One of my most enduring fantasies was to find myself back again in Fairview, at my aunt’s house.

In this fantasy, it is a cool day in June and the trees and plants are lush. It’s quiet even if we’re in the middle of a hectic urban sprawl. We sit in her garden and talk for hours and hours. I tell her everything and she just listens, every so often nodding or saying her piece.

We notice that it’s gotten dark and we go inside where we sit down to a dinner of dishes she’s made that I could neither forget nor replicate; buttery soft Bistek Tagalog, rich beef caldereta and pork binagoongan with an impossibly perfect ratio of meat to fat.

But sadly, regretfully, it will be just that - a fantasy.

I never did get to visit.

I have a million reasons (or excuses) and I think that she would tell me to my face, how wrong I was on all of them. She would say this in a tone that is just slightly reproachful and firm enough that it makes you think twice about answering back.

I’m actually referencing my dad here, but only because they were so alike. They loathed inaction and hated it even more when you attempted to defend your inaction.

Perhaps the true fantastical bit about this fantasy is being able to talk to them the way I picture it in my head. They were so stoic, so forbidding (the demeanour only softening when they sit down to a meal they’ve cooked for their family) that you often stayed out of sight, out of mind.

Would they have indulged me?

I’d like to think that she would, but I don’t know and I’ll never know.