Swatting for tests isn’t something they seem prepared to do. Swatting for them ourselves and drumming it into them isn’t something we’re prepared to do. We’ve reached a natural hiatus. We’ve created it and now we’re not sure what to do about it.

There are secondary school tests which will determine levels ahead. There are primary school tests for reports which will be passed on to the secondary school. We’re raising them not to be too anxious about these things. Then in the wee small hours I pray for a bit of anxiety to be instilled in them. A little tiny drop to set the adrenalin pumping. Theirs. Mine pumps away on their behalf. If I could inject a vial of mine into them then maybe…

They’re doing exactly what we’d hoped for them. Enjoying their interests and aptitudes, having fun and being unperturbed by the competition that looms around them. And yet.

Marque 3 sails out of school today announcing he had his summer maths test.
‘Were you supposed to study for that?’
‘Ah no, you can’t study for a maths test. You can’t really study for any test in third class’.
Marque 2 has a similar attitude to his 5th class ones. I was astonished to discover that there is a revision list detailing exactly what to cover for each subject. He is unshaken. He reckons he knows all the stuff pretty well without the need to go over it. He tends to get away with it too. Last year as he approached the tests without a drop of sweat I was sure it would be reflected in his report. A little lesson that would serve him well. I hinted as much to him. Then his best report ever lands at my feet one sunny July morning. The lesson learnt was that mother does not always know best. My ‘told ya so’ moment turned out to be his. Oh well.

‘Ah, that’s because you have all boys’ I’m told when I relay my laid back approach to the studies tale. The girls just get on with it apparently. I’m averse to gender stereotyping, but it’s everywhere and we’ve been at the receiving end of plenty of it over the years. Blithely removing individuals from the conversation and casting an all inclusive sexist net. The more kids we had the more bizarre it became. The comments and the free reign blind assumptions. But they are are all so thoroughly different I’d scream silently.

‘All boys?’ strangers would ask with a subtle shake of the head, a ‘poor you’ intimation, an ‘oh well’ sigh. Or sometimes they’d come straight out with it.
‘I feel sorry for you. If that was me I think I would kill myself’ a sage mother (unknown to me) said shortly after the birth of my third. She had a son and a daughter. She said she’d love to have a third. But only if she could be guaranteed another girl. Stuff rattled in my head. Stuff that ought to be said. We consider ourselves very lucky, but thanks for the concern. Maybe you should stop at the two then. Save yourself the disappointment. You haven’t even met my children. How can you possibly comment? As luck would have it some years later her daughter ended up in play school with marque 3. She developed an acute crush on him and expressed this to her mother who dutifully informed me. ‘It is so funny, she is really very serious about it – she wants to marry him’. Not on my watch sweetheart! But then again if I kill myself like you kindly suggested, she’d be in with a chance!

The skin grew thick to the comments in the early years. At first I found myself flying the flag high for boys. Trotting out how much fun they were, how positive and zesty and affectionate and hilarious and by doing so I was really joining the polarising boys versus girls discourse which I didn’t like. By defending so much I was doing everyone a disservice, boys and girls. I found people agreeing with me, defending away, ‘yes give me boys any day, much more straight forward than girls. I know someone who had four boys and then a girl and she says the girl was all the work…’ I dropped the flag. These are all individual children, all different, no generalisations necessary, thanks.

However the consumerist polarised marketing of boys versus girls – a money spinner – has been irksome over the years. We have found ourselves purchasing a pink padded flicker scooter, a pink/purple framed blackboard and a pink kids’ camera as the boy colours were out and the birthday deadlines were up. Even some of the technology comes in thoughtful pink or blue. For heaven’s sake. When I read a newspaper article citing the compulsory removal of girl themed folders from the stationery shelves of a large supermarket chain – due to an anti-boy slogan – I was sadly unsurprised that there were such items. Complaints had been made. At last we’re waking up I thought.

There seems to be a change looming – in the form of the loom band craze – and we’re embracing it wholesale. This sees boys and girls equally industrially employed weaving bracelets, necklaces and rings from multi-coloured bands and flogging or trading them in the school yard, or giving them as presents to family and friends. The boys are wearing the products – and yes even if speckled with pink. At last and long may it continue. An accidental maturity in the marketing perhaps with great bonding benefits across a largely socially constructed gender divide. Roll on the next gender neutral craze and fingers crossed we see an end to pink versus blue.

We decide it is time for an adventure. The memories that we are creating with them and for them have been geographically located in the east and the west. Of this island, that is. We have not burst beyond the peripheries to far flung Europe. Passports and airports and waiting and sweating and sunburn are not things we do. We tell ourselves that we’re keeping them safe. Not dragging them around to encounter the dangers. And sure where else in the world would they want to be, we say, when the sun makes an appearance in Connemara. It was good enough for us as kids so it’s good enough for them, we reason.

Except there are mutinous whisperings amongst the crew. Marque 4 came home from a friend’s house grumbling.
‘We always do the same things over and over. Can’t we be more adventurous, live somewhere different with a bit of a view or something exciting like that?’ The cheek of him. Turns out the house he was in has views over the city. From upstairs windows the airport was pointed out to him. He could see the sea and asked if he could see England. He was, I’ve been told, in awe. Ah god. He has never even been to the airport. I log this with a modicum of guilt. Some day, my son. Some day. We’ve become selectively deaf over the years when the older ones enquire if they will ever, ever, like all the rest of the kids they know, venture to pastures beyond the island. Some day my sons. Some day.

