The Bread in the Fridge

I have always had a capacity to hold polarity.
Right now, it feels less like a gift and more like a full-body initiation.

For much of my life, this ability served me well. I could sit in complexity. I could be both in awe and in tears at the same time. I could see more than one truth at once. After leaving conservative Christianity, with its rigid lines of right and wrong, this capacity deepened. What I discovered was not grey. It was richer. More technicolour. More alive.

Non-duality is beautiful in theory.
Practising it is something else entirely.

Because belief may feel clean. Life is not. 

 

At the moment, I feel polarity everywhere. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. It shows up in the most ordinary and the most intimate places.

I am consistently moving between two countries. Establishing myself more firmly in one, while choosing to be present in another. I have created a small space in France, just a twelve-minute walk from where my parents live, so I can be around more. My brother has moved over permanently. He wants to be there while our mother might still recognise him. While she might still know his face, his voice, his gentle kindness.

The love story that is unfolding between my brother and me is not one I could ever have imagined. Our relationship continues to soften and expand in ways that feel quietly miraculous. We are learning each other again as adults. We are healing old fractures without needing to name them. We are discovering that presence, not perfection, is what our parents need most from us.

My mother can be utterly present, conscious, funny, sharp. Then, moments later, confused, lost, suspicious or frightened. She holds two realities at once. So do we.

Last night, the four of us had dinner together. My mother had prepared a raclette. A simple family meal. Except nothing is simple anymore.

There was almost a fallout over where the raclette appliance should be placed. My mother wanted it in the kitchen. My father was afraid she would touch it while it was still hot. She did touch it. She started shouting at him. He snapped back, quietly but firmly, saying that if she continued being aggressive with him, he did not know how much more he could take.

Then, just as quickly, the moment passed. My brother and I stayed calm. This is something we have spoken about often. The greatest gift we can bring our parents is our regulated nervous systems. We may not have solutions. We may not be able to change the trajectory. But we can bring serenity. Steadiness. We can bring the ability to breathe.

After dinner, my father packed the dishwasher. My mother loves it when he uses the dishwasher rather than washing everything by hand. When he finished, she asked him to come closer. She wanted to offer him a kiss. He looked surprised. As was I! He leaned in. She kissed him tenderly. Afterwards, he looked at us and laughed and said, well, that’s the first and probably the last kiss of 2026.

We all burst out laughing.

Before that, there had been bread. My father insisted there must have been more. My mother argued that he eats too much bread and that she had prepared enough food. He kept getting up to look. Eventually, he found a fresh baguette in the fridge that he had bought earlier in the day.

I watched my mother closely. I saw the moment she realised she had been wrong. The flicker of embarrassment. The subtle shame. And then, almost instinctively, she said, “Oh yes, yes, yes. I decided to put the bread in the fridge so it stays fresh and doesn’t go hard tomorrow.”

In that moment, I felt a surge of compassion so strong it surprised me.

She was not lying to deceive us. She was preserving her dignity.

 

As someone deeply familiar with the Enneagram, particularly the Type Three archetype, I recognise this instinct. One of the type three shadows is deception, not in the sense of manipulation, but in the need to maintain coherence, competence, face. Watching my mother, I saw a version of that instinct stripped bare. I saw myself. I too have chosen deception to maintain dignity.

She has never put bread in the fridge to keep it fresh. She likely never will. But in that moment, accuracy mattered less than wholeness. Sometimes truth is not about being correct. Sometimes it is about allowing someone to remain intact.

This is what holding polarity looks like when it leaves the conceptual and enters the reality of a life hopefully well lived.

About living a life, a few weeks ago, I took my Life in the UK test. It was far harder than I expected. Or maybe I was more tired than I gave myself credit for. I am in the final stages of applying for UK citizenship. I could have done it a year ago. I qualified. But the year since my mother’s diagnosis has been full. Emotionally. Logistically. Existentially.

I did not have the heart to memorise dates and monarchs while watching my mother begin to forget. In hindsight, I am grateful for the delay. Studying now, I feel a deeper reverence for this land and its layered history.

This dance with my parents, with my brother, feels like the return phase of the heroine’s journey. We leave home to become ourselves. We come back not to digress, but to integrate. There is healing here. Slow, relational, imperfect healing.

 

Midlife, for me, has not been a collapse of energy so much as a recalibration of identity. Since the hormonal chaos of November, I feel physically and emotionally really good. And yet everything I thought I was building is being questioned. Where do I place my attention. My devotion. My care.

It reminds me of a poem by David Whyte, SOMETIMES, which I memorised while walking through a forest in Japan with him two years ago. Poetry has a way of holding what the conscious mind cannot. The poem speaks of questions that arrive quietly. Frightening, tiny requests that ask you to stop what you are doing and who you are becoming as you do it. Questions that unravel a life and have no right to go away.

The question I am holding now is this.
Who do I become as my mother seems to unravel?
And is she the one unravelling. Or am I?

What I do know is this. When my brother and I are around, something softens in my parents. My father carries the weight of being the carer with less sternness and anger. My mother messages me more often. Thoughtful, coherent, kind messages. Little threads of connection that matter more than certainty ever could.

The more I live, the more I realise how little I know.

And perhaps Cremora had it all wrong. We should not be putting it in our coffee at all. Because the next time you cannot find the baguette, do not look on the fridge.

Look in the fridge.

Look inside. All you need is inside YOU.

This is Midlife Memoirs with Coco.

WATCH (29 sec): An Ode To Cremora...