Once upon a Dream
In the windless noon, the flaunt of the sunshine on this sultry day and the cirrus clouds above help to absorb the moment’s meaning. As I observe the sights and soundscapes, I gaze across the daisied meadow watching the motionless eye-winking cattle basking in the sun. A young bull suddenly breaks into a lumbering run, his half ton landings alerting Maverick to his presence. With his observing eye and attentive ear he gave voice. The young bull stops for a moment then alters his course and slowly walks away. The rest of the herd stand and shake away the many flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides. The cattle were followed by flocks of swallows sweeping and collecting all the skulking insects which are aroused by the trampling of their hooves.
The view, however, is as sweet as wild strawberries and in the distance, we can hear the merry peels of the church bells. I feel strongly that the place is good, part nostalgia, part clean air but also solitude. We rest a while and bathe in the blithe air beneath an ash tree, the buds however, sullen for so long in their covering like the black hooves of the cattle now broken into brownish-green sprays. Maverick sits like a nervous antelope, alert and instinctual. I then see an elderly lady approaching with her dog. She has a muted northern accent and is keen to talk. She is as fragile as a fawn with kind brown eyes smiling out from under her arched eyebrows.
Although my acquaintanceship with her was but slender, she radiated sincerity and kindness and an essence of familiarity passed between us. She reveals that these little rambles induce her to forget for a time her ordinary solemn deportment and speaks of her old dog Truffles who lies beneath a heavy stone that lay in the woods close by. There was no name but merely a curious piece of doggerel with a single flower placed beside it, I extend my sympathy to her. She spoke of the mood and the beauty of this place and how in blessings or in sorrow the peace and strength this wonderful place had brought to her throughout the years. She then took my hand, abased her eyes, turned and with her slow stepping feet she walked away.
As she walked along the path, I called to her and asked her name, she turned, pushed back a lock of hair from her face and added softly…Mary, Mary Peet. The thought settled over me like a November mist, but my heart won’t believe it for her name is the same as my grandma’s.
When sleep would evade me, when all my rescues were gone and the old hurts came to life, memories of grandma would come unbidden, she held me together, she saved me. Grandma was a truly wonderful lady and I do not remember to have ever seen her out of temper in all my young life. It caused her to be loved and looked up to by all who came into contact with her. ‘Be good, be simple, be kind, t’is all I know’ she would say, and I am marked by grandma’s faith. I have always carried her smile in my heart, but strangely, I feel that there is a connection , somehow recognisable and yet transmuted into vivid strangeness.
I feel Maverick’s tug and lift my hand to wave but as I do a single flower falls from my grasp and as I look ahead, she had disappeared without a trace. It catches my heart off guard, but her image was as clear as the face of the village clock. In this evanescent moment I wonder did I really meet her or is it a coincidence of paths, a random intersection of lives that will never come again or was it just a dream? This unutterable experience with her and the essence of her individuality can not be represented in words and is indescribable.
As I sit beneath the ash tree in my concussed fog, my gaze turns to the single flower at my feet, a mute testimony to a random encounter, but only Maverick really knows.