We ease ourselves into this new adventurous mode. We decide to ditch the car in favour of the train to break through the border into the Northern Territory. This is a trip we’ve been promising marque 1 for years now. As an avid Titanic fan – who was interviewed on radio about his interest for the April 2012 commemoration – it is with another smidgeon of parental guilt that we’re only getting around to it now.

When we tell them that we won’t tell them where we are heading but that there is a train involved the guessing begins. We’re off to Bray for the carnival. We’re off to Howth for a picnic. Both ends of the dart line is all they can imagine we’ll stretch ourselves to. This little game makes the elders feel good. Ups the impact of the punch of excitement to come.

We nearly fall at the first hurdle. We’ve pre-booked our tickets to include dart tickets to and from town. We’re keen to avoid any diversions courtesy of the bank holiday marathon. We are smugly organised, foreseeing pitfalls, great parents that we are. We are catching the 9.35 train from Connolly to Belfast. We rock into our local dart station at 8.00. Red neon lights flash 9.20 at us.
‘What does that mean? Maybe it’s the next train is in nine minutes twenty seconds’ I say hopefully as I watch the neon sign unchanging, no diminishing seconds, and allow it to dawn on me that the first train today is actually at this tardy time.
The troop is deflated.
‘But I really wanted to go somewhere’ they are muttering and echoing around us.
‘Back in the car, we’ll drive’.
‘But I really wanted to get the train’.
‘We’ll drive to the train’.
‘Ohhhhh…’

As we stand at the rope barrier, first in line in our zealousness to embark on the Dublin to Belfast train, marque 5 bursts into song.

Sine Fianna Fáil
Ata faoi yowl ag Eireann…

Crystal clear, he tinkles on, substituting his own words here and there. We shuffle our feet and laugh raucously to drown him out. Of course he was going to sing this. He has been singing it ever since he learnt it for St Patrick’s day with his classmates. We do not cast our gaze around to pick up on any potential nervousness of the other passengers travelling with this nationalist gang.

They bask in the luxury of the standard class carriage, the plush seats with armrests, the window with a blind to be pulled if needed. Little squeals of delight escape when the train pulls out of the station, the smoothness and quietness of it taking us all by surprise.
‘Hey guys, this will be your first time to go abroad’ marque 1 booms, lording it over them as he accompanied me to England once. At seven months of age.
‘It’s not exactly abroad now is it’ I say fearing the intricacies of the debate to follow. ‘It is. It has a different currency and everything. Hey guys, we’re going to another country’.
Sine Fianna Fáil…

The food trolley lady is doing her rounds.
‘Can I use euros in Belfast?’ marque 1 enquires.
‘You can use the notes but not the shrapnel’ is the sage response, no kidding.
‘Is that a northern term for coins then?’ the father enquires, laughing. Always mention the taboo is his mode. Breaks the tension with potential for bonding laughter. She is not laughing with him. She pushes on leaving us with our ignorant southern questions. Shrapnel. Seriously though. I think I’m beginning to feel a little nervous. What if she’s trying to tell us something. Keep on your toes with your wits about you, drop the anthem, drop the inappropriate jokes. I put my head back and say a little prayer of sorts. That all seven of us return in one piece after this long awaited adventure.

The ATM in the station spits my card back at me. It is not recognised. Great. We have to make it to a bank or hope that everywhere takes euros. Lovely taxi drivers offer their services but we decide to traipse. We’ll get a great sense of the place walking. We google and find a branch of my own bank exists in the centre. We will go there and we will traipse on then to the Titanic quarter. Except by the time we have found the bank and done the exchange with all in toe we are starving. A quick lunch and then we’ll set off. There’s a great choice of places to eat with the parents hinting heavily about Wagamamas while the kids debate the relative merits of Nandos versus Pizza Hut. Nandos wins and we have an excellent feed.

The clock is ticking. Even so, we find ourselves walking again. Navigating our way to the Titanic quarter with our noses. This is the flaw of the day. We haven’t a clue really, and marque 5 is intent on dropping my hand and bursting into happy little runs, hurtling towards roads with me running and shouting and grabbing him. It’s much further than the map suggests and walking with five kids is pure folly. At a junction of the M3, which our noses tell us we should take, there’s a ‘no pedestrians’ sign. I’m wondering who’s to blame and as I’m about to decide, miraculously, a seven seater taxi appears. We are saved and delivered to our destination. We were, he tells us, very close. We are, we tell him, knackered and foolish, and we try to make him promise that he’ll reappear for our outbound journey.

The Titanic experience beats all expectations that we could’ve had. It is exceptionally busy with visitors from the south today. The staff are exceptionally patient and good humoured throughout. We wait in a long queue to be taken in a lift to the top of the Arrol Gantry to immerse ourselves in the construction of the Titanic. The guy operating the lift listens to his earpiece which tells him the state of play above.
‘Sorry for the wait. It’s choca above. It’ll be a few minutes’.
I get a real Titanic feeling washing over me. We can’t move forwards or backwards. We’re stuck waiting for the lift to rescue us. I wonder if this is deliberate.
‘No worries, as long as it’s safe’ I say laughing.
‘Yes’ he chimes in twinkling. ‘I find if you mention health and safety here, people are very understanding about the delays’ and he laughs.
We take a shipyard ride in a car that fits all seven of us. We fly through the shipyard experiencing the sights, smells and sounds of the construction. A big hit all round. The other favourite bit is when we get to sit down to a ginormous screen and experience the actual ship at the bottom of the ocean.

