What’s My Age Again? (bp coyle)

‘How old am I?’ asked Granny.

‘You’re ninety four Granny,’ I told her as I stirred the water around the teapot.

‘Oh,’ she replied. ‘That’s a good age isn’t it?’

‘It is indeed,’ I assured her.

‘And how old am I?’ asked Auntie Maude, Granny’s younger sister.

‘You’re ninety Auntie Maude.’ I poured milk into the china cups. Granny and Auntie Maude always took out their finest tea set on Sundays when I visited.

‘Ninety!’ Aunt Maude shook her head. ‘Am I really?’

I started to pour out the tea.

‘I’ll have two spoons of sugar in mine.’ Granny told me.

‘Just one spoon for me,’ Auntie Maude announced.

I smiled at them and pretended that I hadn’t been pouring tea out for them for several decades. In all that time neither of them had changed the way they like their tea.

They both reached for their cups with shaking hands.

‘Nothing like a nice cup of tea,’ Granny declared after taking a sip.

‘Nothing at all,’ her sister agreed.

They lapsed into silence for a time, the old grandfather clock in the corner ticked the seconds away.

‘How old am I?’ Granny eventually wondered aloud.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay