Gaps and a precious moment

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‘Try to avoid eating or drinking for two hours.’  This instruction is followed by nine other orders including ‘no alcohol’. You have probably guessed, it is to do with the dentist, I have had a tooth extraction. I have not had a tooth out for about forty years and it was a very painful experience then, but this time it was easier. All I have now is a gap which I must not probe with my tongue – it is all I want to do, of course.

Isn’t it strange that when we go to the dentist, we clean our teeth extra carefully the night before we set off. It is like cleaning up before the cleaner comes or washing my hair before I go to the hairdressers.

The potholes in our road looked like the huge gap in my row of teeth. Big and black and painful if you go into them. Last week a Highways lorry came and I thought ‘Oh good, here it is at last’. We were promised a new road by the end of August (I still have the letter), they were just in time.

Traffic was stopped, men were out there with shovels and the lorry was full of tarry pebbles. But when I came back, the lorry had disappeared and so had the men. On close inspection I can see that some potholes have been filled but some of them remain at the side and we are still going very carefully to be safe.

Teeth coming out is a sign of my age and I am aware that some of my possessions have a lot of family history and time is running out (not immediately I hope) for me to tell their story.

When I was a little girl my grandma, who lived in the same sprawling farmhouse as us, followed me out onto our backyard cobbles. She had a bible in her hand and said that she wanted me to have it. Inside I saw that it had once belonged to her daughter who died of TB when she was only 23 years old. Grandma had given me her dead daughter’s bible for safekeeping. I told no one and I was a little frightened, but I have taken the bible with me wherever I have been for seventy years.

I thought it was time to pass it on to the younger generation. I chose the youngest in the family because I was the youngest when the bible came to me. Some of us met in our churchyard and we had a little handing over ceremony.

Now, there is a sad gap on my bookshelf where the bible used to be.


(Taken from my column in the Shropshire Star)

A gap in my shelves - the family bible has been passes on to the younger generation
From old hands to young hands.

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