Our taxi driver delivers us back to the centre for some last minute shopping. The kids have ten pounds each to spend. It is the spending of this different currency which will stay with them. They hit the pound shop and emerge with bag loads of thrilling junk. They are orbital. We are leaving it tight for the train back so we flag another taxi to the station. Head count. All in. All smiles.
‘I want to be the first to say it. Thanks Mum and Dad’ with echoes of same all round.

We made it. Banter with the taxi driver about options for our next trip. The Odyssey Arena. The Transport and Folk museum. Yes, yes, we’ll do it all, our newly empowered traveller selves say. We are alighting from the taxi. ‘Careful guys’, I say,’don’t trip on the seat-belts, quick, onto the path’ and I pull the sliding door at the same time as he is closing the passenger door and somehow he is standing there with his finger retrieved, bleeding, in agony, white as a ghost. Fingers in doors. It’s one of our pet dreads.

In the blink of an eye it can change for any of us. Almost there, almost safe, wham. And that’s what we bring from our adventure above all. A thankfulness for the luck that we’ve had to date. An added vigilance for ourselves as well as the kids.

As marque 2 put it: ‘I had a feeling that something might happen to somebody today, but I didn’t expect it to be one of the parents’. Thankfully the finger will recover. And we will venture on unperturbed to other pastures. After all, marque 1 tells us it was one of the best days of his life.

I attempt in vain to coax marque 2 out of the bed. He’s muttering something to me, some mumbo, half asleep, jumbo. I reiterate. He mumbles. I stare at the duvet and wonder if reefing it off the bed would be considered as a sort of trauma later on. Something to be re-told to friends, partners, therapists.
I desist. Despite the fact that standing here talking to him gently about how late we already are is making not a jot of difference. A little threat perhaps.
‘If you’re not up and out of the bed in the next minute there’ll be no Friday treat’. Big guns.
‘Can I just finish my dream first’ he says, which I realise now is what he’s been mumbling all along while I’ve been considering my tactics.
‘Of course you can’ I say. Ah god. What a lovely idea. If we could all just finish our dreams first…

There is an ongoing tug-of-war in my own mind about the benefits of the school morning routine. I find myself staring at them in their cozy slumber, knowing I should be proactively waking them, and I turn on my heels to leave them for another few minutes. I busy myself downstairs with making sure everything is ready for when I have the courage to wake them. Then I try again. I hover, listening to the gentle snores, and I try to whisper them awake. I visit all the bedrooms with my whispering as a round one tactic. When no-one stirs I revisit with round two, talking now, repetitively, cajoling. Eye-lids flutter. It’s a dizzying affair with five of them. All the while as I hover not really wanting to wake them, I know that there are consequences. Every hovering moment extenuates the pressure on the dressing, breakfasting, and grooming to come. Round three tactic (how late we are getting plus a little threat, some deprivation) is where I am with marque 2 when he requests to finish his dream, which catapults me back to a pre-round one state of not wanting to wake them at all. Perhaps I could just collapse here in a heap beside him as he sees this dream out. Maybe, just maybe, we could all sneak a little day off from the dastardly routines. Knock around, free range, learning in different ways from fun and play rather than the prescribed syllabus.

I think of the first Monday morning after the Easter holidays. I have successfully herded them all downstairs. Marque 2 is putting his tie around his neck when he looks up at me and says ‘wait a minute, when’s my project due in?’ I discover that there was meant to be toil over the break. Toil that he thankfully forgot all about. While I wouldn’t have been able to forget if it was me I’m delighted that he can. A break should be a break, especially when you’re ten. It’s that tug-of-war again. I should be imposing the prescribed rules and the structures on him and I’m delighted when he frees himself from them. Maybe we should be more regimented with them, but how can they emerge as their true selves if we are. If only we could do a boot-camp control group! We’re not keen on the idea of raising robotic creatures, scared to be themselves.

The project was marked down in the end for being LATE – underlined red pen – despite my note about our broken printer which didn’t seem to wash even though it happened, coincidentally, to be true. Despite the fact that he did it all by himself – we’re averse to embroiling ourselves in projects to win best prize. Three days late which was pretty good going considering the others had two full weeks to work on it! Oh well, I say to myself while spouting the school line to him of how there has to be a consequence for not going by the rules.

The lesson fails to sink in.

Yesterday he was supposed to be neck deep in maths sheets distributed as compulsory revision aids for today’s scary fifth class summer test. The one for the report that his secondary school will request to see. I watch as he sets up his paints and canvas in the garden and gets to work. A sunny afternoon spent with his imagination and his brush. I fail to interrupt him, to say you can do that later, now get on with the maths. The truth is I feel too that it’s the maths that should wait.

He knows me well.
‘Have you finished your dream?’ I whisper, gently again.
‘Yes’ he says and he’s smiling now. ‘Can we please just be home-schooled?’ he asks and we both laugh.

There are limits to my free range ideas after all.

We’re novices in the whole secondary school subject choices arena. Marque 1 is forging the way, educating us. We will be more adept for lucky marque 2. There were six subjects from which he could choose two as options for the Junior Cert. He loved them all to begin with when the trial runs were on. We could imagine him doing and enjoying each one of them. We were unable to attend the night of the subject choice discussion. Where teachers meet and discuss the options with unenlightened parents such as ourselves. Then in our ignorance we tried to help him decide. He whittled away a couple for himself – the Latin and technical graphics – and then made a play for home economics. In our infinite wisdom we said ‘sure you do all that stuff anyway, you’ve a natural flair for it, the cooking and the shopping and the economising.’
He is a child who makes real chocolate sauce from scratch without measuring a thing. He just seems to know. Someone who shops for food bargains in the German stores and whips up a steak and crème fraîche mushroom dish for a certain parent’s birthday lunch. Crème brûlée without the aid of a blow-torch. When one night we dropped the tray of freshly made rice crispie buns for the school’s annual cake sale – I stood staring hopelessly at the smithereens – he said ‘don’t worry’ and whipped up some fresh cookies instead.

