It all comes flooding back. It’s the last Communion and memories of the first one, a short eight years ago, flash before me. The circle is closing. We’ve come a long way.
Eight years ago our fifth child was due to be born on our first child’s first Holy Communion day. When the date for said Communion was announced the mother guilt, only a scratch away at the best of times, burst through the skin and became inflamed. There aren’t nails long enough to get at it. I will not be able to attend my very own child’s Communion. Imagine what that will do to him.

But then a hand intervened. The baby arrived dutifully a full four days early. Which meant delightfully that I was in with a chance of getting along to the Communion after all. There was, how shall one put it, many a raised brow when I’d chirp my great news to the medical staff at the hospital.

‘Yes, isn’t he sweet, and guess what, now that he’s here a little early I’ll be able to go on Saturday to be there for my first child. Sooo excited’.

‘You’ll get out on Friday, afternoon most likely. Do you think you might be pushing yourself just a little too hard to make it along to the ceremony?’

Of course not. This is a gift. The baby’s a gift and he’s had the thoughtfulness to arrive on time to let me go to another gift’s Communion, and it’s wrong to look all these obvious synchronicities in the mouth. Or some such gabbling. Then I rang my Mum to make sure that Marque 1’s shoes would be ready. The rest of the garb was hanging up. She searched and searched and came across them, eventually, in the garden having been left out for days on end. It had been raining, naturally, and they no longer looked quite so black.

‘Nothing a bit of black shoe polish won’t sort’.

‘If we had black shoe polish’.

‘Ah sure, I’ll just use Mr Sheen furniture polish. It’s all the same in the end’.

Maybe the lovely nurses were right. My blood pressure was going dangerously high.

The birth had not been straight forward. He was in an occiput posterior position – his head was down but facing my front instead of my back. He wanted to come out looking up at us, so as not to miss a trick. Which is still how he is. But it’s harder for a baby to work through the pelvis in this position. Harder, longer, a little more dangerous. It upped the drama of the delivery and with it the interventions, which is not ideal. Although we were all singing from the same sheet. A baby to be delivered safely, please. Do whatever you need to. There was talk of an emergency section in the last few minutes. And then, as if he got wind of it, he flew out while nobody was looking. Beautiful and perfect. The manner of his sudden bursting through left a little devastation in its wake. More interventions. More meds for ongoing pain. Which is also why the medical staff could not quite join me on my high of being able to go to the Communion.

They were right and they were wrong. I was thrilled to be able to attend. Although I didn’t quite know what it would entail. He had a little job bringing something up to the alter, bless him. So we were in the prime position of the front pew. Fantastic. Then a bit of mother guilt began to fizz. All the other Communicants had white rosettes with medals expertly pinned bang in the centre of them. My child had an empty rosette with a medal strung around his neck. How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t I know? There he was with his Mr Sheened garden shoes and his uncoordinated rosette and medal. What kind of damage are we doing to him? We’ve over done it, obviously, on the procreation front. But I didn’t expect to feel so, what was it, neglectful? My poor little sunny first born. I’ll make it up to you, I thought.

Then came the video camera man, positioned right in front of us courtesy of our prime position. In case it wasn’t already obvious that we weren’t acing this event, it would be there for all to see forever. Oh and I was wearing jeans. I know, I know. You see the point was about being there, not about the clothes. Which is all very well, until the ultra casual bloated mother in jeans ends up in the front row.

Then came the pain. It was already there at the beginning, but the adrenaline of making it along seemed to disguise it. Every time the priest said ‘kneel’ I did. Kneel, sit, stand. Kneel, sit, stand. Kneel. I wasn’t going to be the complacent casual bloated mother in the front row who couldn’t be bothered to follow the priest’s commands. With each one though, the pain increased. Pain, lightheadedness – no time for a cuppa beforehand, baby to be fed – engorged breasts and a queer colour about the jowls. A shade of greenish yellow.

When it was all over I tottered to the back of the church to a beautiful sight – the oasis of my mother-in-law, her arms outstretched to mine.

