My Mystery Woman

There was another woman. 

There was another woman, other than my mother, at the moment of my birth. 

After I had been through some indescribable trauma, surrounded by alarmed voices and clanking noises, and blinding light, and somebody scraping a metal tool over glass, this beautiful and soothing voice brought me peace. 

A beautiful, soft, soothing, country accent. 

Of course my mother had a country accent of sorts, but this was the real thing, a really soft, beautiful, loving, country voice. 

After that, as I sucked breast, I held this mystery woman in my mind. I never spoke to anyone about her. There were no words in my vocabulary at that time. 

I never spoke about her, but I often thought, vaguely, about her. 

When I got my legs going and began to stand and take some tentative steps, I was resolved that, when I got really going, I would go and find this mysterious woman. 

As soon as I would be allowed out the gate, I would go and find her.

However, when, eventually, I got out the gate, she still was not anywhere to be found. She must be farther afield. 

Anyway, outside that gate, there were always other immediate things to be done, other matters to take my attention. It is when I was drifting off to sleep in the evening, it was then that I renewed my resolve to meet my mystery woman. 

As months and years passed, I began to piece together the clues. 

I realised, soon enough, that I had been born in a hospital, the Rotunda Hospital, and that the mystery woman was a nurse. 

So, when I would be big enough, I would take the bus all by myself, and stroll into the Rotunda Hospital, and keep my eyes and ears open, and insinuate my way into the birthing wards, and find my mystery woman. 

Unfortunately, when I was big and bold enough to take a bus by myself, I no longer had the courage to walk into mysterious places uninvited. As well as that, I perceived difficulty introducing myself to this stranger, and explaining my quest. Also, who could say if she would still be there after such a long time?

So the mystery woman challenge was slowly and sadly abandoned. 

However, the spirit of the challenge was revived in W. B. Yeats' poem: The Song of the Wandering Aengus
Though I am old with wandering,
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands,
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.


 

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