MAY 23 Easter Weekend Easter WeekendAshley Penrose

$Maundy Thursday Afternoon sunlight glares off cracked tarmac. Airport vehicles scurry to their attendant planes in obedient haste. Clouds, in contrast, crawl across the blue sky at a barely indistinguishable pace. Through the tinted airport windows, all is varied movement. Inside, Bryan Adams warbles in a stale duty free shop. Billboards boast deluxe watches HUGOT and BOVET either side of an ad for SWISS ANTI-AGEING clinic Lemanique. I do, and don’t want to stop time…approaching a milestone birthday, another trigger of mortality; certain life choices now made from which no retreat seems possible. The youthful capacity to wonder at life’s unending possibilities that I see in my son, replaced, long ago it now seems, with the crippling need to choose one at the expense of all others. And a growing anxiety that only so much can be achieved in a lifetime. What, if anything, can be salvaged of the old life? The idle eyes of the youthful model in the Health Clinic ad gazed out, without answers. Her head instead, is being gently tilted to one side by the medical gloved hands of the age defying expert. ‘Functional, Preventative, Regenerative medicine’. But either side, the giant, seductive watches blaze the advance of Time. *** “Your five minute reading time is up. You may now begin.” The invigilator’s voice made him jump out of his over-sized skin. Catching the absurdity of the moment, a grin appreciated by nobody but himself. Ahhh. He loved the way girls under pressure swooped their hair up with deft fingers, securing it with one of those…what were they called, scrunchies? He studied the postures on display; there were the hunched worshippers, willing their pens to inscribe at a rate faster than their brains could think. Others reclined in apparent ease, one leg crossed, an ankle resting on a knee. He scanned the room. Crossed, uncrossed. Crossed, uncrossed. Everyone was wearing blue, beige or washed out grey. Biting on his pencil the taste of lead reminded him of his childhood, graphite and wax crayons always did. And with that, his mother’s anxious face that morning resurfaced in his mind. Bitterness, and recrimination at the breakfast table. I could pray for her. I will now. Before I get into this question. She glanced at the time on her iPhone - time to put things in order for the boarding ritual- I am not checking for messages, I am not checking for messages. Let him stew. Her last message rang with a triumphant finality she wanted to savour. “Imaginary delegation. AGAIN. This will be the end of us.” 14 C. Rear of aircraft. How dare he cut in front of me! ’Good riddance’- the message lying in wait on her phone on landing. Good riddance? what the fuck? What does he mean? Good Friday How was the Economics? Oh, alright, I think. Oh, and I prayed for Mum. I think she needs it right now. You know she didn’t come home yesterday. I guess this means there won’t be any Easter egg hunt at the weekend? Pfff. Did you hear Cadbury’s took the word ‘Easter’ out of ‘Easter Egg Hunt’. Political correctness run amok. You’ll have to be chief entertainer tomorrow instead. Dad this is serious…I never really got what chocolate eggs had to do with Jesus dying on the cross anyway. And why do they call it ‘good’ Friday if it’s the day after the crucifixion? Some Roman soldier’s sense of humour? It’s her illness I’m worried about. Where would she have gone? She didn’t say. She’s never done anything like this before, Dad. I know where she is. She texted me from the airport. But I’m not saying. We won’t hear from her where she’s gone -the wifi connection is lousy. Saturday Dawn chorus never sounds as good as it does from this bed. Functional. Preventative, Regenerative. This time of year…the scent of wild garlic on the bank that rises behind the bedroom, the green arm that wraps this side of the house and hold it in. Through the mullioned window the pale yellow of primroses meet me at eye-level. That same sensation it always gave me of looking through a porthole into the sea. The early summer light is drunkenly coming through this window. I have a whole day - ONE WHOLE DAY - of unending light…and the evening being pushed further and further back. Years before and unbidden from some inner source, the sound of laughter, the uncontrollable laughter of a three-year old. The sound carried now across the years though this laugh now belonging to another young adult, five years older than Jake now, who’s matured body I cannot picture. But as I try to picture the sunlight glistening off those other limbs, I can feel the hardness in my own body loosening. I’m going out - there’s so much to see. When I get to the coffee shop I’ll tell them ‘Let’s Skype tomorrow morning.’ Easter Sunday So Jake entertained his cousins, as only he, or you could. All the eggs were found except for one, which remained lodged in the branches of a holly tree. And your mother Skyped from your Aunt’s, It was like seeing a different person. She smiled like in the photograph where you’re both trying to stop your ice-creams from melting. Thought is not in the same place today as it was yesterday. It never is. It moves on. Perhaps we can too.