‘You made it darling’ she said and then really dangerously close to fainting I walked linked between her and my father-in-law and they whisked me off to the sanctuary of their home where I was fed and watered and minded and told how wonderful it was that I could do that for my first child. I’ll never forget it. It was like being a child again, being rescued from peril and utterly taken care of.

Later that day I was back in the hospital for some work around the pain issue. Then we were all at home together as people called in to wish him well. We whipped him off to Milano’s, just the three of us. It was a triumph.

So our last little Communion is a doddle. His four older brothers attend to support him. He has a medal pinned expertly in the centre of his white rosette. New shiny black shoes smile up at me. We party it out in a hotel in a picturesque small Wicklow village – a favourite of all. We don’t want it to end. Oh and nobody is wearing jeans.

Oh the glorious symmetries. Our fifth child was born on the fifth of the fifth. The dangerous perfectionist streak in me delighted in this far too much at the time and delights in it still. When all else around me is falling asunder I can always remember that one great feat. And then revert to beating myself up for not managing it for the rest of them. The thirteenth of the eleventh for the poor first child. Not trying hard enough at all at all. There are therapy bills looming for someone down the line. Although it was the millennium, so that’s some sort of consolation I suppose. At least we’ll always know what age he’s turning without being too taxed in the poorly resourced maths department. 

Oh the high when my fifth of the fifth fifth child turned five. Does it actually get any better than that? There are burdens for him with it though. Being the youngest of five. Burdens of excessive love.

‘Isn’t he just the icing on the cake’ we used to say often, because whether he liked it or not, he was the last. A very hotly debated last. There was a traumatic late loss before him and I just didn’t know if I could do it. Someone sensible spoke up, loud and clear. We should not end our child bearing on a sad note. We were lucky in the past and we were lucky that we had the choice. To go for it or not. It’s unthinkable now. If I’d remained like that, stuck, not finding the courage, we might never have met him. We burden him in our own minds with that a little too. That there’s an extra spoonful of magic about him. There’s magic about all of them, of course. But he was conceived when our lost baby was due to be born. Exactly when. And there’s something lovely about that. A continuity of spirit. But then he is his own little person and he happens to be blessed with the sunniest of dispositions. A joker. A joiner. Always laughing. A real little lover, as his granddad once said about him. And that he is. Full to the brim with it. 

‘Have you any idea?’ I used to mutter to him, often while feeding. Have you any idea how much we love you, was the question thrumming in me, but it always came out as have you any idea, and was as much to myself as to him, overcome with the oxytocin fuelled joy of having him safely here with us. Then one day he pulled away, looked up at me beaming and said ‘yes idea’ before continuing on. His Dad chimed in chuckling with ‘well you know the breast feeding has gone on too long when they start to answer you back’. That you do. ‘Yes idea’ became a little mantra of positivity. And today, on the fifth of the fifth as our fifth child turns eight he tells me something on the way into school. 

‘The only word I have is thank-you, that’s all I can say for everything and I wish I had more words, better words than just thank-you all the time because I just can’t explain how much you make me happy. You’re the best ever’.

Ditto and happy birthday baby. 

I have a distressed leather brow and I’m not quite sure what to do about it. I’ve always had a touch of it, coupled with lovely dark circles under my eyes. A skin too sallow to give off a glow. But glower I did, and do, quite well. In my youth I used to glower at the occasional wolf-whistler. It was an affront, naturally. In my twenties I used to glower at the whistlers as well as the staff in the off-licences and bars who always asked for my I.D. 

‘Ah you’ll be glad of it someday’ they’d say cheerfully, ‘looking younger than your years’. In my early thirties I used to glower at the wolf-whistler who decided not to whistle but to call out instead: ‘Don’t worry about it. It might never happen’. The cheek of him. How the hell does he know what I’m thinking about? Now that I no longer have to contend with anyone shouting or whistling or with-holding alcohol, I’m glowering all the more. Particularly, it seems, when I take my lenses out.

‘What?’ he says often. Followed by 

‘What have I done?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I say, reasonably, ish.

‘You’re looking furiously at me, what have I done, now?’

Oh dear. 