‘But I really love it’ he implored.
‘Yes but maybe it’d be a waste to do it as a subject seeing as you do it all already’ these wise folk spouted.
He chose business studies and music in the end. A fitting choice steered by the elders. Until not too long into the old business thing he began to complain of boredom.
‘I can’t believe it’s so boring, all budgets and stuff. I don’t want to waste an option on this – not when I don’t have to do it’.
The elders paused for a moment and then advised. Wise counsel again.
‘Stick with it a while longer. It won’t be all boring. Sure you’ve been thinking up business ideas since you were tiny. It’ll be good to get some knowledge of how business works.’

Some weeks later he produces a change of subject form.
‘I just can’t do it any longer. I really want to change. I’ve asked about home economics but it’s too late. There weren’t enough people for the second class and now if I was to do it it’d clash with music. So I’m going to change to art. Will you sign the form?’
A whole plethora of feelings rise and fall in me. All intricately related to guilt. We didn’t listen well enough to him, or at least we didn’t hear him. We didn’t attend a vital meeting which could’ve staved off this unfortunate situation. We thought we knew what would suit him best when in truth we hadn’t a clue. He knows himself well enough to be able to tell us. We’d have served him better if we’d stayed out of it altogether.
‘Of course I’ll sign the form, here hand it over’ I say eager to make up for the deafness. ‘Will you enjoy art do you think?’
‘Well the art teacher has to see if I can draw first. I have to do a still life tonight’.
‘Of course you can draw’ I say, fingers crossed, otherwise he’ll be consigned to three years of business and it’ll be all our fault.

I press him and probe him about the still life all afternoon. ‘Have you done it yet, when are you going to do it?’ He is ultra relaxed about it, especially considering he is so desperate to change. ‘Not yet, I’ll do it later’.
At 11.00 that night he rocks into the sitting room and nabs the bowl of fruit from the dinner table, plonks it on the coffee table in front of him and using his legs as a prop he sets to work. I pretend to continue reading the newspaper and not to be peeping at the unfolding still life. He doesn’t appear to notice anything else, the concentration is deeply relaxed. He waves it at me on completion and to my non-artist’s eye it’s pretty good. He waves it at the other parent, the one with the discerning eye, who nods and smiles.
‘Here’ I say excitedly now, offering my half empty glass of red wine to be included in the artistry. ‘Put that in too, fill the page’.
He draws the wine glass and the bottle of wine. Then he meanders over to the book shelves and selects a book to plonk the fruit bowl on to finish off the effect. The Art of Thinking Clearly he selects, seemingly randomly, but I’d guess he’s trying to tell us something, fair play to him.
I knock back the rest of my glass of wine. We are saved. He will do art and enjoy it. Better than home economics any day surely?! We will not be made to pay for steering by watching years of miserable toil because we did not listen.

I’m ready to pounce on him as he gets in from school.
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘What do you mean well what, what did he say?”
‘Oh the art, good yeah’.
‘Did he say it was good?’
‘He did yeah’.
‘So you’re allowed to do it?’
‘I think so yeah’.
God give me patience…

Today is the day of his summer art exam. He has to select something from home to draw as a still life. He wasn’t worried enough to choose something last night. He knocks around the kitchen this morning with a list of possibilities.
‘Sure I could just pick a flower or something on the way to school’ he says and I simultaneously love how relaxed he is about it while being utterly perplexed by his laid back approach. I try to keep my ‘be prepared’ girl guide anxious motto to myself. He finds an old head of garlic, complete with green shoots sprouting.
‘This will do’ he says wrapping it in tin foil, happy out. What about all those other choices on the list I think to myself. What if there’s something easier to draw, what if he’s setting himself up for a fall? I manage to remain silent and watch him saunter off with the ease of someone who knows and trusts himself well enough. Thank goodness for that.
I’ll have to think of a new motto (‘listen, don’t steer’?) which chimes in more readily with this diverse crew.

Marque 5, on the verge of turning 5, pipes up with a special request.
‘Can you buy me my own bed that I can sleep in by myself and you can come and check on me every few minutes?’
Wham.
‘Yes of course I can sweetheart’ I say a tiny bit pleased and more than a little gutted.
‘But will it cost too many hundred euros?’
Ah, god.
He’s clearly had enough of this attachment parenting lark. He’s making his bid for freedom. He would’ve made it long ago if he wasn’t so worried about the cost.
‘No it won’t be too many hundred euros . Now where would you like your bed to go?’

He announces the plan to a mother at the school gate.
‘My Mum is going to buy me my OWN bed and she’s going to come and check on me in the night’.
I was lucky with the person he chose to share his great news with. Not a raised eyebrow or a hint, if she was thinking it, of ‘poor angel, your mum should’ve done that for you long ago’. I begin to gibber on, flush faced, about thwarted plans to execute this phase in the past. In truth I think about it and wait, patiently – attachment parenting style – for a sign of readiness.
The wham bang sign arrives today.
He sketches his new bed for me. It floats seamlessly on air. His teddies join him up there. He is more than a little bit ready.

