They pour themselves into her, whispering and kissing and making up words. They fawn and they fight over her.

‘She’s my baby’.

‘No she’s my baby’.

She crawls on them. Nestles on shoulders. Kisses their noses. Noises come from them that we haven’t heard before. Guttural murmurings. Cooings. They love her. Are in love with her. This three inch long black eyed Russian beauty.

I was reluctant at first. Memories of my brother’s one – Hamsterdam – coming to a tragic end. He had taken it for a ride on his tricycle in the kitchen. Didn’t notice it had fallen off the broad dipped seat. Rode the thick plastic back tyre over it. I arrived in from college – yes there’s a significant age gap – to find the creature splat on the freezer top. I popped my head into the quiet dark sitting room and asked what had happened. My father put his finger to his lips and set his eyes on my silent traumatised brother. We were not going to discuss it then.

So it can be tricky and painful, owning a creature, caring for it, knowing that death whether accidentally hastened or not, is around some corner, soon.

But then he propositioned me. Marque 2. Almost a year ago now. He had saved up. All the money for the creature and the cage. The food. The bedding. We’ll just go and have a look, I said, see what we think. In the pet shop over sized Syrian tan coloured hamsters with squinty eyes and bitten off ears were running riot. Oh no, we said in chorus. Fat guniea pigs squealed for our attention. Certainly not. He was deciding along with the rest of us that this was not for him. Relief fizzed in me. Until.

‘Oh look – there’s a little thing here, oh my god, look, what is this?’

And there she was. Tiny, grey and white, staring at us with adorable big shiny eyes.

‘I think it’s a mouse’ I said ‘and we’re not getting a mouse’.

‘Awww’.

‘It’s a hamster’ the pet shop assistant said.

‘A Russian dwarf hamster, female. I wouldn’t recommend her though, for kids, they bite, especially the females’.

It was too late for that. She was far too cute to leave behind. The heart strings had been pulled. On all of us. We had seen her and she couldn’t be unseen.

‘Why don’t you think about it for a couple of days’ she said appealing to the probable wisdom of the parent. The wisdom that should be saying a biting hamster is not what we need.

‘I’ll keep her for you, just have a think and a look around’.

I listened to her vacuous words. She was wasting her breath. But I let her, politely, carry on, knowing there’s no way we were going to leave the cute beauty another second in with those other fighting bruisers. She needed to be rescued. Now.

‘We’ll take her’ I said. And so it began.

The taming was quick. From a wild nipping thing, pin pricks of blood on little fingers, within a few days of being handled regularly, she was docile as a bunny rabbit. They googled away. Hand made toys produced for her out of toilet roll cardboard. Best foods. Best care. What to watch out for. We fell, all of us, harder and harder. Except the father. It took him a while longer.

‘How’s the rat?’ he’d ask getting in from work, laughing, sending shudders down spines, emitting defiant squeals from the kids and perhaps the mother. She got to him too though, in the end. She has a personality, you see. She does funny little things and seems to laugh along with us. She brings out qualities in the boys that they may not have known they had. Generosity, protectiveness, caring, loyalty, love. They fizzle with these around her. She has been the recipient of a wooden play gym, purchased by marque 3 out of his savings. At €19.95 I tried to persuade him not to get it. It would clear him out. Perhaps something cheaper so he’d have a little left for himself? He was not for the turning.

The love runs so deep though that it’s overwhelming at times. I look into their glistening fearful eyes when they think something is wrong with her. We’re having a party in the house – my sister is home from Dubai – when Marque 2 discovers a lump on her. We Google. Perhaps, the father suggests, she’s a he after all and that’s a scent gland. He laughs. Hoping to keep the party vibe going. Also it’s true. The males have large scent glands exactly where the lump is. She’s a she, they tell him, and the lump has only just appeared. Keep an eye on it, we suggest, calmly.

A week later I’m with them in the West. The last blast of summer. The Connemara Pony Show is on in the town. The highlight of the year for locals. We are hemmed in. The place is thronged, thumping, tannoy pumping, no parking, hemmed. I decide that whatever we do will be on foot. You can’t get into or out of the town in a car. If we try to leave we might never get back. The weather isn’t good anyway and I’m mulling it over, what we might do, when the burbling sounds of thinly veiled hysteria filter up to me. The lump has grown. They look at me, accusingly. I’ve no idea why. The glistening eyes produce actual drops.

‘If my baby dies because you didn’t bring her to the vet…’ and he trails off, matricidal thoughts no doubt humming inside him. Hang on a second. How could owning a little creature produce such deep emotions? It’s all very lovely when it’s going well. But threatened with the loss of her plumbs different wells. Scary wells. I try a rational approach. Something along the lines of how we knew when we got her that the life span is two years and… Nope. The hysteria goes up a notch and they look at me as if I am a traitor. Where’s the father with the diffusing jokes when you need him?

