘morning my sweet,’ then they would kiss. Not a passionate kiss, but one that looked as though it was routine. She left to let Aidan get ready and served the porridge.

 

After the bathroom, Aidan whizzed towards the dining room in his shiny aluminum Zimmer frame. It had two wheels on the front and two rubber ferrules on the back to enhance the grip and avoid the frame slipping on the wooden oak floor. He could really move when he was hungry.

 

Marian licked her lips as she served the hot porridge. She put the 20-year-old tea pot onto the table. It was nothing too impressive, but Marian was great at the old knitting, so the teapot always has some sort of woolly contraption on it. This month is navy and baby blue entwined together because Dublin made it to the All-Ireland.

 

‘This looks lovely!’ Aiden said even though it had been porridge every day for years, except on special occasions when it was a fry up.

 

‘Where are your teeth love? You can’t have breakfast without teeth’ she looked at him and he looked at her and once again smiled his toothless grin. ‘It’s a good job I wasn’t sitting down!’ she sighed.

 

Marian went down the hall to the bedroom and sure enough the teeth were in a glass of water on the bedside locker. She grabbed them and shook her head as she muttered ‘porridge will be cold now!’ She put the teeth onto the table in front of Aiden and said, ‘now love, you’ll enjoy it more with your teeth’, and so he did!

 

They ate breakfast together slowly with radio one on in the background every morning on a round kitchen table that sat beside the wall. The radio sat on a shelf above it. Aidan needed hearing aids but was in denial. ‘They are only for owl ones’ he’d say every time they were mentioned although the man was 85.

‘What do you think about the storm?’ Marian said to him, but he didn’t respond. ‘The storm love?’ she repeated louder.

‘What?’ he replied.

‘The storm?’ she said even louder.

‘What storm?’ he asked.

‘The one that’s due love!’ Marian rolled her eyes.

‘What?’ Aiden still had no clue what she was talking about.

‘They’re just after been talking about it for the past twenty minutes on the radio,’ Marian said under her breath.

‘What?’ he said again, hand cupped against his left ear.

This drove Marian bananas but Aidan refused point blank to get his ears tested.

 

As Marian cleared up, Aidan got dressed. She was singing away to herself. That particular morning she was singing ‘Chandelier’ by Sia. Marian got a new hip 12 weeks ago. Her grandson Pete who was a dancer always encouraged music to be played in the house so Marian could shake her hips making sure it took properly. Marian had said on numerous occasions during her recovery that she would crack up if she had to listen to one more song by Daniel O'Donnell. She liked something she could move to, so Pete got her an iPod and put loads of upbeat music on it. It wasn’t headphones she used, however, because they would ruin her hair, instead she used ear buds to listen to it. Sia would have to be her favorite.

‘I'm gonna swing from the chandelier, from the chandelier, But I'm holding on for dear life, won’t look down won’t open my eeeyyyyesss!’

‘Holy Christ’ Marian screamed as she felt her husband tap her on her shoulder. She quickly turned around from the sink and took out her ear buds, her hands still in her marigolds.

‘Aiden,’ she chastised. ‘You nearly frightened the shite out of me.’

‘What?’ he replied.

‘Never mind’ she said trying to get her breath back.

 

Aiden had been suspicious about Marian’s hearing because half the time he wanted her attention, she didn’t respond. He wondered if it was because of the music but even when she wasn’t singing, she still didn’t respond. He got so concerned that he went to the doctor the previous day on his motorized scooter that lived in the garage and asked for some advice. The doctor told him he should stand in the next room and ask a question, and then a few feet away and ask the same question and then again beside her. He took it all in and said:

‘Right doctor, I’ll give it a go and then get back to you’ as the doctor walked him to his scooter.

‘Thank you, sir, and make sure now you keep me posted!’ the doctor shouted after Aiden as he drove away.

