My Thoughts

My Nan unexpectedly visited our home yesterday. My parents went out to collect something, which I don't know about (they don't tell me much anymore).
While they were out I had the most intriguing conversation I've had this year.
Stirring her sugarless tea while laughing "I'm much too sweet for sugar" she shared with me her childhood. It's strange, she's 82 and I'm 16, yet she knows everything about my childhood. And I know nothing about hers.
She told me about the time when she hid her pet snake in her parent's bed just to amuse them (and herself).
She told me about the time when she would sneak to the shops on a Sunday morning, at a time when shops were prohibited from selling any items, and how she would negotiate with foreign shop assistants and buy lollies anyway.
She told me the time when she was 11 and she received her first bicycle, and how happy this made her. And the time when she learnt to ride it she fell and reached to her friend's bike for balance only to drag her down too.
My Nan openly claims she's depressed. Yet in this moment her laughs outnumbered her breaths. She looked so content, so proud of these stories she was telling me.
When I asked her if she missed the old days she immediately nodded. "Things were so much simpler then".
I showed her some of my photographs. She's more interested in them than anyone I know. And probably more than anyone I don't know. I showed her photos that were taken in the Botanical Gardens and she in my photos she would show me the tree she used to sit under almost every weekend when she was my age. She told me about the museums she used to visit on the weekends. And how disappointed she was when she returned only a few years ago to find them completely changed. "They were so much better back then." "But the art galleries haven't changed?" "Yes they're still the same... although I haven't visited one in a long time."
Stirring her sugarless tea while sighing "time has changed so much" she shared with me some of her most fragile thoughts.