Father I place into Your hands...

It’s been a pretty horrible few weeks for me. At times I’ve wondered whether it would be easier to give up and let someone else take over.

I remember once when I was a kid I had a Home Economics assignment. I wasn’t as good at cooking back then as I like to believe I am now and I had worried myself into a frenzy over it. I had undertaken to create some kind of apple sponge swiss roll style thingy. I had no idea how I was going to do it, I had no idea what I needed to do it and I had no idea why I was planning to make something like that when I couldn’t stand cooked apple. The one thing I did know was that I had messed up.
So at 4am on the morning of the assessment I finally broke. In less than six hours I was going to be plating up for the teacher. I hadn’t looked up any recipes; I hadn’t even checked whether I had the necessary raw materials.
I got up and made my way down the dark corridor to my parents’ room. I knocked on the door, went in and, with tears running down my face, shook my mother awake.
“I need help.”
I half expected her to be angry that I had left everything to the last minute. I fully expected her to be livid that I was waking her up at a ridiculous time. I would have understood if she told me it was all my own fault and that I had to learn the lesson before washing her hands of it and going back to sleep.
Of course she didn’t. She got out of bed and started pulling things out of cupboards in the kitchen. She showed me how to stew the apples, she gave me a masterclass in weights and measures, and we even had time to do a practice run for the sponge making.
The weight she lifted off my shoulders that morning made the journey to school the most pain free it had ever been. And it is probably that incident I return to when I try to trace my love of cooking odd things. I’m not a parent so I cannot begin to surmise why she did it or what was going through her mind at the time – but it left a lasting impression on me.

So when I was weighing up my problems while standing in the freezing cold rain on a half deserted football terrace watching Coleraine losing one nil to Ballymena United I thought again of going to my mother for help. When Coleraine had their main goal scorer sent off it appeared to symbolise the uphill struggle I seemed to be facing. I wanted to talk to my mother about what I should do about my lack of employment, about the toothache that was keeping me up at night. I wanted to talk to her about the huge gap she had left when she passed away on the previous Monday after fighting illness so bravely for so long. But she is no longer there for me to shake awake.

As I stood in the rain, half watching the match I suddenly realised what she would tell me. In fact it was as clear in my mind as if she were standing in front of me. It was real because it was what she told me time and time again when she was alive. I wouldn’t dare suggest that my problems all drifted away at that moment but I was able to be a bit more objective. And a few minutes later Coleraine equalised. Not that I’m suggesting the events were related but it did bring a smile to my face and I spent the rest of the match jumping up and down and urging my team forward with all my breath. My voice has not recovered yet.

But I bet you want to know about that apple sponge swiss roll thingy. Well I went into the class full of confidence. I threw it together with panache and a smile on my face. The teacher was impressed and I got a decent mark. But it was never going to be as good as the one my mother made six hours earlier.