I phone the local vet to see if we can get her seen. Have you been here before the receptionist asks. Oh yes, I say. We rescued a wild non-flying bird from the beach a couple of years back and brought it in to you. At least now they know the cut they’re dealing with. I ask how much it’ll cost. €35 for the consultation. More if anything needs to be done. Great. That we could purchase another two and a half black eyed beauties for that price may or may not cross my mind. The fact that we will now certainly not be making that visit to the cinema, nor indeed getting the take away pizza certainly does.

We traipse the ten minute journey along the Galway road. Me and the five and the cage carried solemnly by marque 2. We meander around pony poo on the path. Passers by enquire – what did we purchase at the show? A hen? What’s in the cage? As if we’re part of the club. We nod and smile and pick our way along in procession. Ponies trot beside us. It’s funereal.

We wait. Dogs and cats are seen before us. A beautiful black placid hound behind the counter catches their eye. Louis he’s called. Ah god. They stroke him on his regal head. He seems to smile at them. I know what’s coming down the line. The vet invites us all in to her tiny room for the consultation. She has a dulcet Scottish lilt and is kind and pragmatic, just as one would hope. She compliments them on the early detection of the lump. Usually in ‘small furries’ they remain unnoticed until they are large. She then speaks in code, skilfully avoiding the word tumour. Which is the only word they are expecting and dreading. In truth she can’t say what it is without a biopsy. To biopsy such a tiny creature comes with risks. It will be important to weigh these risks up, down the line, should the lump grow further. It could be a cyst, something benign, or something else. As she is very slim the vet worries that it might be the something else. But if it’s not bothering her then the weighing up thing will have to be done. Nature or intervention with risk. Nonetheless she says she’ll treat it for now as if it’s a cyst that may be infected. She instructs us on administering antibiotics. If it shrinks at all then we’re in luck. I get the impression from her that vets don’t tend to see much of little furries. We leave relieved. She has a shot at a while longer with us. As we trot back, leaping over the mounds of poo, they begin.

‘We have to get a dog Mum, we just have to, did you see the way his eyes looked so lovingly at us and how his…’

Oh yes. I saw it all. God help us.

It’s with a mixture of guilt and relief that our summer holidays are being spent in Connemara again. The guilt, which bubbles away in the epidermis, stems from the fact that we have failed to take them abroad. Ever. The relief from the fact that it’s so easy, safe, stunningly beautiful – even in the soft misty drizzle which features for part of most days before doing the decent thing and hiding for a while. It makes perfect sense the relief says. But what about them experiencing other cultures, foods, climates the guilt chimes in. All in good time, the relief says. All in good time.

I’m talking to myself about an idea that’s been brewing which might just jizz it up a little. I’m mumbling about a boat and an island and some bicycles. They don’t usually pick up on my mumblings, nor indeed on my requests, but I find myself now confronted with widened eyes dotted all around the room. There is nothing wrong with their hearing, it seems, after all.
‘Did you say a boat?’ marque 4 asks and he begins to whoop and clap and then there’s a cacophony as they join him and I feel like sticking my fingers in my ears to protect my own hearing.
‘Oh thank you Mum so much, I’m so excited. I’ve never been on a boat in my life’ and he squeezes my legs as his words echo around the room and the guilt bubbles that bit closer to the surface of the skin.

It’s not the way we usually do things. We usually say nothing. Not a word. Bundle them into the car with the notion that we’re going somewhere. It’s a surprise. They guess and guess. We don’t tell. It leaves us with a get out clause. In case we can’t actually get to do the super exciting thing for whatever reason (rain mainly, let’s face it). But then it’s all the sweeter if we do. I’ve blown it. Without having even discussed it first. He’ll arrive down on Friday evening after a busy week at work to be greeted by super excited kids with big plans for his weekend. Early rising energy fuelled plans.

They blurt. He enthuses. The excitement soars. Weather checks are made. I wonder if the solid lines coming out of the grey cloud for Sunday’s forecast are more foreboding than the broken lines coming out of the grey for Saturday. On the strength of this questionable deciphering we plumb for Saturday. Then we cart ourselves off to Aldi to purchase all that we’ll need to survive.

The alarm clangs cruelly but there’s no need for it. For the first time on their summer holidays they are all wide awake at this school going hour. Dressing eagerly, avoiding shorts and flip-flops in a bid to minimise the trauma in case they come off their bikes on rugged terrain. Hoodies, T-shirts, tracksuit bottoms.

Nobody mentions how the windscreen wipers are working pretty hard, although he does glance at me whispering ‘I wonder, I don’t want to disappoint, but…’
‘It’ll clear’ I tell him. It’s just a feeling. I’ve acclimatised to the vagaries of the Western weather now. I purchase the family return ticket in the little porto-cabin, expressing that if the soft rain turns torrential in the next half-hour we’ll be swapping it for another day.
‘No problem at all. You never can tell what way it’ll go’ she says, auburn eyes matching auburn hair, smiling. And with that it lifts, magically, as if it was never there, revealing the true beauty of this fishing town. We make our way to the end of the pier where the ferry awaits. They are too preoccupied to eat, even as I wave warm sausage rolls under their noses. Instead they count the enormous jelly fish idling in the harbour and watch the boatmen load stacks of provisions for the islanders.

