Lived dreams & incoherent nightmares

 

When I arrived at my brother's house, I saw him upset and worried. Among pots and pans in the kitchen.

-Mom? And he replied that she was in her room, but that she wasn't feeling very well. She had always woken up in a good mood these past four years. I went to her room. I found her facing the window, near the wardrobe, sitting on the edge of the bed, visibly exhausted and very still, as if in a trance. She half smiled when she saw me. I kissed her. -Mom, let's take a shower. - She nodded and said, through her teeth, that she didn't know if she had the strength to drag herself into the bathtub and take a shower. I showed her that she did. She felt better right away. After the shower, where she scrubbed herself and asked me to let the hot water run down her shoulder, which was hurting. Then she put on body cream and put on some clothes, so that she wouldn't feel cold. I finished by drying her hair, beautiful short white hair, in a short bob. I put a green parting on her eyes, put on light lipstick and finished with earrings, rings and bracelets. The necklace with the agate stone in the kitchen. I put on her English sandals and we headed to the kitchen, after my brother came to tell us that lunch was ready. Already at the table, my brother's stress remained, combined with the fear of the future that moved his jaw and made him feel tense. I tried a relaxed approach to the tangle of emotions and feelings captured, probably, during the night. The dream world needed to come out and, to alleviate other less pleasant emotions, such as the tension that is created when a mother has no appetite, rejects this or that food, the anxiety and concern visible and pronounced in my brother's complexion. Bolognese pasta. Spur to go with it. I laughed to myself, on one side of the counter, opposite both of them. I was in front of him, so that my mother could continue to distract her gaze from the television screen, where yesterday's news was being shown, as if everything was new. Except for the news of the end of the life of Sebastião Salgado, the photographer who lent his eyes to the world, to show us the ongoing hunger, war, permitted misery and the lack of evolution in terms of humanity.

- Mom, guess who I dreamed about? Grandpa Rodrigo. - She smiled. - Did you?

- Yes, I dreamed about him, alive. Elegant, charismatic, cheerful. I was still little, I guess it was some moment I forgot during his stay among the living, and when many of us benefited, privileged by his presence and teachings. And I began to describe the dream to her. The living room, just as I remember it, in fact, the house, exactly the same, clean, organized and full of light. My eyes saw in the living room, the sideboard and the china cabinet, above, filled with glasses and other old crystals, which had been passed down through the generations, crossing time and outliving those who had drunk from them. The square and wide family table. The chairs were properly placed with their legs under the table, only mine remained outside, and the fingers of my left hand stretched out over the napkin under the fruit bowl, counting the open and closed designs on it in fine cotton. Grandpa came from the bedrooms. The light could be seen in the hallway thanks to the skylight in the ceiling. I could see the trunks, three trunks lined up between each room, upright and so clean that they always seemed new to me. The floor was made of wooden slats, properly waxed. I could still smell the wax. Aunt Joaquina kept everything clean and smelling nice. When Grandpa burst into the room, without a hat or a jacket, just a waistcoat over his shirt, he scratched his head in a sign of incomprehension. I heard him ask: - Bina, are you sure you didn't take the laces off to wash them?

I didn't hear Grandma Bina's answer. I didn't even see her right away. It was only when Grandpa pulled up one of the side chairs, where Grandma Bina used to sit for their long, calm lunches, that I could see her smiling blue eyes and her smiling mouth and her giant chin, unique and unrepeatable, except for the women in the family who seemed to copy hers. I heard myself answer for her, Grandpa, I didn't touch the laces, I didn't go, and behind me, I heard laughter. Vitó was laughing along with someone else I couldn't identify. Vitó had taken the laces off Grandpa's shoes!

- Oh, you rascal! Where are the laces? And he took them out of his pocket, still laughing, and said to him, "Grandpa, let me go with you, I'll behave myself!" Grandpa began to put the laces on one shoe and then on the other. There was perfect gymnastics and a very specific way of putting the laces on, on Grandpa Rodrigo's part that I had never seen in other hands. And he made this analogy with respect to Grandma Bina's cooking, that there was no one who could overshadow her typical mannerisms in the kitchen, everything was so typical of her, the beautiful smell of food spread throughout the house. Next to the living room, there was a door that took us, by dark stairs, to the attic of the house, where useless or painful, forgotten or damaged things were kept. Next to the living room, towards the kitchen, there was a pantry, a bathroom, a hall facing the door that led from the kitchen to the backyard. Which was my favorite place. Full of flowers and plants, a pond, just below the stairs on the right side and on the left side a kind of a plot of short, trimmed grass, where white and cotton clothing was sun-bleached to remove stains. The sun removed everything, along with the experience of my aunt and grandmother. In the background there was a chicken coop and a small house where tools and a pump that I loved were kept. As I turned around, with my arms on the long, wide handle, turning the pulleys, a bucket rose, bringing fresh water to the surface.