‘I just can’t see you, is all’ I say squinting at the blur in the corner. I can’t tell what his reaction is. If only I could find my glasses when I whip my lenses out. Things might just run a lot more smoothly. Then again, it’s really his fault. He has taken to sketching people recently and he’s frighteningly good at it. But with it comes a realisation, worse than the one that happens when your phone camera is switched to selfie mode.

‘It’s easier to sketch older people’ he says one evening which otherwise is set to be perfectly pleasant. He produces a photograph of me and poises his pencil.

‘All the lines, gives you more to work with, you see’. See I do. I hand him an eraser and glower at him expertly until he makes me look 19 again. 

I will not chop a fringe onto the distressed leather, having not a hope of being able to maintain it. My locks get some sort of attention about every four months. A fringe would be too demanding for me. I’ve heard of tricks committed fringe wearers use. Tricks with nail scissors that somehow feather and tether it. I don’t fancy my chances there either. That could be one holy mess. 

I don’t want to look furious and worried all the time, especially when, for at least part of the day, I’m actually quite serene. It really is a curse. Apart from when I really am cross about something. Then it’s a godsend. One daggers look from me can send the kids scurrying to tidy their rooms. If I have a complaint to be dealt with at a customer services desk I tend to be taken rather seriously. I’d be a bit of a chicken when it comes to the obvious next step. Injecting my disloyal brow with toxins doesn’t seem right somehow. Slitting it and stitching it further up my skull is never going to happen. 

I’d like to think it’s a writerly thing. All that pursing with the creative juices blocked. But I’m sure some actual research would show that a writer’s brow is no more distressed than anyone else’s. Perhaps they’re just not trying hard enough. 

A distressed leather couch is all the rage. Maybe, somehow, someday the same will be in vogue for our ravaged brows. 

It was getting a little tiresome. Every single time we passed a dog:

‘Awwww’ in a singing crescendo. Sopranos, tenors, the lot. 

‘Awwww, look Mum, soooo cute, we NEED to get a dog’. Years and years of it. Rescuing dogs that didn’t need rescuing on wild beaches. They’d only be trying to have a swim. But my lot would sense abandonment and danger and invite whatever mutt up to join in on our barbecue. Which they’d dutifully do until some owner or other, a camper or a walker, would appear over the grassy headland and reclaim their pet. A different sounding ‘awwww’ then, dripping with disappointment. 

Then there was the evening when I arrived home after my monthly novel writing group meeting. I was greeted by marque 5, who really should’ve been fast asleep, but something thrilling had him wide awake.

‘Dad said if I finished all my homework quickly and well, we’d get a puppy’. Ah, good one. These kids really are geniuses at trying it on.

‘No he didn’t, now get to bed, quick’.

‘He did, he did, he said we’d get a puppy if I got all my homework done and…’

There was, how can one put it, a little confrontation.

‘Tell me you didn’t promise a puppy for completed homework’.

‘I did. We’ve talked about it. We both know we’re getting a puppy. So yeah, why not now?’

That familiar feeling of needing to throttle someone near and usually dear to me tingled in my finger tips. 

‘Well we’re not getting one, because guess what? While you sail off into the sunset interacting with real people I’ll be here cleaning up shit, which, I think you’ll find I’ve already excelled at and no longer choose to do. Really? Supervise homework once and promise a bloody dog? Well you’ll just have to un-promise, poor kid’.

There. Sorted. All the lovely feelings of creativity and potential from the encouragement of my colleagues in the monthly writing meeting had seeped down into my toes. 

‘But we’ve been promising this for years and…’

Ya-da-ya-da. I can’t hear you.

But then. The hamster went and kicked the bucket and there was a palpable void. It would be disloyal to her to shove another hamster into her cage and pretend. 

‘It’s time. We’re going to get a dog’, I announced, lounging in front of the fire one evening, as if it was all perfectly logical. He looked at me from his corner chair. Looked. Said nothing. And so it began.

We already knew the exact breed. We had met and fallen in love with a Papillon at a Christmas party. Prosecco coursing through me, I might just have tried to sneak away with him. Beautiful, friendly, bright, alert, performing tricks for cocktail sausages. This was a full year ago, practically to the day of my announcement. 

