Fidelma's Freedom

This story is about a lady called Fidelma. She lived out in the countryside, just like she had for the last 70 years, since she was a girl. Fidelma had always loved her cottage. Her daughter Emma, on the other hand, had been concerned with her living in the cottage as she wanted her to live closer to the town. But Fidelma would never move out of her cottage.

After all, she knew that she would never leave the surroundings that she loved. There was one big reason that Fidelma would never leave her cottage and that was because around the corner there was an old trail.

Every day she would rise at 8am and walk along this trail, which was approximately a 2.5km round loop. It wasn’t just the trail that Fidelma loved. No, it was the sights she saw along the way.

She loved the smell of the daisies, the chirping of the robins and much more. This was Fidelma’s morning routine every day and she absolutely loved it.

But the time that our story was set wasn’t Fidelma’s most enjoyable. You see, the last few mornings Fidelma had a problem on her walk, her knee.

At first it was just a niggle, and it didn’t really bother Fidelma but the next few days she was limping!

Eventually, Fidelma and Emma agreed that Fidelma should go to hospital.

There, the doctors told Fidelma that she should have surgery on her knee.

Fidelma wasn’t too sure about the surgery but with a bit of convincing she decided that it was the best solution.

A few days later, Fidelma underwent surgery and luckily, she was all fine.

But the doctors told her to rest for months!

N000000, Fidelma might never get to go on her nature walks again!

So, as the months and seasons passed, Fidelma had changed. You see, not going on the nature walks really had an impact on Fidelma, and it had made her gloomy and dull.

Fidelma was sad and Emma could see it as well.

“You look really sad, Mam,” she said, “is there something wrong?”.

”You don’t worry about me, Emma. I’m all well and fine,” she said, though she was lying on the inside.

This stayed the same until one Autumn morning, when Fidelma opened the curtains, she was surprised to see a robin on her windowsill with a lovely red rose in its mouth.

At that moment Fidelma realised what had been bothering her for so long.

You see, it was months since the doctors had told Fidelma she had to rest. And since she had been so gloomy, she had forgotten all about her morning nature walks.

Fidelma immediately realised what she had to do and in a matter of minutes, she was out the door.

After all those months, she could finally smell the daisies and hear the robins chirping again, and this time she enjoyed it way more than she had done before.