A late bloomer

Let me call her Mrs McKnight. Doris McKnight. She was a little wisp of a woman, 60ish, nondescript, mousy, soft-spoken when she spoke at all, which was seldom. Her great burly husband spoke for her, barging into my consulting room ahead of her, telling me about her symptoms, usually in a rather patronizing way, belittling her problems, giving her little opportunity to speak for herself. His name was ... no, I'll keep him anonymous. I'll call him Vern. I doubt if he ever read a book in his entire life.  Doris made up for this. By the time I met her she'd worked her way through all the classics in the municipal lending library and sometimes diffidently asked for my suggestions about what she should read next. Doris was in pretty good shape.  Mild high blood pressure was her only overt reason for seeking medical surveillance, and like so many fair-complexioned Australians, she had some hyperkeratoses on her scalp and arms, the thickened skin spots that are the consequence of a lifetime's exposure to too much ultraviolet radiation, and precursors of skin cancer.

Then Vern died suddenly, probably of a cerebral haemorrhage. He left their affairs in a horrid mess. Doris tidied the paperwork, paid the arrears of income tax, rearranged her home, sold the car that she couldn't drive, turned the garage into a workshop, and set about fulfilling her unrealized dreams, turning these into exquisite reality. 

Doris had always wanted to do something with her hands.  She began with plasticene but it dries out, crumbles away and loses its shape. She graduated pretty quickly to pottery, and invested in a kiln. She began making little pottery flowers arranged in elegant sprays and wreaths, and decorative abstract figures on teacups and teapots. She spent hours painting these, honing another skill, teaching herself which colours best blended or contrasted with others. Then she graduated to human figures, whimsical leprechauns, demure fairies, lecherous satyrs, naughty little boys and prim school girls. Her irrepressible sense of humour bubbled up around all her figures. She sold them at fairs and the 1950s equivalent of farmers' markets. She did quite well: her little 'human' figures especially commanded very good prices and she was businesslike enough to recognize this, charged appropriately, and, I suspect, didn't bother the tax authorities with details of her cash transactions.

I got to know her in the last 2 or 3 years that I was in practice in Adelaide in the 1950s and regretted leaving the practice more because of her than almost any other patient I cared for.  She bloomed late, but luxuriantly, an inspiring example of all that is best about the human spirit.