Tags
brunch, chocolate, Dublin, family, food, friends, good little girl, love, memories, miscellaneous, random, thoughts
Brunch is a wonderful thing, especially when you are having it with five lovely ladies in one of your favourite food places in Dublin. As always I was running late, no real reason why other than I always seem to be just five minutes behind my scheduled, maybe it’s the running in heels that does it.
Anyway, as soon as I arrived a good friend gave me some chocolates, a very special kind, and even though I was already in a good mood it skyrocketed. As I sat down with a big grin, the other beautiful faces looked at me with large question marks written all over them. It wasn’t my birthday or any other special day for that matter (unless they had forgotten the newly invented give-your-friend-some-chocolate-day) so why the big purple box filled with chocolaty delights?
My dad had an uncle, the rich, very mean and children-hating kind. And every now and then my mum and dad would take us children to visit him for an afternoon in his house by the sea in Clontarf. He was a true bachelor who loved his piece and quite and I do believe he kept all the balls that ever landed in his back-garden and stored them in his potting shed.
My big sister was a quite, good little girl who did as she was told and loved to read so she would sit and not make a sound. I was more of the chatty, questioning, sock-slipping and always getting into trouble kind who seldom did what she was told and had very little fear. And somehow this little girl version of me broke down the mean old uncle and charmed him into liking both my sister and myself.
I have no memory of this, but my mum says that on one of the visits to this old mans home, I decided I wanted to see the back garden and since my mum was busy drinking tea and it wasn’t my dads home I took my great-uncles hand and demanded he show me the garden. My mums says he was so shocked that I had no fear he brought both me and my sister outside and walked around his garden with us, holding my hand and chatting. From that day onwards whenever he came to visit us, or we went to see him or it was a special day he would give my sister and me each a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray.
So when my generous friend told me that she sometimes gets boxes of chocolate from thankful new mums (she is a mid-wife) I told her about my special relationship to the purple Cadbury’s kind. I was just telling a story, sharing a memory with her but for some reason she understood that when you are five, six, seven or even thirty-eight having a whole box of chocolates all to yourself is more than just a treat, it is something very special indeed.
So now, on some rare, surprising occasions, this particularly giving girl shares her chocolatey delights with me and makes me feel just as special as I did when I was a little girl.
jensinewall 