The theory is that the more securely attached they are to their parents the more confidently independent they’ll be later on. Co-sleeping, prolonged breastfeeding and trusting your instincts are some of main facets of this approach. Easy peasy. Delightful. Natural. A privilege.

What about the parents though, when the little traitors decide to move on?! Absconding and leaving them all by themselves to resume normal marital relations. These people who are used to sneaking around, nabbing their moments opportunistically like young ones with nowhere to go. What about the separation anxiety the poor mother could (theoretically) feel when her snugly warm love-bug ups and flees. It remains to be seen as I’ve yet to source that new bed. He’s phasing me into the reality of it, in fairness to him. After dropping the bombshell he saunters into his brothers’ bedroom and sleeps in with marque 4, swapping for marque 3 half way through the night, and then tosses me the couple of hours of sweet slumber after dawn. Slim pickings. I think it’s about time to unearth the downside of attachment parenting – for the parents. The poor separation-anxiety struck mums and dads, bereft in the absence of their co-sleeper, hurtled together again, blinking into the half-light of life without a chick in the nest. Marque 5 picks up on this, telepathically (all that attachment!) and pipes up.

‘I thought you might want to have another one of us now that I’m getting my own bed’.
‘What, another baby?’ I say laughing.
‘Yes’.
Nope. No sir-re. In fact when he puts it like that I might even begin to value the freedoms that are coming my way now that we are well and truly out of the baby stage.

Cheers and happy birthday to you marque 5.

Ellen Kelly

Somehow, somewhere along the way, we bought into the concept of the Easter Bunny. As this was not a feature of our own childhoods, we should’ve had more sense. Blindly, unquestioningly, we let the Easter Bunny in. We let him take over. We failed to distinguish between the bunny and ourselves, so each year the bunny does it all. The surprise eggs that await them, carefully selected and laid out. One large, one medium, one bunny, a hen and a few mini eggs are laid. As we celebrate Easter in the Wild West each year, the bunny has to conceal these for the journey. No mean feat with seven of us cramped into a jeep. Then he has to stash them – paws crossed that they remain intact and unmelted after the long journey – until the day. Then sneak around undetected laying the magic out. The kids wait for one another in the morning and go downstairs together to see if he has been. I wait in the sidelines for an appreciative glance. A little thank-you. But as the bloody Easter bunny has done all this they don’t have to remember their manners.

The industrious Easter Bunny has also set up another annual tradition. The highlight of the day. All they talk about when they talk about Easter. All they remember. Come rain, hail or shine, the Easter Bunny sets up an egg hunt on the glorious Mannin Bay. This is where some real magic takes a hold. Where it is possible to believe in anything you choose. Rollicking grassland, white sand and dunes, rocky outcrops, the magnificent bay in the shadow of the Twelve Pins. Rabbits, hares, sheep, cows and ponies. Wild rustic magic.

The kids are keen to get to the bay early lest some other family beat us to it. Marque 1 is co-opted to go ahead with the father to ‘check’ if the bunny has left a hunt for us this year. The rest of us de-camp at the first beach and meander the half mile across the headland. We reach the jeep to be told that he has indeed been. Multi-coloured foils glint and wink at us in the sun. They hide in rocks, grass and sand. The clever bunny has managed to hang some from twigs in the dunes. My heart beats a little faster as I spot one and I have to stop myself from leaping on it and claiming it. Whoops of joy come from all of us when marque 5 spots one. The father has to restrain himself from pointing out where the bunny might have left some more. We are child-like again with our children for this special part of the day. Hats off to the Easter Bunny. Where the hell was he in the 70s?

Ellen Kelly

We have feral cat visitors in our garden. We welcome them. We leave out water and sometimes food. Then we watch through the French windows as they take their tentative steps towards the old lunch box and munch furtively. The kids delight in it. They make hissy swishy cat encouraging noises. The parents delight in the natural outdoor rodent exterminators. The cats delight in our haphazard garden. They play in the broken tents. They scramble up the trellis and sit on the high wall surveying. They sunbathe on the flat black roof of the kitchen extension. There’s a synchronicity to it all – the cats in their multiplicity with their unstructured free range exploratory play mirroring the values of our family.

We hire a skip to de-junk the garden. Rusty old bicycles, broken plastic cars, burst bouncy toys, un-pitchable tents. An unhinge-able broken old wooden door lies at an angle in the hedge-row. The skip beckons. I lift it and yelp. A pair of stern yet terrified yellow eyes stare at me. She does not move. Nestled in beside her is the tiniest kitten. Eyes closed, days old. The mother looks like a defiant teenager, daring me to continue with my eviction. I place the door carefully back down on them.

There are squeals of delight when I share my news with the brood.
‘You mean they actually live in our garden?’
‘Was the baby born under the door?’
‘Can we keep them, please?’
‘We have pets, hurray! We’ve always wanted pets and the y’ve come to us!’

The skip leaves minus the old door. We call their nest Coombe corner, after the hospital where most of ours were born. The kids scatter dry cat food all over the tidy garden. The parents agree that it would be wise to google it. Taming ferals, diseases, injections, pit falls.

It’s a beautiful sunny spring day when I decide to mow the lawn. I sneak a peek into Coombe corner and there are no eyes staring out at me. I mow merrily for the first time since late last autumn. I stop to empty the grass and admire the transformed space. There’s a loud scurrying noise in the foliage above the blue door. Mother cat is scarpering frantically up the trellis. She has something in her mouth.

