It was when I was four. I came back home after playing with my two best friends outside until dusk. In our tiny half-dilapidated apartment, there was an old sofa in the main room adjacent to the kitchen. While I was waiting for supper, I sat on the floor and started playing with my dolls on the sofa. But I must have been tired from the daylong play. Before long, I fell asleep with my head laid against the sofa.
When I woke up, the house was very quiet. The TV was off, and I couldn’t hear my little brother’s voice either. It didn’t feel like supper time at all. As I sat there wondering what was going on, my mother came out of the kitchen.
“Have you woken up?”
She smiled at me and went back to the kitchen. She was heating up something in the microwave.
“Where is the supper?” I asked.
“We already finished supper long time ago,” my mother replied. “You were sleeping for quite a while.”
It was already midnight. My father must have also come back home and gone to bed already.
My mother brought me a bowl of rice and a plate with a few pieces of fried chicken flavoured with lemon and garnished with lettuce.
“Your brother was calling you for a long time. But I guess you were asleep and didn’t notice,” she said as she saw me start eating the food.
“No, I didn’t.” I answered, picturing my brother sitting next to me and trying to catch my attention while I was asleep.
“This is delicious,” I said to my mother. There was nothing fancy about the food, but the way it was kept especially for me and microwaved at this very late hour made it feel like a special feast. “This is delicious,” I kept saying as I ate my special supper.
My mother was unusually kind that night. It was a mystery to me why she didn’t even wake me up for supper in the first place, but I didn’t ask. I wanted the magic of the evening to last longer and didn’t want to risk anything that might break it. I was only happy that my mother had prepared this very special supper specifically for me after everybody else went to bed. It was really a dreamy night.