Late afternoon I sit on the veranda with the sunlight just so from the right and I pull the needle through the last bit of seam and secure the thread and snip off the end. There. It has only taken me three years to finish the very last bit. It was here on this chair in this sunlight an eternity ago. I thought I would just pretend and go on as usual and finish this sweater, the last bits and pieces. In the days when I was told by my GP that maybe it was all down to a bit of rest. Sweet innocence. 

Three years later. Roughly. That's really nothing. I have only just started. How dreadful wonderful will it be? The future.

Any day now my child is returning from her visits and the sailing and the lakes and the Alps and I will smell her hair and watch her sift through the fridge in search of olives and cheese. She has the most amazing rings and bangles, like a pirate's stash. And little tattoos in secret corners. And this day next week she will be on her long flight back to the other end of the planet.

You own nothing and yet you have this cluster of stars, this wind, this direction, these shadows flitting across the earth.

(Breyten Breytenbach)