- Mom, Grandpa was already thin, excessively thin, and therefore deprived or unreal of the last time. Grandma's flowers perfumed the house inside, spreading their scents through the vases outside of mealtimes. There was a mathematics of their own, just like in Grandma's cooking, in the placement of the vases, of the water that kept the freshness and scent of the chosen flowers. My cousin Vitó's laughter lingered at the end of the dream and I saw them go out the door, past the enormous hallway, where they both played, with the complicity typical of each grandson. My brother asked me if it had been a dream or if it had been an episode that happened in my childhood and that I had kept. I told him that I didn't know how to answer, that it had come up during the night, perhaps it was a hidden thought that had been released. And I believe that our ancestors are appendages that we keep, that carry love through the veins of our memory, bringing us into contact with the synchronicities that we experience, a connection, a link that opens up paths of possibilities for us, so that we can see our own experiences in a different way. There are no repetitions, but rather appropriations of realities that were called the past, as a matter of synaptic organization, but I have always believed, which is the same as saying, which is what I think, that they remain with us and accompany us and even keep us company, protecting us, within what is possible for them, and even guiding us, if we want to look at it that way, to that perspective that makes us raise the bar on existentialism that the defenders of this philosophical current see themselves as nullifying. From my point of view, they continue to work, to offer us, to add to us the candor of acts and affections that are linked to the way in which daily deeds are carried out.

My mother sat up straight in her chair, putting down her cutlery, picking up the small paper napkin and lifting the glass of rosé (grandma Bina's favorite wine), taking small sips, to go back to the cutlery, to pick up some more of the spaghetti and minced meat with the sauce cooked by my brother and distracted, so that the simple act of eating would not irritate her, stirring up our concern again, increasing the anxiety and fear that surrounds us both, Antero and me, and they were talking on TV about the candidates for the PS, about the recent legislative elections.

My mother looked at me with a smile and said: I also had a dream last night and I remember what happened well. Antero and I looked at her, and she paused, whether necessary or caused, to continue telling me about her dream: I dreamed about her. Rosinha. I heard her at first, but my brother, next to her and with this problem of sudden deafness, asked her: with whom, mom?

- With Rosinha, she repeated. - Rosinha is Antero's girlfriend, with whom he has developed, in recent years, incompatibilities that are very difficult to overcome, with her and with other close people and blood relatives. To ease the tension that had risen at the lunch table, I asked again: And what happened in that dream, mom?

- She was peeking here in the kitchen, where I am, but standing, at all points of the balcony and the living room. Peeking behind the curtains and I heard her say: I'm calling you Antero. Open the door for me! She asked for the door to be opened for her, but she was already inside.

And this made me think of the promise they had exchanged, my mother's request and Antero's promise, to only take her there and put her in touch with her when she felt ready. My mother didn't want to live with her. In fact, she didn't want to live with anyone, neither family nor strangers. She wanted the peace she had in the village, where only the animals, because they didn't talk about inconvenient things, nor remind her that forgiveness is a human ability that should be exercised. She didn't want to see anyone, she was tired of people and in my personal observation, she didn't look kindly on the joy and vitality in others, the imposition of their bodies on their daily lives, reminding them that she was once close to them, a friend to them, and her own physical and psychological incapacity or limitation deepened the unhealthy silence that accompanied what she herself considered setbacks, escapes from her will, impositions that she refused to look at with a natural look.

- Mom, it was inevitable, I told her. - Mom, Rosinha is his partner, his choice, they like each other, she bought my share of this house, so they could be close, at the time, in my opinion, I believed they could get married (I've always been a kind of greedy or matchmaker), I wanted emotional stability for my own brother and I sympathized with his choice. It was also this that made me "sell" my share of the property for a pittance, so that they could both cultivate a new chapter of their lives closely. He was detailed and she was sensible. I asked my mother for forgiveness, for having gone against her wishes, who first didn't want me to sell her my share and then called me stupid, for having sold her my share of the property for 35 thousand euros. It was idiotic, but what was behind it was the intention of seeing them well. My mother kept saying: always gossiping, always spying on others and bossing your brother around! The dream had been a nightmare. Not mine, but hers, who was still angry and unable to overcome the painful stains in the relationship between them. I kept saying to her: - Mom, forgiveness is necessary for you, above all. Because it makes you sick. Forgiveness is a human capacity. It doesn't mean trusting again, it means allowing healthy relationships to produce better results for your physical and psychological health. Immediately afterwards, a call came in on Antero's cell phone and it was Rosalina, again, Antero said, that my mother's sister, who had also recently recovered from heart surgery, wanted to know if my mother was okay, if she was better.

