Dotwork mandala on upper back

The lift was out again when I got back from the cash and carry, so I climbed all fourteen floors with the shopping cutting into my fingers and your birthday card wedged under my arm. Mrs Okonedo on the eleventh was sat on the landing step with her shoes off, saying the council will fix it when the pigeons learn to vote. I told her I'd bring her tea up later.

I finally sorted Mum's boxes. Under the bed, in a tea tin with a Scottie dog on the lid, I found the doily she was working on the winter before she went. You remember it, the one she kept saying was a map of the estate. She'd sat with a pin and a bowl of dried peas in her lap, pricking a dot at a time into the card, and never got past the middle. The centre is a small dark shape, half-finished, the rest stippled grey and then black where she pressed hardest. Petals scalloped out from it in rings, each one a little lace edge, and I counted twelve before I stopped counting.

I took it down to the man in the repair shop on the ground floor and asked if he could frame it. He turned it to the light for a long time and said, "Somebody's been very patient with this." I said yes, and that she'd been patient with everything except the lift.

I've put it up above the telly, where the afternoon sun comes through the balcony door and makes the dots look like they're moving. Come up at the weekend. Bring the good biscuits, and bring your glasses, because you'll want to see what she did with the middle.

Love, Jo