It takes me a moment to work out that it is not a mouse, rat or bird. It’s her baby. Eyes still closed. She squeezes through the fence into next door as I call ‘no, don’t go, please, too loud I know, I won’t switch it on again, hissy swishy,  here kitty kitty, I’m sorry, come back, baby come back’.

We sit in our tidy mown garden and wait for our untamed pets to return. I peep into Coombe corner, obsessively, compulsively, checking and deflate a little each time at the sight of the empty nest. I think of the synchronicity again – this is a window to the future, and I resolve to enjoy every bit of young family life before I’m peeping into their empty rooms.

Ellen Kelly

‘I wish I had ear plugs’ I hear myself say before I can stop.
‘I wish I had ear plugs that I could shove in my ears for the first two minutes when you all get into the car after school’, and I don’t look around to absorb the potentially hurt faces. I do not need to have those in my memory bank for guilt tripping myself in my dotage. Today is an acute case. It goes from passing the hour wait with marque 5 in pleasant (grab hold of these remnants of babyhood) banter and laughter to the assault.
‘Mu-um what about our book lists?  I told you they were due in and today is the LAST day’.
I’ve been putting it off, naturally. All that adding up and forking out in one go. Four booklists. Procrastination is called for.
‘I thought they were due on Wednesday’.
‘Well everyone else has theirs in by now’.
‘Yes but what day are they actually due in?’
‘I don’t know’ marque 3, the accuser says.
‘Wednesday’ marque 2 says assuredly. Saving me again. But then  – ‘Mum I definitely need my eyes tested’ and he goes into an elaborate tale of fuzzy letters on the board, of having to copy from his neighbour and then his own resourceful testing of the situation.
‘So I got my best friend to come down to the back where I’m sitting at break time. I asked if he could read the words. He said yeah, sure, no problem. So I NEED to get tested’.
‘Tested. Right. Of course. Although I think we’d know if there was a problem. You don’t seem to miss a trick to me. And anyway didn’t you get an eye test in Junior infants?’
‘I was four then. I’m nearly eleven. Maybe it’s time for another one’.
Point taken.
‘Mu-uu-uu-mm’ comes a wail from marque 4.
‘I’m in a show TOMORROW and I need all the costume stuff…’
‘You didn’t tell me you were in a show tomorrow’.
‘I DID. I gave you a note last week and you lost it and now I don’t know what time it’s at or what I have to wear’, and he sobs, real tears. This is all before they have their seat-belts on. All before we make our get away from the school gate. This is when my ear plugs comment enters the space. Just to add a bit of fuel to the fire. I could do with a good wail myself.

I nab marque 4’s bag and rummage. There is no way he gave me any note about a show. That I would remember. Especially as I’m supposed to make myself available. The show needs an audience. He’s as disorganised as I am. He forgot all about it. I rummage until I seize upon the crumpled note with the vital information. So annoyed am I at being accused twice – nay thrice in two short minutes – that I read the note aloud in what only could be described as a ‘see told ya so’ style. The others row in behind me now.
‘How can you expect Mum to know about your costume and the show if you don’t give her the note?’. This is going even further downhill. I am vindicated but there’s a mob vibe mooching around and I’m at the helm. Time to act like a parent again. On it goes.
‘Maybe she won’t even be able to go now all because you didn’t give her the note…’ Ascending wails.
‘Alright, enough. I will be able to go. We will be able to get the costume bits, although it will mean having to get out to the shops tonight. Marque 4, you need to be more organised. You need to hand the important notes over as soon as you get them so that I can act on them. There are repercussions…’ (I use this word a lot these days) ‘from being disorganised’.

They are silent (phew) and they never, ever ask what repercussions means. One of those mother words best left misunderstood. Maybe she’s really talking to herself after all. Now, homeward bound to fill that skip we had delivered this morning.

Ellen Kelly

Waiting in the rain in the car at the school, marque 5 breaks into verse:

This old man
He played six
He played knick knacks
On my dicks
With a knick knack paddy whack
Give a dog a bone
This old man came rolling home!

Pitch perfect, fresh faced straight from his junior infant class, this four year old chimes his insidious rhyme. There is no-one to impress with his impish take on it. We’re waiting for the brothers to emerge from their classroom labours. They would kill themselves laughing and then tell him not to sing it in school. Much as I’d like to now. There’s a niggle though. Something to do with the way he seems to be singing it just to himself, no audience or giggles necessary.

I try not to say a thing. Drawing attention to it might reinforce it and he’ll be singing it merrily all day long. But then I wonder. Where did he learn the original rhyme? We’ve been pretty remiss on the whole singing nursery rhymes with the kids thing. Despite how good it’s supposed to be for them. Despite the fact that it was a strong recommendation for marque 4’s speech development. We packed in a few the week of that suggestion and forgot about it ever since. It seems quaint and old fashioned and out of sync. It seems to be more about parents reminiscing than anything much else. Or maybe we’re just lazy.

Anyhow the chimes of the four year old have my mind a-whirr, as it were. That dirty old man, playing tricks and knick knacks on dicks and rolling home drunk as a skunk afterwards. The bastard.

‘Who taught you that song?’ and I’ve my fingers crossed that he doesn’t start to talk about some dubious geezer who has somehow slipped beneath our radar.
‘What song?’
‘The one you were just singing.’
‘That’s not a song’.
Patience is called for.
‘What is it then?’
‘That’s just something I taught myself’ he says and begins the verse all over again. The verse with the six.

My antennae sharpened now, I can imagine subtext everywhere. This afternoon marque 4 is reading to me with delightful fluidity. His book for today is Dr Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham. I am smiling at him and winking my encouragement as he does not stumble over the rhyming rhythmic words. Maybe the speech therapist had a point. Then I actively listen.