We are shown through the gleaming new ferry onto a much smaller tattier old one. As we’re first in the queue. The late comers will be treated to the new one. There seems to be a downside to being too well prepared. But then the old ferry begins to move, ahead of schedule, and we meander out onto the deck which is low to the water. We are part of it. Part of the sea. We make our way up to the prow and, holding on to gapped railings, we ride the waves. I’m receiving hugs and squeezes, while grasping marque 5’s hood lest he slip through.
‘This is your number one idea ever, thank-you’ one of them says.
‘I just love it’ says another.
‘It’s way better than Tayto Park’ says a third and they all agree which causes laughter beyond the family circle. Fellow passengers enjoy their banter and strike up chords with us.
‘And only €76 euros for all this’ marque 5 says gesticulating to the ocean and the landscape and the boat, laughing. I tighten my grip on his hood and try not to think about my Grandfather – a pilot and sailor – who would be horrified to see his great-grandchildren bumping along at the very front of the boat without a single life-jacket amongst them.

We strike a deal of sorts at the bike hire hut – it’s extortionate now that we seem to be tourists – and set off. It’s been at least twenty years, shamefully, since I set my arse to a sadle, and I beg the kids to go easy on us olds. The days that they know nothing about, of their mother offering a saddler to their father home from college, via the student bar, where lemon salted tequilas may or may not have been imbibed, are well and truly gone. Perhaps they could check that we’re doing ok from time to time. But then we take off and it’s easy peasy and the memory of the pleasure of the pedal and the fresh wind whistling and the foot to the ground to pause and take it all in, floods back. But this, cycling with my own crew out here on a beautiful island in the Atlantic, this is something special.

They lead the way, mapless, interrupted only by hens on the path, and we stop to picnic on a rock. We’ve seen a handful of other people only even though two ferry loads of tourists were dropped off. The quietness is dizzying. A man in his 60s is walking in our direction as the kids cycle up a vertical hill. Two women follow behind. He stops to talk to us. I think he’s muttering about mushrooms and how someone has pipped him to it and nabbed them. We sympathise but we do not ask what mushrooms he’s talking about.
‘Are they all yours?’ he asks counting the kids disappearing over the hill.
‘They are’.
‘Wow, five, that’s unusual these days. What’s the mix of boys and girls?’
‘All boys’ we say in unison.
‘All boys? That’s fantastic’ he says.  I’m warming to him. Even if he’s hallucinating.
‘You know what’ he says looking directly at me. ‘You’d be higher than chief in a tribe producing all those boys’. I laugh. ‘No really, your status would be higher than chief. Fantastic’, he says again and then shares this news with his female companions. I know it shouldn’t mean anything at all, this little snippet of questionable sexist lore, but it does something to me. A fellow human being just saying well done you. Nice one.

We pedal on past breath-taking sheer cliffs and discover a white sand turquoise water beach. We ditch the bikes and clamber down past the bleating sheep. Not a soul to be seen. The sun appears. Some of them insist on a swim. One brave parent does too. Even though they’ve all been warned we have one towel only to share. It feels different to swim off an island than off the mainland. A tingly intrepidness. That’s what I see in them. I’m not the brave one who joins in today. But hey, I’m higher than chief so I can claim a pass.

We reach close to our starting point with an hour to spare before the boat. We sit opposite a hotel at a picnic table above the coast and gratefully receive a Bulmer’s cider and a Guinness while the kids have well deserved cidonas, a smattering of chips, island ice-cream.
‘It’s just been astonishing’ marque 1 says about the day.
‘Hey guys, what do you think about your first time off mainland Ireland?’ and they banter on about the adventure as I feel the parental guilt slipping dutifully away into the copper fizz before me.

The first time I was told there was to be a jersey day in their school I was filled with a ticklish delight. I pictured him, my eldest, then aged five, relaxing in school in a multi-coloured cotton home knit style V neck jumper. How lovely, I thought. Like dress down Friday at work.

One might think I must’ve come a long way since then. He’ll be sixteen this year after all. But somehow I’m still the same person. Still filled with a little bit of horror when jersey day comes around. It’s – as you more savvy readers already know – all about competitive team sports. Who do they support? What do they play themselves? What do you mean you do not follow English football league? Ah, it’s the rugby you’re into. Which club? Gaelic? Anything? Anything at all? Relaxing in their cosy multi-coloured soft knits this is not.

