It was a day with extended family. Sitting around the lunch table and talk about what`s next for each of us. It was nice to acknowledge that both Kriszti and I are well, we both put back on the weight that the breakdown temporary took away from us. Apparently 1 in every 3 women goes through depression in their lives. I miss having the family around me in England. It makes things difficult. The decisions have been made, I know and I am living with the consequences. There are moments when I am dreading the next 4 months. Working and studying, finishing the thesis, the sleepless nights, the chest pain, the lack of food and the stress about not having time for anything. And the memories creep up. Me lying on the bed waiting for the end. I need to take another loan out, otherwise it is going to crash down on me again. It is like drowning in ice cold water, if you`ve ever experienced how it feels you never want to go back there.
About a year ago, I had a dream. We went to see Auntie Kati and was sitting in the small room, where her husband stayed terminally ill when we visited him before. In my dream the bed wasn’t there, the room was rearranged and I kept wanting to ask where Uncle Janos was, but never get around to do it. On the way home I told mum, we never even asked about Uncle Janos. And the dream finished. He died the next day. It was his anniversary today. That`s why the lunch and the mess in the local church. Mum had strange dreams about being around people, who were dead. She had suitcases with her and they told her she wouldn’t need them where she was going. First time she told me about this dream, I was very worried and prayed that God would keep her safe. I was frightened, being in a foreigner country, what if anything happens to her. Exchanging family ties to pursue something that I can`t even touch in an incredibly lonely place. A couple of days later when we next talked on the phone she told me the day after her dream my grandparents’ house collapsed. Just like that one of the walls gave way and the roof came down. Both granny and granddad died a long time ago. A few months later mum called and told me she had the same dream again and the house next door collapsed. The old lady, who lived there died a long time ago. The memories on those collapsed walls cemented in my memory.
But life goes on. We had `Ujhazi Tyukhusleves` with `Csigateszta` the most famous Hungarian chicken soup with the nicest pasta. In the old days it was made especially for weddings and Christenings. I remember when I was little weeks before a wedding the women in the extended family came together and rolled the tiny (1x1cm or less) pasta squares up on a small piece of textured wood with a small rolling pick. And the result looked like a kind of small sea snail. Of course the `Csigateszta` we had today was made in a factory and bought in a shop. The main course followed, one of the best Hungarian dishes of all times: fattened fried duck with red cabbage and mash potatoes. Fattened ducks are traditional dishes for the Saint’s Day festive. Weeks before Saint`s Day the ducks are fed twice with maize softened in lard. This makes the liver big and tasty. It is a very old tradition, but recently 3 twenty something girls from a Budapest office tried to ban duck fattening and feather plucking branding it animal cruelty. Feather plucking is traditionally done twice a year and is used to make home-made feather pillows and duvets. I used to help mum plucking the ducks, they lose their feathers anyway. It is more sustainable to re-use it or sell to the feather trader, than sweeping it up as waste. We should learn a lot from the previous generations, when it comes to reuse, recycle and waste. There is nothing warmer than a good duck feather duvet during the cold winter.
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