Would you? Could you?
In a car?..
I would not, could not in a tree,
Not in a car! You let me be…
Could you, would you,
On a train?..
Not on a train! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! Sam! Let me be!

I would not, could not, in a box.
I could not, would not, with a fox….

Would you, could you,
In the rain?…
Could you, would you,
With a goat?

Bloody hell. ‘That’s enough now for today. Excellent reading. Well done. Your teacher will be so pleased with you’.
‘But I want to read on, just a few more pages, please’.

Would you, could you,
On a boat?…
(Perhaps, Dr Seuss, perhaps).

The blurb on the back of the book states that Dr Seuss makes reading FUN! It’s all about the rhythm and the rhyme and the repetition.

That it is.

Ellen Kelly

I am woken by unusual sounds in the bedroom. I switch my phone on. 3.45am. I use the light of the phone to ascertain that we are not being burgled, again. Maybe I was dreaming. I try to doze off. Rustle. Bang. Creak. Phone light again to see what the other two in the bed with me are up to. They are completely still. My heart is thudding, my eyes on stalks. Creak, creak, creak. A-ha. Marque 1 has a French test in the morning. He must be worried about it. Pacing the landing. Creaking the boards. I am surprised and a little relieved. He has shown no such nerves to date. No harm in it, taking the occasional test seriously. Doze. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw. Right in the corner beside my locker something is making a rip roaring racket. I believe I am about to snuff it. The heart couldn’t possibly keep this beat up. I look at my sleeping duo and bail straight out of the room.

I have no idea what to do next. Some creature is in our bedroom. There is an adult and our darling marque 5 asleep with the creature roaming. Should I wake them and have the whole house up? With school and work in a few hours. He has an important meeting. We went to bed at 1.00. Almost three hours sleep. Not enough. I listen outside the door. He is snoring gloriously loudly. That should be enough to scare whatever it is away. Marque 5 is cuddled into him. Safe enough.

I find myself in the kitchen making a pot of tea while googling what it is likely to be and then how the hell to get rid of it. I am showered with the sandwiches made by 4.30 am. The rest of the time is spent trawling the internet arming myself with solutions. I am feeling queasy with tiredness and shock.

At 7.00 I karate kick the bedroom door open, Miss Piggy style HI-YA, and expect to be leapt on by a giant wild rat or cat or god knows what. I grunt whisper my nocturnal findings to himself, sure he will’ve been oblivious. ‘I know’ he says nonchalantly.’I saw it’.

‘What the hell is it?’ ‘It’s a mouse’. ‘A mouse, are you sure, it sounded enormous…’ ‘I’m sure, it was this size’ and he shows with his fingers stretched wide. ‘That’s a bloody rat’ I say. ‘That’s the length with the tail’ he says. ‘It’s a mouse for sure’. ‘Here’ I say thrusting a Pyrex dish at him. ‘Catch it’. He laughs. ‘Have you seen how fast they run?’ No, thankfully, I’ve never had the opportunity. We’ve led a rodent free existence to date. ‘What the hell is it doing in our bedroom? Aren’t they supposed to inhabit kitchens where there’s food to chew on? What’s it doing upstairs? And there’s been no warning. Not a dropping in sight. Aren’t they supposed to leave signs?’ ‘I’ll have a word’ he says and laughs again.

‘You didn’t give me my cuddle yet ‘ marque 5 hollers from the bed. We’ve been over doing the attachment parenting on this, our fifth and final child. Co-sleeping with no alternative bed or space yet sourced for his bolt for independence. Some day, some day. ‘Come downstairs for your cuddle’ I shout back through the crack in the door. I might never be entering that room again.

I’ve made an appointment to see the principal of marque 1’s secondary school. It’s at 9.30. My legs are jelly wobbly and my eyes squinting in pain with being open at all after 3 hours sleep. ‘I can’t do it, not today, sure I won’t be able to speak, let alone get our concerns lucidly across’. ‘You look wrecked which is a good thing’ he tells me assuredly. ‘You look even more worried and stressed than you actually are’. Cheers.

I waddle my way to the meeting and manage to hit a few key points while words such as ‘colonies’ and ‘infestations’ dance across my mind. I leave buoyed up by the principal’s reassurances, my concerns paired back to an actionable plan.

Now for some more pressing action. I go directly to the hardware shop. We’ve discussed the handling and been advised. I think traps but our advisors say poison is your only man. Simple. Clear. No nonsense. No mess. They eat it, get thirsty and scurry out of your house to find water but end up dead instead. In the doorway of the DIY store I bump straight into my next door neighbour. She’s all smiles pushing a cart full of lovely flowery things for her garden. I think I might’ve seemed a little rude as I declined to stop and chat. I might’ve blushed a little too. Oh well.

Night 2: I decamp to the sitting room and listen. Tap, tap, tap. Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. Munch, munch, munch. Ha. How easy is that? How foolish is he? Poison taken, I doze on my new couch bed.

Night 3: No discernible sounds from my new bed. Sweet poison success. The children begin to quiz about my decamping. I distract and fluff and bluff.

Night 4: Growing accustomed to my new bed. I can read while the rest of them sleep. I can potter without waking anyone. I can’t sleep, but hey… Tap, tap, tap. It lives.

Night 5: Rampaging sounds above my head. Half poisoned furious tapping. Heart thudding. Eyes on stalks. Adult movement, bang, crash… He is doing battle. For me and his brood. Ah god.