This year we’ve had a double-pleasure of pretence. It began with sports day.
‘Mum, we have to wear shorts for sports day tomorrow‘.
‘Ok’.
‘Not the summer shorts we usually wear. Sporty shorts’.
‘What?’
‘Sporty shorts. You know like the ones people wear for rugby or Gaelic’.  (Every time I try to type Gaelic, Garlic comes up instead. It makes much more sense to me.)
‘But we don’t do rugby or Gaelic. Just wear your school tracksuits instead’.
‘Mu-uum. Everyone is going to be in shorts and I was the only one in the wrong ones last year. I can’t be the only one again’. The voice is wobbling. He’s on the verge. Bloody hell.
‘So we have to go out now to a sports shop and buy really expensive rugby shorts, for one day?’ I say, pressing a little too hard on the accelerator. The general consensus is yes. That’s exactly what we are to do. We go home first. I’m sure I’ve seen an unused gift voucher for one of the local sports shops when tidying one of their rooms. The sensible part of me is yelling that I must not go and waste a whole load of money for my boys to feel part of the crowd for one minute. Anyway, aren’t we raising them not to be like sheep? Something is obviously going awry with our parenting.
Voucher in hand, I waltz into the sports shop.
‘I’m looking for three pairs of your cheapest sporty shorts’ I say. The young assistant’s eyes begin to twinkle. He seems to be waiting for me to elaborate.
‘Which sport?’ he says, smiling still. As if we are sharing some sort of joke. If we are, it would be about his hair. All permed and dipped in peroxide. He has a sense of humour alright. Which I do not. Certainly not right at this moment.
‘Any sport, as long as they’re cheap’ I say. He’s looking a little befuddled now. Really. Do I have to explain myself?
‘It’s for their sports day tomorrow. For one day only. So cheap and cheerful. Good lad’.
In the end the voucher covers 2 pairs of half priced shorts – black rugby yokes with some label – and a pair of knock down runners for marque 5. He’d prefer the runners to the shorts. Me too. I’m delighted now. I love a good old bargain.

It rains for sports day. The first time it’s happened in 11 years. Marque 4’s class are not allowed to wear their shorts on account of the weather. Great. Marque 3 sticks with it and shivers his little white legs off waiting in the drizzle for his turn to shine. They all shine on sports day. Medals or not. They have a ball.

Not a week has passed when the letter arrives announcing jersey day. On Friday. And there it is. The familiar little electrifying tingle that tells me, once again, that we are a non-jersey family. A conversation that I have with myself each time begins to rattle. Sure maybe they can just wear their favourite t-shirt. Why not? It’s a fundraiser after all. Who cares what they wear? As long as they donate. They like basketball and tennis. Why does it have to be a rugby of football themed day?
Then I begin the search. For the raggedy donated adult rugby jerseys they’ve worn these last few times. Ancient isn’t in it. They swing with age. Like little dresses. I haven’t the heart to do it again. I make up my mind. For the second time in a week I saunter beyond the doors of the town sports shop. As luck would have it, I’m greeted by my peroxide smiling friend. I think he remembers me.

‘I’m looking for some cheap jerseys’ I say. He nods and twinkles and shows me over to them. He looks like he’s about to ask for which sport. Which teams. But chickens out. Or knows better.
‘It’s for jersey day in school’ I say as my friend rifles through the sale rack for me.
‘So whatever’s cheapest’.
‘These are all on sale ‘coz they’re last season’s’ he says. Knowing by now that this’ll put me off not a jot. Last decade’s, adult sizes is what they’ve been pretending in up until now. The exception to this was when we purchased marque 1 a knock down team jersey to see out his primary school days. We bought it. Then we googled the team and got him up to speed on the players and the latest victories. A crazy parenting moment. But like I said, I’m sure we’ve come a long way since then.

Marque 5 sports his new last season’s Manchester United jersey with the pride of a full time fan. Marque 3 and 4 wear the new lime green Ireland training jerseys. Just out, my shop assistant friend tells me. There’s a frisson of pride as I look at my joiners going off into school. I’ve made it. Shipped them off, shiny, feeling totally with it. I’m busy noticing how the lime green brings out the blond in marque 3 and 4 and consider taking a quick snap of them when something more pressing interrupts my thoughts.
‘Don’t spill any lunch on the jerseys’ I call after them. ‘They’ve to see you out of school’.

I wait at the gate ready to milk the joiner joy. But when marque 5 comes out he looks a little crest-fallen. He tells me how all the others in the class were in full football kit, shorts, socks, boots the lot. That’s a new take on jersey day. Who’s making up the rules? The pressure has been ratcheted up a notch. Next time he too would very much like to wear the full kit. Then marque 4 appears. He’s disgruntled too. Some boys in his class told him his jersey was from 2004. 2004 – two years before the children in question were even born. He’s on the verge of tears telling me. My eyes go into involuntary slit mode. My fight or flight response kicks in. I’m ready to take these teasers on. But then the calm sanity of marque 3 infuses. He talks to marque 4 about how maybe the other kids were jealous that he had the latest Ireland training jersey. Marque 4 relaxes down. It’s great when a child steps in and takes the reins from an agitated floundering parent.

And so today, as they finally get their release from school day toil and comparative competitive interactions, I’m celebrating. For eight weeks I’ll gather them close, water and feed, and then marinade in the feast of them being free to be just themselves.

