Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

“I wish I could discover the trick of making every day last a week,” said Lara to her friend Natalie. They were sipping red Bordeaux from obscenely large wine glasses, and Lara was already feeling a bit tipsy. The two of them, with four other friends, were on an end-of-the-year skiing holiday in France.

   “What do you mean?” asked Natalie, puzzled.

   “I read somewhere – it was a quote from the Jewish ancient-wisdom book of Kabala – that when you are young, every day feels as if it lasts a week. The older you get, the shorter each day feels, because it becomes a relatively small part of your life. The more you live, the faster the rest of your days go by.”

   The flavour of the wine lingered on her tongue and her cheeks were
flushed.

   “What rubbish,” said Natalie. “An hour is an hour, and a day is a day, no matter how old you are.”

   And yet, although Lara had read this pearl of wisdom when she was sixteen or seventeen, it remained engraved in her mind.

   On January the first, a day when the sun rays were fractured by the airy snow- flakes into a million sparkles, Lara awoke early. She wanted to capture the first seconds of the first minutes of the first day of the New Year.

   She ached to set her feet in the fresh powder that had settled on the slopes of Chamonix. The desire to be there before others, to make as much of the day as possible, was immense.

   “You’ve only had four hours sleep, I can still feel the flavour of the wine we had last night,” said her friend Natalie, who had a drink of water and headed back to bed.

   “So what? I love being the first up there,” said Lara.

   “I will join you,” said Paul, who came out of his bedroom when he heard the girls talking.

   Paul had been sending out interested signals to Lara during the previous evening. Lara didn’t mind at all - she found him attractive. So what if he had a girlfriend? She she saw no harm in flirting a little.

   “Are you all right driving?” she asked him an hour later, when the small red car struggled with the un-shovelled heaps of fresh snow, on the winding road mounting to the ski station.

   “No problem,” he said, flashing his white teeth, eyes gleaming in the sunlight.

   The morning was so bright and the air so crisp, that they both forgot how tired they were, and how hung-over. They rented boots and skis and made their way to the chair-lift.

   Few people were around at that early hour on January the first, but the ones who were, looked as if they were gliding in a dream. Lara stood out in her bright pink ski-suit that she had bought especially for this holiday. She liked attracting admiring looks from the few men who were on the slopes at this early hour.

   What she didn’t like as much, was when people looked at her with pity. That happened a few weeks later when she was beginning to recover from her skiing accident and was able to push herself around in a wheelchair. She still could not grasp how one instant had changed the course of her life.

   “What did you feel?” asked Natalie when she came to visit.

   “It was just a stupid fall. I didn’t see the drop, and I fell on my back. I couldn’t move my legs, I felt paralyzed, and panicked,” recalled Lara. “Then the first-aid crew came, lifted me on a stretcher and skied down the mountain with me, and I was airlifted to this hospital in Geneva. They operated on me right away. I don’t remember much else. I was later told that I had smashed a vertebra, but that they were optimistic.”

   Lara was not surprised when Paul called and apologized for not coming to visit. He had promised to meet his girlfriend back in London the next day and couldn’t postpone his trip.

   “I hope you recover quickly,” he said over the phone. It was clear from the tone of his voice that his life went on. Why was it that hers didn’t?

   She kept track of the passing days by marking every one of them on a calendar with pictures of the Alps and their snow-covered slopes. Someone had left it in the hospital room, and Lara adopted it. If she couldn’t be on the snowy slopes in body, she could at least be there in spirit.

   A spider weaving a glorious web in the corner just above her head accompanied her during hundreds of reflective hours. She received visits from encouraging friends and family, she took phone-calls, had books to read, and had hours and hours of bed-rest in front of her. It was over those hours, during the tens of thousands of minutes and the millions of seconds, that her world began to unfold.

   “You know, I don’t remember ever having a real conversation with you, until now,” said her sister Maggie, who flew in from Birmingham to visit her.

   “I guess I've had a hectic life,” admitted Lara.

   “No kidding. You were always spinning around like a hampster in a wheel. It was impossible to ever have a coherent conversation with  you,” said Maggie. Lara shrugged.

   It was true that she didn’t share many close moments with her older sister. All that Maggie ever did was tend to her three young children, while she, Lara, did so many remarkable things. She travelled, made new friends, and had worked in half a dozen interesting jobs. What could Maggie say that would be fascinating or exciting to her?

   And yet, Maggie had got the first plane to Geneva when she heard the news of Lara’s accident. She left her children with her mother-in-law and took the trip without hesitation. Lara couldn’t take that away from her.

   But Maggie came and Maggie went, and Lara was still in the same bed, in the same room. Sensations came back to her little by little. First she could move her toes, then she moved her feet. The doctors were pleased. She was making progress.

   “Will I ever be able to ski again?” she asked the young doctor who came to examine her one afternoon. He looked at her and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

   “Ski?” he said. “Let’s hope you can walk again.”

   Lara was determined to prove the young doctor wrong. She performed her physiotherapy exercises with determination, every single morning. “Mind over matter,” she kept saying to herself. “Mind over matter.”

   “Interesting,” she said to her friend Natalie the next time she visited. “I think I've found the answer.”

   “What was the question?” asked Natalie.

   “What’s the trick of making a day feel as if it lasts a week?” said Lara, with a patience she never knew she had. “When I was a child, every day felt like it lasted an eternity. I had time to do so many things each day. When I grew up, days started flowing by as fast as water down a waterfall. I couldn’t do half the things I wanted to in any given day. Now I know why.”

   Natalie's eyes reflected concern: her friend Lara had not only lost her mobility, perhaps she was also losing her mind?

   “It is because I was so busy, always wanting to do so many things, to accomplish so much. I was worried I would miss something.”

   “And now?” asked Natalie, looking confused.

   “Now I am forced to live for the moment. I have no choice. And you know what? It isn’t that bad. Now each day does last a week, just like when I was a child,” said Lara. Natalie looked at her with pity.

   “Do you need more books? Is there anything else I can get you?” she asked, shifting uncomfortably.

   “No, thank you,” said Lara. “Thank you for coming to visit.”

   Natalie left, and Lara lay back in her bed, and stared at her spider, which was hanging on a thin, silver thread, patiently waiting for his prey.

   She looked outside her window, where the skies were clearing and Mont Blanc was coming into view, its white head emerging from behind the floating clouds. To her amazement, Lara realized it was maybe the first time in her life that she wasn’t wishing time away.

   Her parents were about to come for a visit; a pile of books was waiting to be read on her bedside table; a vase with white roses filled the room with a fresh smell. She had nowhere to rush to. Nothing demanded her urgent attention. She savoured the moment.

   “You are making great progress,” said the nurse who came to check on her. “Soon you’ll be able to walk, using crutches.”

   “Of course I will,” said Lara. “Mind over matter.”

   The nurse smiled and left the room. Lara enjoyed the thought of the long afternoon that stretched before her, of all the things she would be able to think about, of all the tender moments that awaited her in this room before going back to her hectic life. Every hour stretched into a day. Every day stretched into a week. Lara didn’t mind. She was living the moment.