At the far end of the long hall, the door into the kitchen was half open and the most wonderful smell of a stew filled the space. Voices came from a radio as I put down my bag and walked along the wooden floor.
I heard her laughter at something said before I pushed the door and she turned – delighted to see me, one hand releasing the long spoon, the other pushing her hair back; an old familiar gesture.
We didn’t hug or kiss. We never needed to show physical affection. It was there in the eyes and the space between us.
The scene, as vivid as it would have been the weekends I came home as a young woman, was brutally wrenched from my mind by the barks, growls and howls of a dog.
It took me a good few minutes to come up from the well of the past; memory and dream. For a few seconds I stared hard at the chalet like ceiling with its crisscross of beams and interlocked wood.
Hotel? Friends? Where? The dog barks were now impossible to ignore. César. France. My bedroom.
Check phone 3.46am…his new preferred time to wake me from the deepest of sleeps and for what I know not, apart from, possibly a lurking animal.
Like all good dreams this was full technicolour, detailed down to the last painting in the hall, the old rug on the wood, and the shape of the handle on the kitchen door.
And that smell: The richness of a stew such as I’ve never had since her death, many years ago now, when my son was only seven.
I’ve started having a lot of such dreams, or even daydreams, which drag me back to different episodes in my life I’d long forgotten.
They’re all just flashes, like watching film trailers, with faces looming to the forefront, aided by mild shocks of surprise. None are frightening; most make me laugh or cause me to pause, if a day dream, to flesh them out further and think back to the moment.
Many involve my mother.
Being Irish and wrapped in superstition and myth; sprinkled early with holy water and wreathed in incense from birth, I’m thinking: Ah God. She’s calling me. Come in Fidelma, your time’s up.
But of course it’s likely an ageing thing (all crossed) and a time of the year distraction where memories of past Christmases flit unbidden through the mind.
I’ve written before of my Christmases past – that much I do remember – and frankly Christmases present have sadly become just another day if I give in to inertia.
Also, I am still in that constant state of anger over Brexit, and overloaded with watching debate after debate in the House. I have a deep, visceral loathing of so many politicians that finding my Zen self becomes more difficult each day.
Meanwhile Paris burns with infiltrators into the Gilets Jaune movement smashing not just a system but also its cultural artifacts.
Racists ride on subways and in school playgrounds; vile abuse is considered acceptable to write on social media and Trump…….and Trump.
I know I’m not alone in these feelings but I think I am in a minority of indignation.
Many chose to turn the page; switch off; don’t look – shrug and shake their heads; sigh and mutter: "But what can we do?"
Oh, I’ve just thought of another reason for these dreams, many of which are set in my late teens and 20s.
All of the above have re-awoken the fierceness and anger of those early years, railing against inequality, the Troubles, the accepted discrimination in the workplace.
But then I had a brain, which just needed to be lightly tapped for facts, figures, and examples to illustrate my arguments, which were passionate and righteous.
Or so I believed when life was black and white; right and wrong. There were no shades of grey (in its old non-literary sense) in my 21+ world.
Remember how certain we all were in our beliefs?
Now, my fast outpourings slow as I search for a forgotten word or the statistics to prove my case. And anyway around here no one wants to debate or get heated.
Well, no one I know around here anyway.
I am immensely cheered though, to find that fierce little creature who was so verbally dangerous and uncaring when the red mist came down, still lives within me.
Immensely cheered that life hasn’t dulled my outrage at injustice, cruelty and downright stupidity.
The difference this time round though, is that one gets drained, not fired-up as in youth.
And one has seen enough to know that the banality of evil often triumphs before we cease to shrug and plead ignorance.
Perhaps that’s why my brain is bringing me soothing memories, dreams and past comfort to balance all out as it used to be.
I hope then to be back in that kitchen again tonight and this time when my mother turns I’ll ask her the one, important question I never put to her.
"Mum – how do I make that stew?"
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