It’s baffling. We’ve just been hurled into the world of teen self-consciousness and it makes no sense at all. Not to the doting ancient parents at least.
‘What are you talking about, you don’t want to come with us?’ the skilled parent grappling to understand this new world might be heard saying.
It’s an overnight transformation after all. The look is one of ‘what is even the point of trying to help her understand’. But understand I sure as hell want to.
‘It’s scorching hot, we’re going for a swim, you love swimming, and it’s high tide so you can even jump in’.
That should clinch it.
‘But there’ll be people there’.
Indeed there will.
‘People who might know me’.
Stranger things have happened.
‘So I want to come and I want to swim but I don’t want to come in-case there’s anybody there’.
Good god.
‘What’s this anybody?’
‘Oh, you just don’t understand’.
Too true.
‘Older boys from school. Seeing me out with my flamboyant family’.
‘Your what?’
‘And then back in school they’d be telling everyone, and no, just no’.
Help, anyone?
‘Hang on a moment. First of all, since when has anyone older in school given a toss about what the younger boys are up to at the weekend? Second of all, you’re coming’.
There. A bit of parental authority is called for. For heaven’s sake. The rumbling sound of a snowball gathering pace can be heard behind me. Forces are being joined. It wouldn’t be so much fun without him the rumbles seem to say. Which is true. He’s king at leaping in and swimming far out, frolicking and laughing in the glint of the sun. But that was yesterday, wasn’t it.
‘Get in the car. We’re all going. We will not be held ransom in this glorious sunshine by some invisible gang who may or may not notice the younger boy out with his family’. The empathetic mother speaketh. And amazingly, a grunt or two later, we’re on our way. I’m busy considering how temporary the disappearance of my confident, friendly, fun loving, socially adept boy will be when he pipes up from beside me.
‘NOT Seapoint, oh god, they’ll all be there…’
He throws his hood up in the sweltering heat and then tries to make me promise, if he spots anyone, anyone at all resembling an older teen from his school, that I’ll give him the keys and he can go and sit in the car instead. It’s then that it happens. A fit of the giggles starting from the pit of my stomach. I watch him march ahead trying to look inconspicuous as everyone else is practically naked around him. I’m doubled over laughing trying to carry the bag to the beach. I mustn’t be caught. I try to sober myself with thoughts of my beautiful son disappearing down the road of teenage self conscious angst. Of what I can do to be a better mother to him during this time.
‘Take the hood down’ I say catching up with him.
‘You’ve no idea what it’s like mum’ he says, whipping the hood down and scanning ahead to see if anyone has noticed.
‘Maybe not’ I say upping the empathy a tad.
‘But I do know that if you care less about what others may or may not think about you, you’ll be better off. Really.’
‘Those people up on the wall, what age are they, they look like older boys who might know me’. My little pearl of wisdom has fallen on very deaf teenage ears.
‘They’re my age’ I say reassuringly and he strips down to his togs. We’ve timed it perfectly. It’s full tide and it’s a wavy choppy sea. Just how they like it. There’s no getting him out of the water once he feels the lack of prying tell-tale eyes. Canon balls, the lot. Whoops of laughter as they let the waves carry them. There’s a man with a lens on a tripod who seems very interested in catching a bit of the fun. Shush, don’t tell. We head home for a barbeque. They are high with endorphins. Just like the good old days. We hold on tight to it. Repeat it over the rest of the weekend to the delight of all. God knows the day will come when they’ll all be doing their own thing. It’ll be a long day.

You should get your bloods done’ she says to me.
I’m knackered and more than a little haggard I know. There’s been a lot going on. But still. The receptionist telling me to get my bloods done. Just by looking at me. It’s making something boil. I think it’s my blood,
‘Why’ I ask with teenage impertinence.
‘Ah just because it’s cheaper to get it done while you’re in with one of the children. It’s good to get it done.’
After many years as a receptionist I wonder what she’s seen. Why she knows when it’s time to do something. Even if the doctor doesn’t. She’s lovely. Bubbly and warm and kind. She’s thick as thieves with the patients. I take her advice.

I phone a day later for the results. She reads from the computer screen.
‘Your thyroid is very good. Your blood glucose is excellent. Iron levels very good, 12.4. You’re way off the menopause’. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this information or even if it is the receptionist that should be giving it to me. She is unrelenting.
‘Years and years off. My god you’re reading is 5 and it doesn’t even begin to kick off until you’re at 26’.
Great. Or is it? Who knows. She seems to.
‘Let me see now. What else. Your cholesterol. Your cholesterol is actually quite high’.
‘High?’
‘Yes. It’s 6.7’.
Wham.
‘6.7? That sounds very high. What might cause that?’
Suddenly she is the doctor and I am the vulnerable patient.
‘It could be too much sugar’.
Hang on a second, I thought my blood sugars were excellent. I haven’t a sweet tooth. Never have. Then I remember.
‘The night before the test I ate a load of cheese. Could that have done it?’
The night before we had skipped dinner and opted for a generous wedge of scrumptious Saint Agur with crackers and red wine. I stopped eating at about one o’clock in the morning. I didn’t know I was having my cholesterol checked in a mere eight hours. Silly me. I’ve caused a skewed reading.
‘It won’t have helped. But sure listen, don’t worry about it. You’re young enough and you’re slim. You’ll be able to get it down with a few changes to diet. Cheese is lethal. Drink a few benecol, they’re very good, and come back and have it rechecked in a month’.
‘My mother has high cholesterol’ I volunteer. ‘Since she was very young. An inherited thing’.
‘There you go. I was going to say it’s probably genetic. But sure don’t worry about it at all’.

