Precarious Balance

December The oak leaves are out in full, becoming a darker green than before. Turning fifty is behind me, Lord, and it all went better than anticipated. It is a good age to be, after all. Help me, Lord, to become older gracefully. Grant me courage, grant me peace. With that, Clare closed her journal, and said to herself, All else can wait. Clare was watching the goldfish in the pond at the bottom of the garden. She had taken an early morning walk to do so. This was where she sometimes came to think things through, and this morning was such a time. There was a still freshness in the air that flushed her cheeks and helped her towards clarity of mind. She was deeply concerned and needed to gain perspective. There were often tricky situations pertaining to family, friends or acquaintances that she felt needed her prayers and love. Discovering how she could be a possible part of the solution needed reflection. The shady nook in her garden was an ideal place for this. As her two sons grew and developed into adults, their needs naturally changed, and she had to make sure she was not stifling them with her habitual maternal instincts. Her younger son Matthew, aged twenty-three, was in love with a young woman, Nicole Hayden, who Clare had reason to believe was seriously ill. When she recently saw Nicole she had an almost deathly pallor. Nicole’s doctor had scheduled her for an appointment with a haemotologist later that day. Clare had asked Matthew to let her know the outcome at the earliest opportunity. ‘I will, Mum, I will, as soon as we know. In the meantime, keep her in your prayers.’ And Clare was doing just that. For her not to pray would be like ceasing to breathe. It was her life force, her central focus, her reaching out to her Beloved. Her husband, Craig, understood this, although he did not share her ardour. Craig MacMillan was already in his study working. An economist of note, and a consultant, he studied the financial world to keep abreast of current trends. The past year had been particularly stressful due to the onset of the financial crisis in the United States and the instability in the South African market caused by the abrupt recalling o its president. There were a number of younger people he mentored, regarding their offshore investments, some of them friends of his sons. They came to see him in his home office, and so Clare also got to know them. Clare and Craig had settled into a comfortable pattern where there was still space for passion but where the relationship was not dependent on it to move forward. When she was twenty, Clare had been desperately in love with a suave and wealthy lawyer, who whisked her around the world in luxury ocean liners and private jets, but passion had at last consumed the very relationship itself. When Craig came along he was so solid, so reliable, so stable and so homely by contrast that she gravitated towards him like a rose to gentle rain. So from the start Craig enveloped Clare with a sense of security which felt like the warm, loving embrace of a friend rather than the passionate kiss of a lover. Not that there wasn’t room for both. Clare mostly felt very grateful for all her blessings. Sometimes, though, when her elder son Jerome and Craig were more grumpy than usual – or when her gentle Matthew was uncharacteristically sharp – she longed to return to the harmonious rhythm she normally enjoyed.