‘Oh my god, I could really imagine one just like him in our family’ I had said, stroking his little head. I suppose I could be accused, on occasion, of sending mixed messages. I’m particularly good at it. 

He got googling after my proclamation. Said nothing. Googled. The problem with falling in love with a Papillon is that they are damn hard to find here in Ireland. They are continental toy spaniels, named due to their beautiful butterfly style ears. They enjoy popularity in many parts of the world. But here? 

For all of you savvy pet loving readers, you already know how not to go about looking for a dog to purchase. But if you had seen the little face on Done Deal, maybe, just maybe, you’d have been stupid like us. Advertised as IKC registered, microchipped, wormed, fully vaccinated, sure what more could you ask for? He sailed off to the owner’s house with marque 1 to meet and greet. Something niggled at me. That place had been in the news recently, had it not? I googled. Too late. Someone had been shot through the kitchen window in the exact estate he was heading to. With my precious son. I rang him.

‘Turn back, feck the dog, it’s bandit land…’

‘But we’re just outside. I’ll go in and see and..’

‘Do not leave my son in the car to be shot at while…’

They went in. Fell for dog. Fell for owner. Sold it to me. A pushover at the best of times. Showed me videos. Yep, let’s go for it. 

Oh, we’ve learnt so many lessons this past little while. We continued on our perilous journey. I named the dog, having not actually met him, but hey, he had this beautiful gemstone colouring. Jasper. The kids loved it. I could be found calling him, in my head, perhaps out loud a little, perhaps patting my knees for him to come to me, occasionally. Watching the videos of him over and over and over again. Oxytocin or something like it fuelling me. 

The owner said she would bring him to us. How lovely and kind, we thought. So the day before his arrival, I brought all the kids up to Petstop and enlisted for the puppy package. Crate, bedding, lead, harness, bowls, food, treats, toys, brushes. Oh what fun we had. Then marque 2 spent the last of his savings. A little cream fluffy coat with a hood for Jasper. €29. Ah god. We went home and set it all up.

On the morning of the day he was due to become ours I googled the check list for buying a puppy. The IKC check list. Make sure that the owner has the registration papers, the pedigree history and the change of ownership form at the point of sale. I’m sure she knows all that, I thought. 

‘Just text her and tell her to bring them with her’ I said. He did so. Texted. Asked her approximate time of arrival. Oh and to bring the papers. Deathly silence for three hours apart from the kids asking every two minutes when he’d be arriving. Then she got on and said she’d be with us by six. That was it. ‘Will you have the papers’ he asked with my gentle pin-pricking persuasion.

‘I’ll have the microchip number’ she said. ‘The papers should be with me shortly’. And there it was. An utterly horrendous electrifying feeling of parental let down. Us to the kids. There were no papers, obviously. How could we have been such fools? 

‘But sure I can bring him over to you and I have his parents’ papers so I can bring them and I can draw out the pedigree for you’. Yes, you just come on over and dangle the adorable dog, who is probably the product of a brother and sister, right in front of my kids. Then get out your pen and start to draw.

‘Eh, no, we’d need the papers for this actual dog’ he texted. Slowly, oh so very slowly, the cop was beginning to come. I rang the Kennel Club.

‘Is there any way a dog could be registered with you and for the owner just not to have the papers?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. She laughed, but not unkindly. This happens all the time apparently. But usually the poor muppets have already purchased. Then they ring to find out that the papers are not actually on their way in the post. At least when the little bit of savviness came it wasn’t too late. We pulled out. The owner offered to drop the price, rather dramatically, as he would be going to such a good family an’ all. Eh, no, thanks anyway.

It wasn’t easy then, trying to dodge the empty crate, bedding and toys lying in wait, the little coat draped over it. Nor the lead swaying gently, uselessly by the door. The kids took to bedding themselves in the crate. Pretending. They’d crawl in and curl into a foetal position making little whining noises. Marque 5 announced that it was much more comfortable than his own bed, and wondered if there was any way we could just cart it upstairs and let him take up permanent residence in it. Years and years of therapy bills loomed. We needed to fix this. Only I was beginning to get cold feet, again. It had been such a close call. We are such fools. Would we even be capable of looking after an animal? There was certainly a mountain of evidence against us. 