My mother also denied relationship ties. She doesn't know how to forgive. Or she can't. She is unable to resolve the internal conflicts that dissociate her and increase family disagreements, relationships with others, with whom she had had disagreements. Everything was today and now, for her. Nothing had changed since the ill-fated lunch, since the last events, more than a year after it.

The meal was over. I didn’t tidy up the kitchen, as usual, I just picked up the plates and put them away, setting the leftovers aside. The kitchen counter was once again piled high with dirty dishes, small plates with olives, vegetables, lupins, and grapes, next to the buckets that separated the trash. The chaos didn’t do me any good. I avoided looking at all that in detail, but my eyes fell once more on the balcony, full of little bags and buckets on the floor, where there were glass and plastic bottles, paper bags, plastic bags, and trash bags from the plants. I immediately looked away, sitting down again to look at my mother. After refusing dessert, asking only for coffee, Antero insisted, but his mother, more stubborn than he was, said no again, angry at my brother’s refusal to accept it peacefully. He helped himself to an apple, cut it into wedges, and ate it, setting aside a wedge for each of us. I went back to my grandfather. And her apples, meticulously peeled, after cutting a pear into segments for Grandma Bina.

-Mom, I'll eat this segment and you eat that one. - She nodded, but her smile was cynical. She didn't eat. She just wanted coffee. We had coffee, for her with 3 spoons of sugar, for us, plain.

I picked up the cover of the medical exams and asked my brother for the latest tests he had picked up at Unilabs, when he had gone to do his own tests that morning. My mother was looking away at the soap opera about Miss Estrela, but she got up to go brush her teeth. While my brother accompanied her to the bathroom, I went to the balcony to look at the church and the ants below, people were moving around quickly, like hard-working ants, with no time to appreciate the present. I put out my cigarette, grabbed my bag and the exams and got ready. I drove to the Hospital da Luz in Boavista, on autopilot. A thousand thoughts were running through my mind. My biggest fear was reading and interpreting Eva's tests. Four ultrasounds showed biliary cysts, the pancreas was impossible to see, otherwise normal. Bladder, kidneys, carotid arteries showed calcifications, as well as other areas, but they were not the reason for the lack of appetite or the extremely high and irregular liver function values. Four times the reference value. When we left the doctor's office, the three of us were tired and my body felt heavy and restless. I needed to take a month off rosuvastatin to see if the medication was changing the altered liver values. Replace Permadoze with folic acid. Maintain vitamin D. If, when the test is repeated in a month, these values ​​change positively, the doctor will decide to replace the cholesterol medication. And, if not, an abdominal CT scan to understand if the pancreas or its surroundings could explain our mother's weight loss and loss of appetite. I linked my dream with Grandpa Rodrigo to my fear of my mother's pancreas, certainly. Certainly. Patience has grown within me, like a kind of tool that is taking up space, fortunately. Only then can I reproduce it in my speech and in the way I try to infect others, those I care about. Life seems to me, at the moment, like a rollercoaster that makes me nauseous and pushes me towards an anxiety with no end in sight.

When I distracted her to eat a bean cake and a juice, and helped her get into the building and into the elevator, I began to think that the world, so big, can shrink and be reduced to a greater pain. With no more characters or spaces, I let my tears out for the possible exit, behind my sunglasses. I turned on the music player, right after starting the engine, and that was how I left Costa Cabral, a dark spot pushing me to the limit of consternation, while the music releases me into the world where I take off my shoes, to enter and live. I chose the third CD, The Phantom of the Opera. And before entering the tunnel on Fernão Magalhães, I switched to the fourth, Peter Gabriel, and listened to him sing Father, son. And once again I faced the heavy traffic on the ring road, the horns, the heat, accompanied by all the ghosts gathered together, but this time, the one guiding my energy was music, which has been my chosen medicine since I was a child and serves me for everything.

My mother's birthday is Sunday. Eighty-one years. May this next one be lighter for her and for us. And may the vivacity that characterizes her be exposed and a joy be drawn in a new solar year.

-Daddy, take this weight off my chest! May it be so, Father!