Mother

You have not spoken to your mother in six years. Sadly this was because you had a difference of opinions, and you have no desire to acknowledge that it was you at fault, and justifiably so. But when you dream about her, it bothers you, because in those dreams she seems such a nice person, the person you remember as always having a kind word and funny story to tell to anyone who came into her shop.

You dreamed about her birthday, which you can't remember the date of but know it's very close to Hiroshima Day, a very ironic date for a supporter of unilateral nuclear disarmament. You hadn't got her a present but knew there were things you couldn't get her, so you asked her what she'd like, and she asked for a bar of posh soap. Upon purchasing the soap, and receiving it in a pretty box, you woke up.

The reason you fell out was over a stay in hospital. You had a tumour in your thyroid with a 2 in 10 chance of attaining malignancy and becoming cancerous. It was a very worrying period in your life because you had it for four years, two of those fighting a doctor who believed it was nothing to worry about and that it would go away - bizarrely the same advice frequently given to you by your mother about important social issues such as bullying in school; just leave it alone and it will go away.

It didn't work for that, and it didn't work for the tumour either; on Christmas 2000 you had to have surgery, which was painful and several months later very traumatic when you discovered that effectively overdosing on calcium supplements is the only way you can stop your feet getting bad cramp all the time - a little known side-effect of thyroid removal. You consider yourself lucky you're not having to take Thyroxine supplements yet, but it is only a matter of time - one day the remaining half will cease to function as well as it is now.

You had very little sympathy from your mother. The final straw would be a very funny story, probably sitcom quality, if it wasn't for the rift it caused. Because you are a fast healer you were discharged two days early, and at the same time you left your sister visited. She shouldn't have done, she was sick herself and you both came to an agreement on that straightaway. If it had been in your power you'd have insisted she didn't come; this was way back in the days before the luxury of bedside telephones and internet access. You didn't even know she was coming. But when you got home you got a very nasty phone call from your mother. She called you inconsiderate, selfish and rude and demanded you call your sister to apologise for inconveniencing her.

That you did, and your sister was horrified. You don't know what she did in response to that, nor did you want to know. Nor did you inform her of the nature of the tumour, discovered a few months after the operation by a biopsy on what they found. If she cared little about you to have a rant about your impropriety of not being in hospital, what difference is a potentially cancerous homunculous going to make?

You've had one phone call since; she wanted your address to put in her will and to this day you wonder why you didn't tell her to "fuck off". Oh, how crude. You don't want her money. Seriously. Very noble, but for a very sad reason.

Dream interpretation would probably list the subject of soap as a gift as a cleansing of the ways between you and your mother. A concern to you is that your chance to make peace with her is growing short; she is in her fifties now but whether she lives to fifty-two or over a hundred it's still shortening time. The main point of the concern is that you have no desire to and it bothers you. She is your mother, and you love her, but you have not forgiven her for treating you so shabbily.

During your stay in hospital you read The Dark Elf Trilogy, the story of Drizzt Do'Urden, and like a lot of people guilty of playing Drizzt Clones (yourself included) felt an empathy for the character. It is very hard to make peace, you feel, when every time you read or recall the incidents of Matron Malice Do'Urden berating and punishing her noble, purple-eyed son you hear your mother's voice.