Day 6: ‘The only way I could get it to stop was to play wild cat noises on my phone…but every 5 minutes I had to re-set it. That’s the only sleep I got. It was burrowing behind the back of the bed, right beneath my head’. Now that’s true torture. I discover that he has blocked off the gap in the floor boards, where the thing emerges from, with a paint can. ‘You’re meant to block the holes’ he informs me. ‘Not after they’ve come through them. It had to dig another hole to get back out’ I say expertly. ‘You block the gaps and holes to stop them coming in in the first place. Once they’re in you’ve got to FIGHT them’ I say, and he’s too knackered to point out that he’s the only one who seems to be doing anything at all. Gotta admire the wild cat noise temporary solution too. How the hell did he come up with that? ‘Traps’ we mutter in delirious unison.

Since it all began 5 long days and nights ago, I am assaulted by cute mice staring at me from the kids’ story books. Every single book cover seems to feature a mouse or two. We even have a finger puppet mouse coming out of the front of one of the books. There’s an uncomfortable disjuncture between how murderous I’m feeling towards the one reeking havoc in our bedroom and these cutesy images. This afternoon as both parents are pooped we are having a lazy duvet slouch in the sitting room. All seven of us huddle around. We flick on BBC Two to the delightful Billy Connolly reading Seamus Heaney’s poem based on Aesop’s fables – Two Mice.

Heaney’s wise twinkly face is delighting in Billy’s assonances. The lovely Scottish lilt is delivering this tale of the cousin-mice, separated, one living a hard country life, the other basking in the fine comforts of the city. The animation is supreme. We are all there rooting for the country mouse, who has joined her cousin to sample the finery, to escape the perils of the city and return to her hard but beautifully simple life. I glance around at the intrigued faces of my brood absorbing this perfectly seductive mix of Heaney, Connolly and the animation. I resolve never to tell them the tale of two parents demented with efforts to overcome a singular poor mouse.

 
Night 6: We agree that marque 5 will decamp with me for the entrapment. To hell with it, we’ll all decamp and survey the situation in the morning.
There’s a cacophony of whys? Why are you three sleeping down on the couch? It’s getting trickier to fluff and bluff as exhaustion has the better of me.
‘We put some stuff on our mattress and now we can’t sleep in there’. Ingenious given the limitations.
Inquisitive marque 2 doesn’t quite buy it.
‘What stuff? Are you going to get a new mattress?’
‘Oh god, just stuff, can you PLEASE stop QUIZZING me now?’
‘Can we sleep downstairs too?’
‘No you cannot. Now please…just…leave…me…ALONE’. I know as I say it that I’m not supposed to. I am an insomniac now and I don’t seem to care much about the rules or the potential damage.
‘Can we put some of that stuff on our mattresses too?’
Aaaahhh…. A wild shriek escapes. I care not a jot.
He plasters peanut butter masterfully on three exceptionally well placed traps.
‘And under no circumstances are you to enter our bedroom’.
‘WHY, why, why, why, why?????’
‘Jesus, just do as you’re bloody well told’.
The mouse has got the better of me. I am a fractious delirious insomniac with persistent parenting doubts, tap, tap, tapping and gnawing away at me, corrupting my fibre.
‘Hurray, I’m sleeping downstairs with mum and dad. This is the best night ever. Can we sleep down here tomorrow night, and the next, and the next?’. Sunny marque 5 almost lifts my spirits. Almost.
‘Maybe we should just tell them’ I say, defeated.
Then nobody will sleep, I am told assuredly. A house full of insomniacs has little appeal. No. We will fight this creature and reclaim our lives.
The three seater and two seater couch don’t seem to be made for sleeping all of us. We toss and turn and watch marque 5 toss and turn. We listen, listen, listen. Tap, tap, tap. We smile. We are trapped downstairs while it takes over our bedroom. We don’t mind. It will succumb. I think I might even get some sleep. Until he goes up to check and comes back down shaking his head.
‘No?’
‘No’.
‘Noooo’ I sob. I can’t do this any more. I can’t do another night of no sleep. We’ll have to call the exterminators’ I conclude.
‘Ok’ he says and dozes off. Out like a light. I watch him jealously and wonder how he does that, from mouse trap to deep sleep as if it’s all perfectly normal.
 

A delicious unidentifiable noise pings above my head. Like two or three little bangs. That must be it. Please god, let that be it. I restrain myself from waking him to check it out. He has work in a few hours. I manage to half doze for an hour. When day light begins to break curiosity gets the better of me and I karate kick our bedroom door open. Silence. I spot one, then two expertly placed empty traps. My heart sinks. I don’t know where he has put the third. But if it didn’t get caught in those two, so close to where it comes in from, then I resign myself to failure. It’s time to phone for help. I’m leaving the room when I spot it. Hidden behind his bedside locker. Trapped. As if sleeping. Eyes closed. No gore. A tiny pang of something regrettable courses through me at the sight of our small dead fiendish foe. This is quickly replaced by exhilaration. It is over. I will sleep again. He high fives me when I break the news. I smile like a Cheshire Cat all day long. On the way home from school marque 3 asks how the Febreeze worked out on our mattress. The what? Oh yes. Great, I tell him. It worked out just great. ‘Can we put Febreeze on our mattresses too and all sleep downstairs tonight?’ marque 4 enquires, chiming in with my exuberant mood. ‘Yes’ I say and I’m eyeballed quizzically sideways by my front seat marque 2 passenger. ‘Yes’ I say again. ‘Tonight you can do whatever you please’.

Ellen Kelly