6.7. I hang up feeling like a fool. All these years and I’ve never even thought to get it checked. I go to the doctors for one reason only. The kids. I don’t go for myself. ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ would be my mature attitude. Reckless it seems now all of a sudden. Time to get googling.

It’s funny what a surprise like having high cholesterol can do to a person. In an utterly imperceptible and seamless move the shopping is full of oats, beans, lentils, nuts, spinach, soy and salmon. I am mopping up my cholesterol. I cannot even look at the cheese section. As if it alone is responsible for my poisoned blood. Benecol – which I had always imagined was for people in their seventies – is my new drug of choice. I swig it merrily and picture the plant stanols attacking the fatty blood. Padraig Harrington – whom I ignore on the radio ads wittering on about Flora something or other – suddenly is an ally.  Someone as fit as him. Imagine. Although he never actually says how high his went. 5.1 probably. I buy the product and smear it cheerfully on my baked potato. I manage not to steal a delicious chippy chip from the kids. I am attacking this thing with the zeal of a perfectionist on speed. My husband is dying to know the results after a month of this malarkey. He tells me he bets it’ll be way down. Dangerously low from what he has witnessed.

I get retested and phone the next day for the results. I’ve a pencil in hand ready to write down the 5 point something low that it now will be. She  calls out all the ones that are good again. She is still cheerfully telling me that I’m no where near menopausal.
‘It’s just the cholesterol I’m looking for ‘ I tell her. I don’t want to ruin her buzz but I’m really rather excited.
‘Just a second, hang on there, where is it, here… 6.7’.
‘6.7? But sure it can’t be. I’ve changed my diet completely and…’
The doctor is put on the line.
‘It’s still high. But you’ve no other risk factors. You’re not overweight and you don’t smoke and your blood pressure, did we check your blood pressure?’
‘No’.
‘Come on around and we’ll check it and see what to do from there’.
I’m floored. It’s probably the first time in my life that I’ve thrown myself fully at something and got nowhere. Nowhere at all. My mind fuzzes with words colliding. Plaques. Stroke. Heart attack. Oh well.

Around at the surgery the receptionist is disappointed for me.
‘Are you sure?’ I ask. ‘All the results were the same as the last time. Could there be some…’
‘Hang on a second, what date is it, the 14th, yeah, that’s – oh no wait, it’s the same date today as you had it done last month, you’re right – that’s last month’s results. Hang on and I’ll ring to get this month.’
‘I knew it’ I tell her. ‘Sure how could it be the same after all those changes. All that benecol!’
‘I know, I was very surprised, look here they are now, they’re just coming in’ she says looking at her computer screen.
‘Oh, that’s it there now, what? That can’t be…’
The doctor is hovering close by. He has a look at the screen.
‘6.8’ he says definitively. ‘It’s gone up’. With that he turns up the radio, just a tad, to catch an ad for Callan’s Kicks. He’s chuckling to himself as I stand there gobsmacked. My body is behaving badly, ignoring me and my first class efforts. It’s doing its own thing. Defiantly.

He checks the blood pressure which is behaving itself. He tells me that I have no other risk factors. For what he doesn’t specify. There’s no need to. Then that I have two choices. See how it is in a couple of months. Or go on a low dose statin. The kids faces swarm in front of me. It’s dizzying.
‘I’ll take the drug’ I tell him. And then perhaps I’ll head straight to McDonalds to celebrate my failure with a Big Mac.

The pharmacist looks concerned.
‘Is this the first time you’ve been prescribed these?’
‘Yes. I was hoping to get it down with diet but it went up instead’.
She nods sagely.
‘These can have some unpleasant side effects’.
‘Yes I know. I’ve been looking into it recently for my Dad. He’s coming off his due to the side effects. Memory loss. I don’t need that! Still, I haven’t much choice. I need to get it down’.
Then she tells me about a natural over the counter alternative that has just come out. Reportedly as good as the statins with no side effects. Now that sounds like my cup of tea. She recommends to try the statins first and then to swap when the count has gone down.

