HUMANS WHO HAVE INSPIRED ME

Cricket, Lovely Cricket

This is not a story about cricket, or is it

I am fast approaching my first half century — a single or two and I would be raising my bat to the crowd as they cheer an innings well played. It did not matter that I knocked very few balls over the boundary and only hitting a four a couple times, I made the runs with fine strokes — many singles, but runs nevertheless.

Cricket is a game that is played throughout the British Commonwealth and I grew up listening to it on the radio. There was always cricket being played somewhere in the world, and my stepfather would tune until he found a game. I was an avid supporter of the great West Indies Cricket Team and though I am not as strong a fan as I used to be, I still watch a game or two and attend 20–20 matches if they are playing in my country, as they are now. Unfortunately, I am not going this year — Covid regulations and all.

Would you believe me if I said that this post is not about cricket? See how easy we can go down a worm hole and end up in some other galaxy of thought? I was talking about getting older, yes.

This story is really about somebodies I admire — the matriarchs of my family, my two aunts and my mother. Theirs have been the shoulders on which we have all stood — all 21 of us — their children.

I have been watching them closely as they enter the twilight of their years and my admiration is growing by the day. We sit in our garden and talk and laugh and reminisce, with cricket being the subject at times — my aunt loves the game of cricket and I recall several occasions when we were in the stands watching a tense game wondering which of us will suffer heart failure first. We would grab onto each other waiting for the bowler to toss the ball and the batter to hit it for six — but only when our team was the one batting.

Here I go again, regressing to cricket talk and for the second time I will go back to what I really want to share.

My body is changing. I see the signs of ageing. I see the fine wrinkles, the loss in muscle tone, I experience the stiffness, the pain — a lot of pain. I see the same in these matriarchs. Sometimes I see them wincing as they attempt to stand or shift their bodies and I can recall the years when I used to wince with them, sympathetically. Now I have my own wincing party going on — a sore knee or two, fingers that cramp of their own accord, ankles that are protesting my body weight, all one hundred thirty plus pounds of it.

One thing I have never heard any of them do is to complain incessantly — they accept their suffering in stoic silence. And even when they grimace, they smile; when they have to stand up after sitting for a while, begging their joints and muscles to cooperate, they smile; when they have to put on their now thick glasses to see because their sight is getting darker by the day, they smile.

I love these women. I admire them. I thank them for the role they played and continue to play in my life and that of my daughter.

I pay tribute to them and to all the mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers who are still raising their families to be the best humans they can be.

Well played, ladies!

© I. Trudie Palmer One Love

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