I was ten or eleven years old when, during the winter holidays, my mother sent me to the largest and most famous in our Kingdom Christmas party, where parents were not allowed at that time. The central hall where the event took place accommodated an insane number of children of completely different ages. After the party, the children had to walk in a circle on the Square of the Three Cathedrals, which looked like a corral for horses and was fenced with iron partitions. Parents, standing behind the partitions in several rows, tried to get closer in order to find and have time to catch their kids out of a huge crowd of children wandering in that circle before they started another round.
The game «Find Me!» was a real stress for both children and adults. Firstly, because winter was still real then, the snow creaked underfoot, thus, after standing in the cold waiting for the kids for quite a long time, parents could catch a cold. Secondly, at that time it was customary to wear «uniforms» there. So it was very difficult to find among the thousands of identical felt boots marching sadly in a circle those on which your kid had struggled to put on the rubbers in the morning. On the other hand, the game developed the sixth sense – just feel yours!
My mother and I agreed that she would wave a scarf of the same color as the flag of our Kingdom at that times. However, it turned out that at least half of the Christmas party participants agreed on the same conventional sign. I felt sorry for my mother and decided to give her a gift – to go outside the first. I walked along the wide road to the magic circle, far apart from the main crowd. I don’t know how I managed that. I entered the circle and heard the joyful and excited exclamations of parents, «They are coming!» And I also heard them whispering, «God, who is so lucky? Whose child is this?» Then I saw my mother. She was smiling. Me too.
After my mother’s death, I often found myself in an unpleasant dimension, in a tense space with «gummy» time, where an inexplicable vacuum of something was felt. You leave almost all your energy there and come back completely exhausted. I usually passed into the World of the Dead (or rather, of those stuck between Here and There for some reason), where various entities live, including gray-wax ghosts, through a huge screen similar to a mirror, in a dream. My mother got stuck There, and we took turns visiting each other, she came to me Here, then I went to her There. The boundaries of spaces (dimensions?) became thinner even in grandma’s old flat, and There turned out to be right Here. First, the Door to Another Reality opens slightly, then you physically feel another space flowing into your local one, and almost immediately you hear Its sounds and, less often, see It.
Having adapted, I wasn’t afraid of drafts. However, due to the specific ability to take with me into Another Reality those nearby when the Door was opening, I was afraid for my son. I purposefully didn’t read him bedtime stories about Another Reality, tying him to the Earthly one. Once, when we were falling asleep and the Door creaked, I pretended that nothing was happening, but my son looked me in the eyes and asked in a whisper, «Have you heard that, mom? These sounds, what are they? Who is there? Tell me that you hear them too!»