Every cloud a silver lining, and all that. We set about doing some proper research. A lovely breeder, who breeds seldom, who keeps them living in the family home with her. She doesn’t advertise. She doesn’t need to. A communication began. We visited. We fell. All the lovely colourful stamped papers were shown. I sneezed and rubbed my eye and thought, here we go, I’m allergic, I’m going to shatter their dreams, again. So she let us take him on a trial basis. If he triggered anything at home and we didn’t want to go ahead that would be fine. The odd red eye and sniffle in some. A trifle of a thing. Nothing that a couple of anti-histamines and a bit of time wouldn’t sort. We have him. He is ours. Smudge. The  collective blood pressure in the house has gone right down and the joy levels are soaring. ‘Awwww, look at our happy Papillon’ they can be heard murmuring to one another, nuzzling in to him, accepting all his unconditional energetic love and dolloping out mounds of their own. He is, of course, the sweetest, smartest most beautiful little dog in the world. Alert and fun when needs be. Quiet and curled up by the fire when that’s what we’re into. Oh and it’s an absolute pleasure to clean up after him. 

I knew but I didn’t know. Not really. Because how is it possible to believe that it would actually be in? I was up after a night of fretful sleep. It was early, oh so early for a Saturday. But when you’re having dreams in which indecipherable notes are scrawled on the underside of sheets of toilet paper, sealing your fate, you know it’s futile, this sleep pretence. The notes might say ‘congratulations, well done you’ in weird mirror writing or maybe they are saying ‘not published, last minute ditch’. It’s difficult to tell from this side of the sheet.

I had tried very hard to knock myself out. The plan was that copious amounts of Prosecco imbibed during the Friday night Late Late Show would see me through a serene deep night’s sleep until a decent hour on Saturday, by which time some angel or other would’ve been out to the shops. They would then appear at the end of my bed, pop the crucial newspaper on my lap along with a steaming delicious freshly brewed Americano. I would take my time, have a few sips first. Either it’s there or it’s not. There’s nothing I can do about it anyway. It’s great to be so chilled.

It was not thus. The horror of the dreamt anonymous toilet paper notes, combined with an arid post-prosecco mouth and perhaps a faint ache about the head, had me downstairs, all alone, knocking back water and wondering. What time would the papers reach the shops? Was there any way of getting them without actually leaving the house? What would be a decent time to wake someone else who might just oblige. Because there was a little creature, a new family member, who was very excited to see me at this early hour, and who would bark enthusiastically and unrelentingly if I tried to escape. I played for time. Eight o’clock on a Saturday. Sure what shops would even be open? I made myself that Americano. Marque 1 purchased a glorious yoke of a machine that serves up frothy strong aromatic coffees as if by a barista. It can make a person feel super competent at the switch of a button at any time of the day.

I sat at the dining room table with the early morning sun streaming in and the puppy at my ankle. I felt strangely calm. I didn’t know. I didn’t know how I would get to know. But I had this lovely creature to chat it through with. He seemed to agree that just sitting down sipping coffee and stroking his beautiful head was absolutely the right way to go about things. Dashing around, getting dressed, looking for keys and then trying to escape to the shops which may or may not be open to get the newspaper which you may or may not be in, was not, he was saying, the best approach to this. It turned out that he was right. There was no need for it. Because when I checked my e-mail at 8.30 there was a lovely surprise from an unexpected source. The subject line read ‘congratulations’ and the mail began ‘Ive just read your short story in the Irish Times. Simple elegant writing bring us to the mind and body of a young girl…’ The source was a retired excellent sociologist, mentor, friend. The last time I’d seen him, pre-retirement, we chatted about the possibility of opening up creative sociology within the University. Something new and fresh. An unguarded uncontested terrain. He’d be leaving soon. It would be up to someone else to push that boat out. So there was something fitting about me learning it from him first. This confirmation. That the much coveted Hennessy New Irish Writing prize for February was mine. A story that had its origins in a Master’s by research which was left behind due to the high sensitivity of the topic material. I went on to do a different Master’s and a very different PhD. There’s a beautiful symmetry to it now though. To drawing on the research done decades ago to produce a creative piece which actually gets published and read. To hearing confirmation first from a fellow sociologist, someone I’d lost touch with, the story out there sketching reconnecting lines.

