“Through the Mists of Time”

“Through Floating Mists of Time”

It’s Saturday afternoon. Bake a cake Saturday. It was a tradition that began when I was about 4 years old with my Mum but now it’s with Grandma who came to live with us after Grandpa died. We’ve made pancakes, florentines, cup cakes with pink icing and hundreds and thousand sprinkled on top. Lamingtons with raspberry jam and lots of cream. My all time favourite. Today it’s Grandma’s famous chocolate cake. She’s won so many awards for her cakes and jams, shiny silver ones, big and small that line the kitchenette shelves. I think she’s very happy to have won so many. Her cakes are really delicious so I guess that’s why. When I started school she always put some of her special cakes or biscuits in my lunch box that I would sometimes share with my friends.

We’ve begun and I stand beside her barely tall enough to see above the bowl as brown sugar crystals fall, releasing wafting scented veils of caramel. Eggs cracked on ceramic bowl’s rim splinter shells whilst slippery, clear albumen and balls of sunshine gold escape to soak the sugar crystals below. As Grandma beats the ingredients I reach into the bag of flour to fill the measuring cup but there’s not enough. Only half a cup that I shakily spill and the fine powder covers the bench top white. Grandma says it’s ok we’ll clean it up later and asks me to fetch another bag of flour from the pantry.

I skip quickly into the gloom of the pantry as shadows lay thick upon the floor and laden shelves. I reach for the flour but it’s not there. But it is there. The bag is where it always has been but then again I see that it’s not there. Disappearing to reappear again when suddenly my hand and all of me slips through the thin walled paper bag into the floury space behind it and I dissolve into mists of powdery white nestled deep within clouds of silk. All around me I see clouds stretching to the horizon some small, large floating high above in colours bright and so wonderfully magical. I wonder where I am.

I turn and ahead of me I see a gathering of people young, old, and carried on the wind children’s laughter drifts toward me. I step out upon a cloud as it becomes a candy pink coloured winding path that leads me to them. I see a tall lady standing a little apart from the others. She turns her arms are outstretched in welcome and knowingly I run into her loving embrace that holds me ever so close and I feel her tears upon my cheek and I hear her trembling voice say “I love you so very much my precious daughter”.

My mother who left us, me and my father. Slipped away not that long ago escaping her pain. Pain I did not, could not understand. The pain my father could not explain not hers nor his. I missed her so so very much then. It hurt so much and the emptiness of her inside me never filled. I’ve missed her always since. I never knew why she had to go. I was a toddler still and couldn’t understand, not ever. 

I am here and I breathe in her smell. My mother’s smell that wrapped around me as I was born and never left. It’s always been with me. Mine forever. It’s the bond that is nurturing and ever timeless even when there were no arms to hold me, no lips to brush against my brow nor fingers clasping mine. She was still with me and sometimes I thought I saw her shadowed figure walk into my bedroom or sitting on my bed with a favourite book she used to read to me. Then she and the book would fade away leaving behind a lingering trace of her special smell. No one else could see her and I didn’t tell anyone because she was letting me know that she was still here, with me and the knowing was mine alone. Now I look into her eyes that swallow me up and feel the tears, warm, flowing with mine into the well that holds our sorrow. Hers and mine entwined with the rising overflowing well of joy and boundless love. 

How did I slip through the membrane of reality of there and here. Through the white powdery mists of flour. How and why was my mother able to change this fabric of reality to have me with her again and her with me? I hear her words flow within me. Of her love for me that never fades. Words that tell me a little of why she left at a time when I could not comprehend her leaving nor my loss with nothing to replace it. She infuses me with a knowing that gently unwraps revealing her truth that allows me to know it, a small part of it. Enough to absorb for now. Memories shared till I know all that I need to know to close the door upon my lingering threads of pain and loss. 

I sense the time to leave is close. A wrenching pain passes between us till love extinguishes it and we float lightly in the eternal knowledge that this moment will live within me for always. She reaches for me, her arms folding about me cradling me and I’m again her child just born. I feel her precious love that will from this day ease my pain and loss of her. A gift I will treasure that will be with me forever. 

In the shadowed pantry unaware that I’d slipped through the brown paper bag I reach up, take it from the shelf give it to Grandma who takes out some flour leaving mists of powdery white floating in the air between us and in that mist I see the shadow of my Mother whose arms wrap around me and she whispers “I love you” and all of a sudden I feel so light as happiness surrounds me.