After their failed attempt to see eye to eye, Bill did indeed pack up and take the caravan to visit Kylie, Bruce and Tiffany in the country. He was sick of waiting for Kat to see the light. He knew she wouldn’t join him, preferring to stay and tinker with her precious hoard.
Kat thought, “That man is obsessed with that caravan. What’s so good about sleeping in a tin box?” She told herself they needed a break from each other anyway. She would use the time apart to research some more storage solutions. She needed something to show off her collection of thimbles.
Three days later, Kat spent hours on the computer investigating her thimble storage options and narrowed her choices down to the top ten shadow boxes. She’d decide tomorrow which one was best. Before she closed the internet browser, she took a peek at Facebook to see if Bill had posted anything lately.
Sure enough he had been posting. There were photos of him and Tiffany fishing together. It looks like Tiffany had a knack for it. There was a photo of Bill and Kylie clinking glasses, and one of Bill and Bruce both holding tongs by the barbecue. There was even one of the wretched caravan parked under a shady tree.
As Kat clicked on each photo, she noticed there were lots of comments from mutual friends.
“Tiffany will treasure these moments with her grandad forever”, wrote their old neighbour, Gladys. That comment received quite a few likes.
Her husband Bob wrote, “Nice barbecue! You can come cook for me any time.” Thumbs up for that one too.
An old colleague of Bill’s asked, “Where’s Kat?”
Bill hadn’t responded, but Kat was livid when she spotted Violet’s laughing emoji on the comment.
“Two can play at that game!” Kat fumed as she silently declared war on Facebook. She knew just where to start.
She wrote, “Just can’t decide which of these lovely shadow boxes will show off my thimble collection best.” And she posted a few of the links her research had uncovered. Then she waited for the replies. There was nothing, not even one thumbs up.
She looked around the room. Her eyes landed on a box, and she knew exactly what was inside. All the calendars she’d kept since she got married. They held some memories. She dug deep into the box and her hand came up with the 1985 free-from-the-chemist calendar with the scenes of their local area. That was the year Kylie was born. Jackpot! Kat leafed through, hoping to find notations about her early days as a mother, but there were none. She checked the box again and found another 1985 calendar. She remembers buying this one for the large format. She planned to use it to diarise her busy life. There were a few notes, but not as many as she expected.
But oh well, this would do for her next Facebook post. She took an artsy photo of the cover and added it to her post with the question, “What were you doing in 1985?” That should get conversation going. It certainly did.
Gladys asked, “Why do you have a calendar from 1985?” She followed up with “We haven’t looked back since we downsized. Life is so much easier now.”
Kat replied, “That’s the year Kylie was born. I couldn’t just toss that memory in the recycle bin, could I?”
Again, Violet came along with a laughing emoji and said, “Come on Kat, who are you kidding? I bet you still have every calendar you ever owned.”
Kat had to defend herself. “There are thousands of memories in those.”
Violet responded, “If everything is special, nothing is special.” Then she posted a meme by some minimalist kook that said, “Use things and love people, because the other way around doesn’t work.”
Oh, this was infuriating. A notification popped up that Bill had posted again. This time it was a video of Tiffany waving and saying, “Wish you were here Grandma!” Not fair, Bill! You can’t use our granddaughter to guilt trip me!
Kat went into the guest room, the one she’d worked so hard on so that Tiffany could come to stay. Kat remembered the nightstand and how she’d decorated it with all those precious memories from Kylie’s youth – the Dolly magazines, the autograph book, the ballerina statue. That vignette would make the perfect photo to show how much she cared about her family. but when she arrived at the nightstand it wasn’t as she remembered. On top of the Dolly magazines was a pile of fishing magazines, a tangled and broken necklace that she’d put there to hopefully repair one day, and a shopping bag with Christmas cards that had been on sale after Christmas.
She moved those things out of the way and then noticed that the nightstand needed a good dusting. So she dusted it, tidied up the vignette and took her photo.
As she worked away, she thought, “This is why I can’t just go away on a whim. There’s no end to the amount of work to keep this place nice. Meanwhile, Bill’s off gallivanting and leaves it all to me.”
With a huff she added the photo to her Facebook post stating, “Can’t wait for our lovely granddaughter to sleep over again.” And she hit the Post button.
She waited for the oohs and aahs and Care emojis but none came.
PREVIOUSLY
Catch up on all the past Adventures of Kat here.
