Once every month, I cross the island of Malta to cash my pension cheque.  I catch the seven forty-five bus, and am usually back home by about midday.  It takes four buses to get to the capital.  I usually need help mounting the steps of the bus -- a person on the outside pushing, and someone else inside trying to pull me up. What a performance!  At those moments, I feel hands on parts of my anatomy where hands have not been for many years.  Just to add to the piquancy of the scene, I often grunt and groan a little, and end up inside the bus as weak as a stranded fish. 
     At the bank, I take a comfortable chair and one of the staff emerges to take care of my needs.  He performs his tasks with supreme courtesy and then, with the help of the white-gloved policeman on duty, makes sure I get down the front steps safely. 
     This is why I make the long journey --  they are so good to me. 
     But how do I cope in the house, you may well ask, since I live alone? A matter of necessity.  I can dress myself, do the very light housework, the little cooking, the washing and the ironing.  I have a "home helper" who comes in twice a week, but her job really is to run errands, such as going to the government pharmacy in another village some way off  to fetch  the prescriptions the doctor writes out for me, doing the shopping I can't do myself, etc.  She also cleans and dusts and sweeps --  always that way round, dust first, sweep afterwards.
     She is married, with two school aged children.  Last Christmas -- her first with me -- she actually brought me the traditional Christmas dinner which she had prepared for her own family.  And she trekked to the "Institute for the Disabled," in the commercial capital of Valletta, just  to ensure I got the Christmas present assigned to us pensioners.
     A district nurse comes in twice a week to make sure I have a proper wash, since I cannot get into the bathtub on my own.  Mind you, she's a bit slapdash.  The talcum powder usually ends up everywhere but on me.  The  surrounding furniture and the floor are a lot wetter than before she arrived.   But, bless her, she tries.
     Once a month. I have to go to the local hospital for a check up.  I spend hours, after the hospital van has deposited me there, being x-rayed and enduring various tests on my back.  I am pumped and pummeled, then locked in an iron corset.  In the afternoon, having had nothing to eat or drink since the night before, I am seen by the specialists. They can do nothing for my twisted spine; the growth at the bottom of it, although it is getting larger, is benign.  The prognosis is that the situation can only get worse and ultimately I won't be able to walk so much as a step. 
     Then the doctors trot out their usual panacea: it's time I went into a  wheelchair and a home, where there will be constant medical care. I ask if they realise what they are saying.  If I did what they wanted, I would immediately become a cripple, and lose my independence.  No!  I have told them, not once but several times, exactly where they can stick that wheelchair -- and I mean exactly! 
     I feel safest at home. It's true that I'm lonely -- but so what?  I have my writing, which I love.  Also a select collection of operas and ballets on videotape.  And, though I was told that I was mad to even think of buying a computer at the age of sixty-two, the Internet is my life-line.  I can't do much else, but the truth is that I have already lived a full  life.  I have loved and been loved, and travelled extensively.  I've amassed a wealth of knowledge from my experiences for others to draw upon, if they so want.
     Recently, adding vastly to my joy of living, I have acquired a new hobby. Next door to where I live, a three storey building has gone up.  The owner gave me permission to climb up onto the roof, if I can manage the untreated stairs, which have no handrail.  It's a long and difficult climb, but the view from the top is breathtaking.  And it has the added advantage of a clear view of the airport.  I love watching aircraft take off and land. There is something majestic, almost magical, about these metal birds that fly in an environment not their own. 
     From this point, I command a view of half the island.  In the container port, with its ugly cranes whose arms seem to be forever stretched out in supplication, I can see and count the ships in the "roads", waiting for a pilot to guide them into the Grand Harbour.  And across the island is the great dome of the church at a place called Mosta.  This dome is supposed to be the third largest in the world.  I also have a wonderful view of the fortified capital and cathedral city of Mdina. 
     Although Malta will one day become nothing but a concrete jungle, I note pockets of green, and terraces of red soil sparkling like rubies in the sunlight.  I discern tiny villages wrapped around a church.  Some churches have spires and campaniles, others rust-colored domes.  Even the new construction has a beauty to it.  The limestone, when first laid, is pale primrose yellow.
     I often climb up there in the evenings.  As the sun sinks, Malta is bathed in a golden haze. I delight in watching the aircraft play hide and seek with the clouds. 
     I am alive!  I can appreciate beauty in the written word, in music, and in the scenery of this tiny island.  I can think my own thoughts, I can dream.  From any  point of view, such things are worth having.

Image: "Nostalgia of the Infinite," by Giorgio de Chirico, ca. 1913: Museum of Modern Art, New York