Sunday, half past two

It's Sunday. You said you'd go over at two, and it's half past, because there was lunch to clear and a child who couldn't find their shoes, and now you're in the car and the guilt has already started, a fizz under the ribs about the half hour. You'll be there for two hours. You know roughly how it'll go. She'll say you look tired. You'll fix the thing with the television that you fixed last week. You'll look in the fridge and notice the milk. You'll talk about your sister, who lives further away and rings on Wednesdays. At some point you'll look at the clock on the cooker and calculate when you can reasonably say you have to go, and then you'll feel bad about calculating.

On the drive home your shoulders will drop, and you'll notice them dropping, and the relief will bring a second guilt behind it, for the relief. Then the week will run, and on Wednesday you'll think you should ring, and you won't, and on Thursday you'll think it again, and by Saturday the thought of Sunday will have a weight to it that has nothing to do with your mother, who you love, and who will be pleased to see you.

Somewhere in a drawer there's a leaflet about a day centre. Somewhere in your head there's a sum, in which your visits and your sister's calls and your brother's nothing are being added up and compared, and the answer is always that you're doing the most and it's still not enough. Somewhere in the back of it all there's a sentence you've never said aloud, which is that you're not sure how long you can keep this up, and you can't say it, because saying it sounds like the beginning of abandoning her.

These are invented, but I'd guess yours is close. Some words. The debt is the felt sense that you owe your parents, which is where the guilt says it comes from. The should is the sentence, I should go, I should ring, I should have them here. Penance is care done to cancel a feeling, a visit made so that you'll have visited. Chosen care is care you decided on, in an amount you named, and give because you chose it. The standard is the invisible measure you keep failing, the good daughter or good son who'd do more, whose life you can never quite describe. The doorstep is the moment of leaving, when the guilt spikes. The sums are the sibling arithmetic. Whole is how a visit is given when it isn't being measured against the clock. Help in is any care that isn't you.

Before you go on, do one thing. Think of the last visit or call. Ask yourself, honestly, whether you went to see them or went so that you'd have been. Most people who ask this find the answer is both, and that the second part has been growing. That's what this book is about.