MUCH ADO...

The dishwasher was almost loaded, most of the cutlery was already in their respective baskets, and I was serving lunch.

I had lovingly prepared a salmon salad...because I knew he liked plenty of greens, and fish, which was so beneficial to good health. Good for me too, of course. Earlier I had picked the ripe strawberries from the vegetable garden that I tended each day; washed, hulled, sliced them; mixed them with the one available passionfruit, a diced apple and two home-grown bananas; some lime juice to blend the flavours. I was pleased with my efforts as we sat in the sun on my north-facing verandah.

We had both eaten every scrap of food on our dinner plates. ‘Yum, yum,’ I said as I polished off the last vestige of the lettuce from my garden. He had brought forward his pretty glass bowl laden with fruit salad. He picked up the oatmeal spoon that I had set at his place.

‘I do wish you would give me a decent spoon,’ he complained, holding the offending article aloft, looking at me as you would a trusted servant, willing me with his eyes to get up and fetch him a dessert spoon, the oval type, not round as an oatmeal spoon is.

‘The others are all in the dishwasher,’ I explained, sitting still.
‘What about the one that I used for my porridge this morning?’
‘You took it out to the shed, remember? You only brought it with you now. When I called you for lunch!’
‘I put it in the sink...’ I didn’t budge, although his eyes were upon me, ordering me to get up and wash the spoon. It was unreasonable. I could have given him a dessert spoon from the few odd, cheap pieces that he had brought with him seven years ago, but I knew full well his reaction when I did that. ‘Crap!’ he would say, ‘I’m not using this crap!’ I would protest that it was his very own cutlery that I kept in a separate compartment, but he would ignore my words and flounce to the kitchen to search for a better utensil, one to his liking, one of mine.

What a storm in a teacup! Who does he think he is? He who has nothing. I, the one who owns the place, who took him in when he had no home. Where have I gone wrong?

It is my nature that is the problem. I do not demand. I am not a squeaky wheel, and I get little oil as a result. Certainly not from dominant people. I like myself as I am, but I realise that a certain type hones in on me, knowing I am malleable, eager to please, willing to pull my weight, that I can be manipulated, bossed around. But only to a degree...

We all have our breaking point; and our memories.