I couldn’t have been happier. There was a puppy at my feet, on my Grandmother’s carpet, the sun streaming in, the house oh so quiet. There was no need for anything else. The toilet paper seems to have been saying congratulations after all.

Link to This Thing.

It was late on a lovely Friday night, a week before Christmas, that she gave up her fight. Marque 1 had been going to take her out for a cuddle but when he lifted the hood from her bed area she was no longer for the cuddling. He beckoned to me to come and have a look. We knew it was imminent. We were all prepared. Until. I had to steel myself. There she lay on her soft pink cotton wool bedding, unmoving. A deep guttural sob came from somewhere. I looked around the room to discover that it was not him in the corner nor marque 1 himself but perhaps someone closer to home that seemed to be over-reacting. We were ready for this, remember? A steady decline. A rasping squawking noise. Falling asleep in our hands. And yet. I felt utterly nauseous at the idea of delivering this news to marque 2, her owner, and indeed all the others.

‘Leave it until the morning’ the corner voice said. ‘It would be too unsettling to tell them now’. Yeah, right. There was no way I could keep this from marque 2. Unconscionable. I trod heavily up the stairs. He was tucked up watching a You Tube video. I took a deep breath, stroked his back, delivered the dread as well as I could, heard a stifled sob, from that unintended source again, and then brought him down to see her. I’m aware that the death of a much loved pet is harrowing but ultimately good. It’s a good way, I’ve been told, for them to learn about death. Then again, I’m sure it has something to do with how the adults role model dealing with it. So far I was pretty sure that I was failing them, spectacularly.

It was the next day, when I was hunting for the perfect casket to bury her in that it dawned on me. It was as I stood in M & S asking an assistant at a display stand if she had any of the little golden oval boxes with the expensive Christmas truffles, empty, that I could have.

‘For the kids, you see, they’ve to bury their hamster today and it’s a perfect size and shape and…’ Her eyes were glistening looking at me, reading me as I gabbled on, croaky voiced, and I knew it then. My despairing was about the hamster and not about the hamster. It was about other losses too. Bringing the rawness singing from the core.

There were no empty golden little boxes. Other things were produced in an attempt to assuage me.  But they wouldn’t do at all, at all. The box was purchased. Nine salted caramel dark chocolate dusted truffles were consumed, at a euro a pop, and the perfect casket was prepared. But we were not yet ready to bury her. Take your time, I told marque 2. There’s no need to rush this. And so she stayed, lying in state, for one more night with us.

The burial was a beautiful moment that will remain with us. At dusk on the Sunday we all gathered around the bottom of the garden. Once the deep hole was dug we stood back, us parents, and watched. She was carefully lowered. They put rocks over the golden box to deter scavengers. Then marque 2 shovelled the earth back and offered the spade to his brothers for a turn each. It was eerie in a way, watching them, their silhouettes, acting with such cohesive solemnity. A flash of things to come. Then the spade was offered to us and we did our little bit. That night the celebration of her time with us began. We sat around the fire sharing curries and memories, laughter without tears. Every so often though someone would go to the back door and peep out into the dark, oh so cold night. ‘It’s good that it’s cold’ I heard myself saying, but not believing. ‘Less chance of a grave robbery’.

It was the little things over the days that followed that got to us. I couldn’t look at, much less purchase, broccoli or cucumber, which she loved. Her little bowl with her last bits of food. Do we just chuck it out? Her water bottle, water still in it? Some adult around here will probably take charge, know exactly what to do with it all I thought. So the cage with everything, as was, got stored under the table for a while. Until the unbitten cucumber fossilised and we copped on that she wasn’t about to surprise us all, like in many dreams that were being had, and pop out of her bed for some fun.

