Be useful for it

Sunday call. Mum asked if we had set a date. Not about the wedding. We both knew it was not about the wedding, and she knew I knew, and she let a beat go past so that I could pretend it was about the wedding if I wanted to, which is extremely her. She said: I am not pushing. And then pushed, very gently, in the way she does, which is by saying something adjacent and true and letting you do the work. She said, your father would like to be useful for it. Be useful for it. That is what she said. Not "would like to meet them" or "would love a grandchild", which are the sentences people say. Useful. He wants to carry something up a stairs and put a cot together and drive down with a car full of things he has decided we need. And underneath that, which she did not say and did not have to: he wants to be alive for it, and in May he found out that is not a given, and he has started doing arithmetic of his own at a kitchen table in Greenfield. I said something about how we are talking about it, which is true for the first time this year. Sat on the back step after and Biscuit came and leaned his entire weight on my leg, which is his whole emotional vocabulary and remains weirdly effective.