The side effects are immediate. Stomach upset. Maybe it’ll settle after a while I think. But it doesn’t. It gets worse. We’re late for school (unusually) one morning and we have to run. I feel nauseous and the muscles in my legs seem to be seizing. On Saturday afternoon I get a whopper of a headache. I never get headaches. I put myself to bed with painkillers and tell him that if it doesn’t shift we’re off to A&E as it could be a stroke. It hadn’t struck me that it could be the meds causing it. I google the side effects and they’re all there. The headache shifts. I’m a wuss. I want to stop taking the statins. So I google alternatives and lo and behold there’s a massive anti-statin brigade chiming a tune that fits my current head space perfectly. It goes along the lines of: Your liver makes cholesterol and it makes exactly what you need. Anything between 2 and 10 is fine. The under 5.0 is a scaremongering money making made up number. There’s billions and billions to be made out of it. So relax. Eat well. Exercise. You are fine.

I choose a non-analytical, non-skeptical approach to this. It feels really good to think that maybe, just maybe, my body is doing what it needs to do. There’s a block of Kilmeaden cheese in the fridge for the kids. I open it, cut a slice, smother it with Coleman’s mustard and sink down on the couch. The pre-occupation with getting the bold number down has left me, for today at least.

I’ve had a thing about old men since I was a little girl. It was serious then. Full on heart melting devotion. So much so that I had a sale of work. I gathered all sorts of bits from the house, set up a stall, and flogged them to passers by. There was an old man’s home close by, you see. Walled, tree lined, private and exotic. I fantasised about getting in there some day. I fantasised about helping the dear old treasures out. Somehow. I was six or seven. The jury is out on what propelled me into this cause.

I counted the coins. Six old pounds and forty seven pence. I stacked the coins in a row. Re-counted. Poured them into an envelope and wrote a note. Please do something with this to help the old men. Then I set off. Alone. The big black gates did not intimidate me. I walked up the large drive-way secure in my calling. I popped the envelope through the letter box and went home. Happy. Oh so very happy.

A week later a letter arrived. Blue envelope. Stamped and addressed to me. The Matron had written to thank me on behalf of the old men. With the money that I dropped in she said she had been able to treat them all to an ice-cream. Then she invited me to come in. To be shown around. To meet some of the men. They would very much like, she said, to meet the girl who’d bought them the ice-cream. There it was. Right in front of me. My dream had come true.

I don’t know what I was expecting really. Mischievous fun-loving twinkly men. Boys in older skins who had no-one at home to mind them. Perhaps a couple of them seemed a little like that. But what struck me was the stark decline. The amount of wheelchairs. The lack of a spark of recognition in some when Matron introduced me as the ice-cream girl, raising her voice to deafened ears, gesticulating to cloudy eyes. I didn’t really know anyone very old or incapacitated. I sat in a wheelchair and imagined what it must be like to be one of them. I left with a slightly broken heart but with firm resolve to raise more money for them. Not for ice-cream, though.

Another brush with old man protective devotion came one day when I was knocked off my bicycle. I was cycling along with the tea-bags I’d just bought in my front basket. A car reversed out of its driveway and wham. Everything went into slow motion. I lay on the road frozen as the car continued to reverse towards me. They haven’t seen me, I thought. This is it. I stared at the reg plate as the car inched on. The lip of the boot was over me and I was staring at the killer wheels when it stopped. 
‘I didn’t see you’ the old bespectacled driver said. He was wearing a hat like my grandfather’s. 

‘It was only that I saw your bicycle on the road…’

I got to my feet. There was blood. My head and my leg. But that did not concern me. It was the scattered red and white basket that bothered me. The clearly damaged yellow super-de-lux bike. The tea bags. Where are they?

‘Are you alright?’ the old man asked.

‘Oh yes’ I said. 

‘Can I help you to get home?’

‘No, no’ I said. ‘Thanks’. 

And the old man himself. It bothered me that he was shocked and shaken. The poor old thing. Sure how could he see me, with those great high bushes? He helped me to reassemble the bike. The basket was wrecked, crooked and scratched. The tea-bags had been flung onto the grass verge. My poor mother, I thought, at home waiting for her cup of tea. I put them back into the basket. Then I hobbled, dragging my bike beside me, all the way home. I was nine years old. The doctor was called. There was a lot of hushed talk and whispering in our usually noisy house. Wounds were dressed. Bed rest was ordered. Unless vomit was to follow. Then take her in. My parents sat at my bed and asked me all about him. This driver who had knocked me off my bike and then let me walk home. My mother, especially, was horrified, and tried but failed to temper it. How could he leave you to walk home like that? 

He’s old, I told them. Like Grandpa old. He just didn’t see me. It wasn’t his fault. The quiz went on. Could he have been drinking? Did I know the number of his house? They just wanted to have a little visit and a chat about what had happened, they said. They wanted to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Some other child who may not get up and walk away. 

‘It’s the house with the high bushes and this is his number plate’ I said reaming off the numbers and letters from the picture frozen in my head. My mother laughed saying I couldn’t possibly have got the number plate. That I must be confused. Then she peered worryingly into my eyes for signs of concussion. 

‘Be nice to him’ I called after them, feeling like a traitor. 

‘Yes, we will, just a little chat’. I lay there fretting about the shock the poor old man would get when my parents hammered on his door. He was shocked alright. Not at them calling. He seemed to be expecting that. He invited them in for a whiskey, my mother told me pointedly. Ah god, I thought. How nice of him. 

