We Are All Rinsing Lettuce in Leaking Containers

Last night, my maman rinsed the lettuce once. Then again. Then again. Only after several washes did she notice the container was leaking. That is the shape of things now.

Within minutes of my brother and I arriving, a cupboard door swung open, something slipped and glass shattered across the kitchen floor. For a brief moment I wondered: we came for dinner. Will there be dinner?

There was. I put water on for polenta. Started preparing a tomato salad. Maman found soup. My brother laid the table. Twenty minutes later, we were sitting down together, all four of us, as we have done a thousand times before.

I love these moments. I also notice what they cost.

Sitting at the table, I felt an old reflex rise. Eat quickly. Drink generously. Take the edge off. Bite my nails. It is interesting how the body remembers old strategies.

When I was younger, speed and distraction from discomfort were how I managed overwhelm. Stay restless. Consume fast. Suppress feeling. Tonight I watched that impulse arise. Mostly without shame. I noticed it. Set it down. Stayed at the table.

My dad came into the kitchen and said he really felt like rosé. I didn’t want to drink rosé. He left and came back holding a beautiful bottle of red.

In our family language, that is love.

He would happily drink box rosé or box red. He is careful with money. Every bottle he opens is considered. So when he brings out a good red because I am there, I feel the weight of the gesture. In the end, Maman and I practically drank the bottle between us.

 

Lately, she has been talking about wanting a fish tank. Which, of course, is a terrible idea. We had one when I was growing up. I remember her sitting in front of it in the evenings, watching the fish move slowly through water instead of watching television. It calmed her.

But now, with memory faltering, with glass already falling out of cupboards, there is no world in which my dad agrees to an aquarium.

My brother, bless him, immediately sat down in front of the television and started searching for an aquarium scene. The way you can put on a fireplace on Netflix. He scrolled. He searched. He made a plan with underwater documentaries played in the background without sound.

It gave me an idea. I am going to take her to the aquarium in Paris one day soon.

Not to pretend everything is fine. Just to let her sit and watch fish again.

 

The evening also held this.

We discussed the same topic several times. My dad had spent the entire day with her. It must be so hard for him. The carers who had been coming have stopped. The system requires reapplication. He mentioned it was a lot of effort. We initially thought he was saying it was too much effort. We later realised he had already started the process.

He is trying to fix things. It is his love language.

And Maman, at times, seems almost antagonistic. Picking at him. Provoking. I find myself consistently wondering whether what she needs most is not more practical support, but tenderness. A hug. Soft words. The one thing he could offer freely, without paperwork or waiting lists, is the very thing that feels most foreign to him.

Then, quietly, without ceremony, he handed my brother and me a form. We are now authorised to make decisions on her behalf if anything happens to him.

No fanfare. Just signatures. Perhaps it was better that way as I was likely to burst into tears with both relief and recognition at what this means for our family.

We also discovered she has had a persistent scratch on her nose for months now. She once insisted he cancel a dermatologist appointment so he did. He quietly made another one. The doctor is concerned. There is so much we do not know.

For a long time, I labelled my dad as difficult. Stubborn. Emotionally limited. But the more I witness this chapter of their life, the more I see complexity instead of character flaws.

This is not good versus bad. Not right versus wrong. It is two ageing people navigating fear and loss and love inside the patterns they know best.

And I am watching them. Learning from them. Being shaped by them still, even now, even at this age. Under stress, we all revert. Some of us eat. Some drink. Some fix. Some withdraw. Some provoke. Some stay stoic. Most of us are simply trying to feel safe.

I write this not because I have made peace with any of it. I haven’t, not entirely.

I write it because some things need to be said out loud. Perhaps you might recognise something here. A loved one becoming someone new. A role quietly reversing. A table you still sit down to, even when it’s hard, because the alternative is not sitting down at all.

We are all rinsing lettuce in leaking containers.

We are all trying not to drop the glass.

We are all loving in the only ways we know how.

And sometimes, love looks like a bottle of red placed quietly on the table.

And sometimes, it looks like taking your mother to watch fish in Paris.