Time. Humour. The quest for another pet. Of a very different sort. These have been the cure alls. Two weeks later we were travelling West for New Year’s. A little bit sick leaving her all alone to mind the fort. But then marque 4 pipes up:

‘Wait a second, whose going to feed her, the birds? Or will she be the one feeding them?’ Three rows of laughter and a foot pressed hard on the accelerator. There are more adventures to begin.

‘It’d be very hard for me to clamp that car’ he says to me. He’s at the rear of the vehicle, peering into it, and then beaming down at me. I’m on my knees searching through bags for my keys. A crisp blue winter sky surrounds him, the cold sun glinting off his glasses, highlighting his silver strands.

‘It is yours isn’t it?’ he asks but waits not for a reply.

‘Coz I let you off the other day too and I was about to let you off again…’

I’ve no idea what he’s rambling on about.

The alarm in my bag begins to buzz.

‘What do you mean you let me off?’

‘There’s no parking ticket and there wasn’t one the other day and I let you off ‘coz I know you from coming in and…’ A flicker of horror. Is my mind that wasted? Pre-occupied, sure. Exhausted, absolutely. Vacuous, I don’t think so. Not yet. Was that not me counting out all the small gold coins, using up the change, permitting me to stay until 13.43, not that I’d need it. Of course it was.

‘There certainly is a ticket and there certainly was one the other day too’ I say, gesticulating to the front window, losing the battle with keys at the bottom of the bag. If only I hadn’t bought those knock down bottles of wine to see us through. They’re clogging up all the space, concealing the keys. I can hardly take them out here on the ground and let them roll around the car park. The phone alarm chimes merrily but I’ve no idea where the phone is either. He looks in the front window now.

‘Ah there it is’. Yes there it is, with thirty nine minutes still left on it, you buffoon. He continues to beam at me.

‘I wouldn’t have thought of looking there’. What?

‘Where would you like me to put it in future?’ I ask. On the roof? Where the hell is it supposed to be if not in the front window?

‘Ah no, there is grand, now that I know’.

‘My car would NEVER be without a ticket, I’m pretty hyper about these things as it happens, wouldn’t let it go a minute over. So don’t ever clamp it’ I say beaming, mimicking him, although I’m perfectly serious. Menacingly so.

‘Ah no you can go half an hour over and you have 15 minutes to get your ticket in the first place so don’t ever worry about that. And sure like I said, I know you from coming in ‘an all, you’re a valued customer’. Great, I think to myself. What an achievement.

‘Is that your phone ringing?’ he asks. I’m just hoping he’ll skedaddle, any second now, and leave me to rummage in my own imperfect way for the keys and the phone. It really is brass monkeys out here. But he seems in no rush to find other customers to clamp.

‘No, it’s just an alarm I’ve set for my eye’ I say, which wipes the grin momentarily from his otherwise imperviously cheerful face. A semi-confused brow lifts instead.

‘Ah it’s just I had a problem with my eye, I got it sorted at the hospital, but I’ve to put drops in every so often’. This does the trick. He starts to beam again.

‘I’ll be in the church tonight, I’ll light a candle and say a prayer for you and your eye’.

And there it is. As so often seems to be the case, it is the kindness of strangers that does something to me. Releases something. Has me undone. I could tell him, I think now. Just him. That I would love for him to light a candle and say a prayer but not for the eye. Forget the eye, I might say. Come here and I’ll tell you, but breathe not a word, you’re the only one I’m telling, so you don’t go wasting those precious prayers.

We’ve had a rollercoaster of a time, you see, these last couple of months, I might divulge. It began on a high, great news for both of us, individually, but dipped before we had a chance to celebrate either thing. We’ve had our three in a row. Two overlapping. One slapping in just as we were coming up for breath from the others and it is this last little one, Mr Clamp-man that I’d like you to light that candle for.

‘Thank-you’ I say instead. He’s twinkling right into me. He knows.

