Fateful beginning of vacations

Chapter 31: An Unexpected Discovery

"Sarah?" her mother interrupted her thoughts. "Did you hear me?"

"Yes, yes. It's all good. I was just thinking. I think the answer, or rather answers, are yes." she said slightly nervously.

"Are you sure? I actually didn't think you would find out again. You had the same problem as Sandra for a while and shortly after the divorce, it wasn't long, let it be a year or just under a year, then it was gone. I think you repressed it and then built up your armor around yourself and shielded it and just repressed it," her mother explained.

Sarah's mouth was open. Whether in horror or astonishment was not clear to her. That was it, that was the explanation for her dreams. That was the reason why she appeared in her dreams the way she did. It was also the reason her mother had been so relaxed about diapers.

"Um..." Sarah collected herself. "I'm a little gobsmacked now."

"Well, I gave you a heads up. I was dealing with that along with the divorce. Believe me you were feeling obnoxious at the time. You yelled at me part of the time and were more than defiant. Don't even get me started on when I came to you with diapers. I don't want to tell too much, but Sandra was much more sociable, even though her mother took a long time and had to talk her down. You were even so cheeky that after we agreed that you would wear one, you secretly took it off again. That was clear to me then at the latest the next morning when the bed had learned to swim. Sometimes I felt really fooled, but I always remained reasonable. I even had the thought in between that you could do all this on purpose to get attention, maybe out of fear to lose me or something. Well, I also blamed myself for it somewhere. I wanted to get away from your father, not he from me. He could probably have continued his married life for decades, but for me it was simply not a life, but a life that passed each other by. By the way, I didn't tell your father about it at the time. That year he was still living in a hotel anyway and only visited you here at home, if at all, so he didn't really need to know, and I didn't want to give him any ammunition against me. Otherwise he would have accused me of making our daughter sick or something. I wanted to spare you the very bad war of the roses. Besides, he made little effort to get you to come to him. Not because he doesn't love you, he probably just loves his work more, but that's just my opinion and doesn't have to correspond to reality."

Sarah didn't know what to say. She fished for her cigarettes that she had brought from the kitchen and lit one. She took a few drags and looked at her mother, only to take another few drags on her cigarette. Finally the cigarette was smoked out and Sarah slumped limply into the chair. Her mother had approached the chair.

"Hey. Is everything okay with you?" her mother asked.

"I'm flat. Just flat. How could I possibly erase something like that from my memory?" she asked her mother incredulously.

"I assume that you were just abysmally embarrassed and you didn't want to put yourself through the embarrassment," her mother explained.

"How come you and Sabine never mentioned anything to us?" asked Sarah.

"That's what we agreed on. If you two don't trust each other enough to tell each other, we don't have the right to do that either, simple as that. I didn't tell Sandra this morning either. At least not directly, but if she's half as smart as you, she'll be able to draw her own conclusions, you managed to do that somehow." replied her mother.

"Conclusions. You're funny. I have since I came into contact with diapers a kind of let's call it insane dreams in which I seem to play tricks on myself. Well they explain themselves by your narration of course also. It also explains why you don't seem to have a problem with me starting to wear diapers, or at least less," Sarah concluded.