Notes of a Therapist

 

I started by asking what her interests were,

how did she spend her days? She told me that

she didn’t much like days. These were the things

she loved most of all: bedtime and dreaming

and sometimes, before nightfall, like the proverbial

shepherdess, she would gaze with an artist’s eye

upon the pinking of the summer skies which

called to her camera and for solo

trips into the hills. On her return she

spent time online with her secret ‘friend’

‘Jiminy Cricket’ whose real identity

could be anyone. This is what she said

she despised, that fact and the two stuffed squirrels

 which he said he kept in a case on the

wall and the way he was always disappearing

 to put fish food in the tank. (He sounded real

creepy to me).  She told me that she had

cried recently because she had seen her

daughter’s  copies of Cosmopolitan which only

reinforced her lost youth with all its past passions.

I left it there, when  the tissues had run out.

 

Cait O’Connor