Dates

Do you remember the box of dates you used to get at Christmas?

It was part of Seventies Christmas tradition along with a tray of nuts in shells, where the brazils got left because the silver nutcrackers were not up to the job: risking a what we called at the time, a black man’s blister. This was the seventies and if we were being racist we didn’t know. I like to think we were just being descriptive. For a white person having a blister filled with blood might make your skin look black. I’m probably being very hopeful though because I’m sure I remember being horrified when my cousin called it a black man’s pinch, which certainly is racist. If only we’d called it subdermal haematoma. Anyway, back to the dates. They were in a long thin balsa wood box; curved at the ends. Inside, the dates were arranged in a herringbone pattern: two by seven in two sticky layers separated by a piece of waxed paper and a long plastic stabber, which was too flimsy to hold a whole date. The lid of the box promised wonderland adventures. The image of the exotic fruit was captioned with instruction, “Eat Me.” I suspect in many households the dates remained uneaten and were finally thrown in the bin in February.

Dates in February are never popular.

Those dates were a distraction. Now I’ve lured you into my memories of the good old days I’m going to carry on doing what I was going to stop and I’m going to talk about death. I’ve never been very good at remembering dates. I will forget your birthday and I never really understand people who remember. Now that I’m old there are a whole new level of dates to remember: death dates.

I’m not sure if it’s a new phenomenon brought about by social media or just something I’m noticing but I don’t remember my parents commemorating death days.  I’m sure they thought about them. I know my mum was always a little sadder at New Year but we didn’t talk about it. These days people put butterflies on social media or send texts to remind you that it’s the day your loved one died and it can feel like every day in February is a death day.
I’m not sure what is better but I’m beginning to get to the stage where I’m ready to throw those dates in the bin.

No one likes a date in February.