I hear someone talking. So very relaxed in my body. Down finally. You have to get up. Why, where am I? I thought I was about to meet Prince Harry, the new archetypal sensitive evolved man, perhaps, or maybe just because I have been wanting to read his book that I’ve been carrying about for days, in hopes of a peaceful time in which I can do so. I was about to glide though a doorway. Was I in an airport, on a stage? I was in a long skirt, flowing, cream colored, and over that, slung low, was a belt, Renaissance style? How funny, that this word would pop up in describing the image, as it seems to have such significance now. Maybe it was more in the Medieval style, over a smooth silhouette. But there is definitely something about this style. My hair was long, flowing too. I moved smoothly through the doorway with the glide of a whirling dervish, looking down to see the swirls of my skirt as I turned in entrance.

Do what now? Move what? I feel so heavy. I said something, as I clearly misheard what the ladies said, and my response was a mix between dream and reality.

Now an alarm goes off, on another phone. It’s pleasant one, marking another time start, or stop. A glitch, I write, in the app, the US version, that inhibits me from seeing new contacts for a couple of days. A glitch in what, the time space continuüm? Don’t be ridiculous, I think. Just as I do so, a lady comes past me and up to where the self-serve coffee usually is. There’s no coffee? Yeah, I don’t know why, but there’s some in Vibrant Life, I say. As I look up at her I say, nice dress, as it is a white and black buffalo plaid number with a cool loose pleat at the bottom, and I notice it’s over black Japanese style trousers. As she walks away, with her walker, I slowly realise that everything she’s wearing, her ponytail with a black satin bow, black, thick-rimmed glasses, everything, top to toe, is basically me, 30 years from now. Walking, living, breathing, and looking for coffee, me. I realise that she approached the table, just as I had, 20 minutes earlier, looking for coffee, and a little pissed it wasn’t there. Space time continuüm, indeed.

It is Saturday morning in the care home where my mother lives. One day I will look back at this morning from a time and place that is different, in a world where my mother no longer exists, and I will long for it to be this say again, and yesterday, so that things may not feel as hard as they will then, so that I will not feel so alone in a world in which my mother does not exist. But today I am in the world with my mother, and for that I am truly grateful.