‘And thank-you for not getting annoyed with me for thinking about clamping you when you already had your ticket’ he says laughing. He skedaddles now, his mission accomplished. Even before he lights that candle he’s done something for me. He’s catapulted me back into writing after all.

I’m sure there are those of us who realise, with sudden astonishing clarity, that we are, in fact, more than a little bit stressed. That moment came to me recently, and the horror of it was coupled with mirth. Great warbling wads of laughter ricocheting off the garden walls. Anyone viewing me on a web cam would’ve had enough armoury for a commital. What follows is the story of that moment of realisation, written on the day that it happened more than four weeks ago now. A veil of shame has precluded me from being brave enough to post until now. It’s time to publish and be damned.

It’s the day of the last little bits. The niggly left overs. That one book for marque 2 who has started back this morning. The grey trousers for marque 1. Because despite knowing there’s a fairly new pair knocking around somewhere they refuse to reveal themselves. He starts back tomorrow and something is telling me that he wouldn’t be okay with wearing his P.E. gear instead. The way that they dribble back on different days this week has the adrenal glands working hard. It’s like a marathon with little hurdles. Until Thursday. The last great push. There was little sleep last night with the idea of marque 2 bravely soldiering into second year. How would it be with his friends since he didn’t go on the trip to Paris? Would he be left out now? How was he feeling about it all? Was he looking forward to any of it? Did he have a good enough summer? At this stage in the game I’ve picked up enough to know that my own thrumming brain is at best a poor link to anything that may actually be concerning any of them. I do my best to keep my thoughts to myself while remembering that my own mother and mothers of her generation had a healthy distance from us and were not riddling themselves with unanswerable overly intrusive questions. It was all just good enough for us and if it wasn’t, well, they didn’t need to know. So I smile at him, an American beam without the teeth, and ask him who he’s looking forward to seeing most and I manage not to foist an ounce of my concerns on him. He smiles, a natural one, as he lists the boys, and even though some are new to me I do not react. I’m acing this feigned detached parenting lark. I do drop him around to the school though, at his request. The bag on his back, full of the books for the year, is pulling him backwards.

So I should be celebrating. One packed off and happy. But the niggly bits are at me. I won’t relax until they’re bought. I jump through the shower and round up the the younger ones. We’re off to Dun Laoghaire for the last bits.

I bump into a mum from the primary school in the book shop. We natter away as we queue for our orders. I haven’t chatted to her for years. She had a child in marque 1’s year. Now she has two in secondary, like myself, and we discuss the flight of time and she is served as I drift off thinking about whether marque 4 deserves a new school bag at this stage, now that he’s going into fourth, imagine, it seems just like… She’s calling me again then, and maybe has been for a minute as my hearing isn’t the best and she seems to be a little red about the face when I turn back around to her. We chat for another minute before biding farewell and good luck with it all.

On off to the uniform shop then where I perform the height and build of marque 1 for the lady. We talk about how he won’t come with me, wouldn’t be caught dead, and she seems to be aware of this about that age group, but perhaps not how he’d like to know if I’m ‘having a laugh’ when I invite him. She chuckles, redundant measuring tape swinging from her neck as we guess.

I’m back sitting out in the garden. It’s a scorcher. Just as it always is when they return to school. I have a relaxing cup of green tea beside me and the newspaper in my hand. I absentmindedly put my right hand to my hair when I feel them.

‘No-ooooo’ I call out, blushing all by myself, willing it not to be true. Perhaps I tied my hair up since I got back? But this is not the case. My mind freezes as I untangle them from my hair, hoping for the small mercy that they are not lurid pink. Which they are not. Black and lacy and complete with label. It was bound to happen some day. It’s a dangerous habit to turn knickers into a scrunchy to keep your hair from getting wet in the shower. But then you take them out, don’t you? You take them out and you brush your hair and you do your best to find an actual scrunchy if you want to tie your hair up otherwise you leave it down. What you do not do is saunter around your local town, knickers twisted around a bun on your head, label flapping in the wind and catch up with old friends and banter with posh uniform shop ladies. It could be worse I tell myself kindly as the cackles echo around. At least they were laundered ones.