I WAS CRUNCHING ALONG the path, thinking how it takes the aftermath of a snow storm to get me out exercising, when I saw her. She was clinging to the wall, wearing black court shoes, no socks and a flimsy jacket. She was absorbed in the challenge of not falling down and the challenge was defeating her. It was a path in Dublin 3 but she may as well have been trying to scale Everest.
I watched as she slipped and picked herself up and slipped again and by the time I got close enough to speak to her she was lying face down in the snow.
Extreme conditions bring out the Scott in me. I love picking my way through urban snow drifts and noticing how everything sounds different, smiling at snowmen built on bus shelters and dodging snowballs thrown by boys and girls on bridges. Under thick layers of white, the always eye-catching lock keeper’s cottage beside the canal appeared conjured from a Grimm’s fairytale and waiting for the arrival of a wicked witch, a lost urchin trailing breadcrumbs, or a magic spell.
Face down in the snow she was. I thought I was escaping a minor domestic squabble, searching for head space, but really I was here to help this woman stay upright. This realisation gave me an instant Ready Brek glow. That’s another thing I like about extreme weather. People holding out their arms to strangers, clearing their neighbour’s path, taking joy from if not exactly saving lives, then making some moments of those lives more comfortable.
I took her arm and picked her up and when I looked into her eyes I realised she was very, very drunk. She told me she was on her way to see a “friend” who was really the man in the off-licence, and she wanted me to take her there and she didn’t want to go the sensible way. She insisted I take her across a busy, icy road and although I’d only been in her company 10 seconds, the Ready Brek glow was fading fast.
We made it across, her barrelling towards the light of the off-licence, me telling her to slow down or I’d leave her there, which had the desired effect. I said goodbye, declining to join her in the off-licence. I walked on until I realised that in a few moments she would be walking out again, crossing that road again. Our contract, etched in black ice, hadn’t been completed. Not yet.
I waited outside. In my head I was in one of those Christmas movies, playing the part of a guardian angel who appears at the right time and melts away, no thanks necessary, no really it’s fine, just doing my job.
I followed a few steps behind as she crossed the road under her own steam, the contents of her plastic bag clinking like sleigh bells. I was almost by her side when she tumbled face first into the snow again.
“It’s me,” I said in my best guardian angel voice. “I helped you across the road earlier.” It was a good job I was wearing my furry hat because otherwise her response would have blasted my eardrums into next week. “get away from me, what do you want from me, leave me aloooonnnnne,” she roared. I glanced around. It didn’t look good. Woman (me) in furry hat standing over a pile of unseasonal clothes (her) that was screaming to be left alone. It was a dilemma. And yet it wasn’t that much of a dilemma. The thought of a news headline – “Elderly woman found face down in snow in Dublin 3” – the next morning meant I was going to help her whether she liked it or not.
She liked it not. When I tried to grab her arm she yelled again. “You don’t move meeee, I move mysellllff, f**k off you pig,” and she got herself up and waddled towards the wall, at which point she fell over again, face down, her default position. I called her from a distance of 10 paces, told her I didn’t want her bag of bottles, that I just needed to see her home and then I would do exactly as she had requested and gladly f**k off.
She muttered her acceptance through a mouthful of snow and the pair of us leaned into each other till we got to her house. She wanted me to come in for tea. “Or coffee, come in will you?” she begged. She told me her name was F and I told her I was Róisín, but that no, I better be going home. “We’re friends now,” she said. “You’ll come again.” It was a statement not a question.
I crunched and slid my way home, thinking of Care Local and similar organisations around the country that make a point of befriending older people who live on their own. They match the older people with volunteers who visit them for an hour a week, often with lifelong friendships developing.
F would be a handful. “You don’t move me, I move myself,” she said, a phrase I can’t get out of my head. I’ll be seeing her around. roisin@irishtimes.com
For more information or to donate to Care Local, see carelocal.ie, or telephone 01-6128000
THIS WEEKEND Róisín will head North for some pre-Christmas revelry involving traybakes and litres of Shloer soft drink, and hopefully finish The Help by Kathryn Stockett for her bookclub