‘He’s in a terrible state and terribly sorry about what happened’ she said. ‘He’s getting the bushes cut down’. 

Shame, I thought.

‘Oh and you were right about the number plate’ she said. ‘Except for the M. It was a W.’ Silly me.

I was in a shop recently when the old man childhood devotion came flooding back to me. An old man hovered with his trolley at the bread section. I whipped past him grabbing croissants and flying on to pick up the rest of my bits. At the end I realised I needed bundies too and I went back to the breads. He was still there. Carefully selecting the packages with the yellow stickers. The date is up on them and they are reduced to a steal. Ah god. I’m queueing already when he arrives with his trolley behind me. All he has is the bread. Three little wheaten loaves. I offer for him to go ahead of me. Not that he seems to be in a hurry. He accepts. He glances into my trolley.
‘Plenty in there anyway’ he says,

‘Ah sure, lots of hungry kids’ I say.

‘I remember it well’ he says. Ahead of us a grumpy lady is arguing with the checkout assistant. She is trying to buy the Valentine’s meal for two special deal. Only she doesn’t want the chocolates that come with it. And she has chosen two sides instead of a starter and a side. Because she doesn’t like the look of the starters. Her meal deal won’t scan. Her face is screwed up into an unpleasant ball of dissatisfaction. I wonder about the poor person she’s inflicting her Valentine’s wishes on. Still, as she battles on it gives me a chance to chat with the lovely old man.

‘I had five kids myself’ he says, twinkling. ‘All gone now, all different corners of the world’. 

‘Oh dear’ I say, uselessly, wanting to help him, somehow. He looks wistfully into my trolley of plenty and I look dolefully into the careful trolley for one.

‘What can I say?’ he asks, shaking his head.

‘Do you have grandchildren?’ I ask to try to add a bit of cheer.

‘Oh yes, yes’ he says. 

‘Still, what can I tell you?’ he says again. ‘All gone’.

It’s as I’m writing this piece that my phone goes.
‘Dad walked off to the shops and hasn’t come back’ I’m told. My own Dad. Now an old man himself. Re-trace his steps, I say, frantically. Blood is found. The police are called. I phone the hospitals. 

‘What’s his date of birth?’ My mind freezes. I think he’s there. He must be there if she’s asking that. It floods back to me. His lovely date of birth.

’30th of the 4th, 1934′.

‘Yes, he’s here’.

‘Is he ok?’ I warble down the line.

‘Yes’ the receptionist says to my fast hot tears. 

I hear him before I see him. Giving over past medical difficulties. I whip the curtain open.

‘Ah’ he says, smiling at me.

‘How did you know I was here?’

It was Saturday. The day before Valentine’s Day. He had walked to the shops with his stick for The Guardian and some cheese crackers. He was trying to get back in time for the match. France and Ireland. He was nearly home when it happened. He fell, hitting his head off a wall and his arm off the ground. He lay there, he says, perfectly calmly, until someone came along. That someone happened to be a doctor and she told him she was pretty sure something would be broken. She phoned an ambulance. She waited with him until it came. Angel. He had no phone with him and didn’t know our numbers without it. There was no-one for her to call. He’s propped up with his badly fractured arm in a brace. His fingers get stitched. His head gets scanned. Beside him lies his green mesh bag with the newspaper, a pen, crackers, reading glasses and a fiver in it. His bloodied tweed jacket is folded beside it. His stick hangs from a table. We start into the crossword as we wait for the others to arrive. 

Ten days later, after acute medical care in a major hospital, I find myself wheeling my Dad into the lunch room of a convalescent place. For all the world it looks like a retirement home. He’ll think we’ve sold him a pup.
‘I’m not terribly hungry’ he says meekly from the chair. He’s only just arrived and doesn’t even know where his bed is yet. 

‘Make room for the new boy’, a carer shouts out with a broad smile. He is sandwiched between two other men in wheelchairs. His head bows down in mute shyness. I want to run with him. To whip the brakes off the wheelchair and scraper. It cannot have come to this. The room is deafeningly silent as I chop up his fish. Then a twinkly eyed man sitting across from him pipes up.

‘What happened to your Dad?’ 

‘Oh, he just fell’ I say, dismissively. As if a mistake has been made. He shouldn’t be here at all.

‘So did I’ the twinkle says.

‘So did I’ another one says, laughing. Younger than my father. Crisp fresh shirt. A healthy bright glow. Encouraging. Maybe this will be alright. 

‘I was putting water in the tractor’ the twinkle says. 

‘Fell off down onto concrete. Broke the hip’, he chuckles. Dad’s head comes up out of his neck. He’s ready to join in with his fallen comrades. Good on you, twinkle. You’re just what I was hoping to meet as a little girl.

(Addendum: Apologies for the hiatus. This piece was written prior to the unfathomable loss of my father-in-law. Sorely missed by all. A man whose enthusiasm, creativity, fun, strength and love precluded him from ever seeming old to me.)