 

Because Aiden was genuinely worried about Marian’s hearing, he tried out what the doctor suggested as she was making dinner later that day. On the way back from the toilet, which was one door down from the kitchen he said in a good loud tone, ‘what’s for dinner Marian love?’ No answer! He went into the kitchen and once again said, ‘Marian love, what’s on the menu?’ She still didn’t answer. He was beginning to get really worried so this time he went closer to her again when she answered loudly,

‘For the third time love, chicken!’ she answered with one hand up the chicken’s arse as she was inserting the stuffing.

‘Why didn’t you say that the first time?’ He asked.

‘I did you gobshite. You asked first when you came out of the bathroom, then in the hall, then just inside the door and now here!’ she explained with hand signals knowing he wouldn’t get the whole answer in one.

‘Oh, right. Well, you didn’t say it loud enough!’ He blushed.

‘God forgive me for cursing, but you need to see a bloody doctor about those ears!’ She said loudly.

‘What?’ He replied.

Marian muttered under her breath and got back to the chicken.

 

Knowing Aiden had been with the doctor the previous day, Marian gave him a ring when she was finished preparing the dinner. She didn’t know the doctor’s number off by heart, but Pete had them all stored in her iPhone. Pete was trying to put them both in touch with technology. She had the screen at arm’s length and still couldn’t see the numbers.

‘Where are my feckin glasses love?’ She shouts into the next room.

Of course Aiden didn’t hear her; he was in the sitting room with the TV blaring at 80, so she went in and stood between his brown leather recliner and ‘The Cube’.

‘Mind love, she’s playing for €50,000’ he said trying to see around her.

 ‘Have you seen my glasses?’ she asked again.

‘What?’ he replied.

At this stage Marian had lost all patience and shouted very loudly ‘HAVE YOU SEEN MY GLASSES’ as she animated the words with her hands like she was playing the game charades.

‘No need to shout, I’m not deaf!’ he shouted back. ‘They are on your head!’

Marian touched the top of her head and sure enough they were there. ‘Now who’s losing it?’ he smiled with a grin from ear to ear.

‘Smart arse!’ She replied.

‘What?’ he replied.

‘Oh Jesus Mary and holy Saint Joseph’ she said and stormed out.

 

Marian sat at the kitchen table and put on the glasses that were on her head. She looked at the screen and it was all blurry. She took off the glasses and looked at them. They weren’t her glasses at all, they were his. She got up again and muttered under her breath as she searched for her ones. ‘Well, if these are his......maybe he has mine’ she pondered. ‘That would mean he went out on that bloody scooter without the proper glasses again!’ She giggled, ‘feckin gobshite’

 

She went out to the garage, and there in the basket on the front of the scooter were both her glasses and his reading glasses. She knew they were his reading glasses because they were like milk bottles and the arms of them were bent. Aidan kept alternating between standing on them, rolling over them in his Zimmer frame and sitting on them. You’d never be sure where you’d find them next. She found them in the bath the other day covered in suds. Marian saw her pair were too dirty to see through, so she went back into the house and cleaned them with a dirty tea towel. This made them worse.

 

‘Feckin thing not worth a shite’ she muttered under her breath at the tea towel. Marian finally got them clean by rubbing them with her apron. She scrolled down the list of names on her phone until she got to Dr. Cassidy’s number. His secretary answered and patched her through immediately because he was between patients. Marian rattled on about her husband’s hearing to realize he was worried about hers.

‘Yeah, I said to him to test it out by calling you from afar until he was…….’

‘…right beside me.’ She finished his sentence. That made a lot of sense.

Marian went on to telling the doctor what happened at the end of that experiment. The doctor admitted that Aiden would need to come to terms with hearing aids and that he would talk to him about it at his next available appointment which was at three o’clock that day. Marian was delighted and hung up.

Marian could hear Aiden shouting at the television ‘take the money, take the money.’ A tear rolled down her cheek, her Aiden was getting old.