Forgetting

My mind is dissolving. Unravelling. I forgot my mother 56th birthday. Never mind. I'm sure my brother made up for it. What do you get the woman who has everything anyway? A strange dread of Christmas descends. It is my mother's greatest creative act of the year. Going home is like stepping into a time warp, a parallel universe - I am catapaulted back into childhood. And, paradoxically, this serves to emphasise my advancing years. And then, of course, there is the food. Enough to feed several armies. A rapid transition from real life to the online world - I appear to have been banned from one of the blogs I regularly read. How will I cope?