There aren’t many aerobics classes to pick between in July. One per day is not unusual. There are none on weekends. Classes are so few that the ratio of instructors to regular folks is almost one-to-one. The instructors attend each other’s classes to stay in shape over the summer even though they are off duty themselves. To us regular folks it feels a bit special to jump about next to ten instructors. A bit like seeing all the big game drink from the same waterhole next to each other on the savannah during the dry season.

People close to me have taken to repeating the same phrases over and over. Daughter either starts or ends each conversation these days with: “I will turn 18 in three months, you know.” The phrase fills multiple purposes; as an argument to get me to agree to something such as buying her some alcoholic cider from the Government monopoly stores. She uses it as provocation, as self-consolation. Most of the time she is simply reminding me that I am, again, underestimating her mental capacity.

Beloved and benevolent Sister has taken the fun out of personal reflections as well as complaints. Sister is suffering from overexposure to patients who all apparently have the illusion that their reactions are unique, though in her eyes all react the same way. When informed about their medical condition, suggested treatment and consequences, each patient says “But I am not used to being in a hospital.” Or “I am not used to walking with crutches.” “Not that many people ARE used to being in hospitals!”, Sister tells me. Sister’s fatigue spills over on me. Telling her anything is useless. She only says “You know, I think that everyone feels that way about x.”

Dad’s new mantra is “We shall see.” He uses it again and again to deflect all scepticism about the upcoming back surgery which his wife has arranged for him to have done privately in Hungary in one week. Dad’s stroke one and a half years took his sense of balance and turned him from a 74-year old guy in reasonable shape into someone who has difficulty moving from one room to another. He also suffers from chronic back pain. While Sister, who has been able to verify due to her medical training that the Hungarian hospital and doctors are trustworthy professionals, she is unable to convince Dad that the expensive and risky procedure may at best relieve the back pain. At worst it might lead him to become even more of an invalid or even die. There is no chance that the operation will restore him to being his twenty years younger wife’s tennis partner, which both of them seem to believe. But Dad is like a man who has caught an oversized fish on his line. He can’t reel it in. He can’t control it. The fish might pull him out of the boat but he refuses to let go. Of his previous life, of the dream, of the wife. Denial may seem like the most innocuous of the ego’s classical defence mechanisms, but it can trip you up real bad.