Perhaps these things are cyclical. Or maybe it’s a blogger’s déjà vu. A karmic reaction to writing about it all in the first place. This evening, cherry picked strands from previous blog posts visit us in condensed form. They visit us, as it happens, in our sitting room.
‘Hang on a second’ I call out into the smoke. ‘I think we’ve already done this.’

It is, naturally, my favourite evening again. That Friday feeling which is intoxicating all day long. The kids are happy. I’m sneaking some newspaper reading on my bed – all gruesome murder tales, what is going on? – followed by googling how to kick off as a freelance something or other. Anything really. Yes it’s time to be a freelancer. There’s much encouragement out there. Something called ‘online content writing’ for a start. I could do that, I’m pretty sure, whatever it is. Sounds like a doddle. I’m congratulating myself on my job search with a cup of tea and indulging in a marshmallow covered rice crispie bun when marque 2 comes to me with my phone, already answered. I can see as he waves it at me that it is one of those numbers you do not need to engage with on a Friday evening. I possibly shoot him a little daggers look. I would not have been available if he hadn’t answered it. A lending bank. Looking for dosh. Or a twelve and a half year old bank clerk as it turns out, with a zillion questions. Cheeky intrusive questions. Slapping me on the wrist. Even though we’re up to date with our interest only agreement, I swear. To keep it going the child clerk is demanding bank statements, pay slips, social welfare slips if applicable. Go to hell I’m mouthing as I dip the bun into the tea to kaleidoscopic effect.

I will not let the cheeky pup put a dampener on the evening, I mumble to myself as I light the fire. We have all we need for a perfectly relaxing night enhanced by some flames. She’s got to me though. I find myself emptying lunch boxes and checking for notes in school bags – the activity of say, a Tuesday evening, not a bloody blissful Friday. I find a note from marque 4’s reading support teacher indicating a sudden waning in effort. I’m concocting an excuse to write back (sick, tired, bored – and that’s just me) and look around the room for inspiration. There’s something not quite right. I can’t see the kids clearly. There’s a fog in here. A dense fume filled fog. And then the alarm that we never expect to hear starts to flash and bleep. The carbon monoxide alarm.

‘Out of the sitting room’ I holler and they run with that out onto the street.
‘The hall guys, just wait in the hall until I put the fire out and open the windows’.
‘No way Mum, we had someone in school yesterday talking about carbon monoxide poisoning. I’m not going back in there’ marque 3 says, standing in the dark wet drive, barefoot, in his PJs. The others echo his sentiments. Mutiny. He coughs. Reminding me that he’s a touch asthmatic. The drama unfurls.

Marque 1 and I set about quenching the flames and opening the back door and windows to the piercing shriek of the alarm. The others fret about us on the driveway, a smidgeon of palpable hysteria, the odd plea to ‘get out of there Mum’. The smoke alarm joins in with the poison alarm just for the hell of it. As mother and protector of this crew there are many conflicting, guilt ridden thoughts. Chimney swept. Tick. Carbon monoxide alarm. Tick. (A gift from my conscientious sister, but tick nonetheless). Instilling calm. Fail. Why won’t they come back in?
‘We’re waiting for Dad. He always knows exactly what to do’ marque 4 calls back and the others echo him. The traitors. Great. He’ll be greeted by a semi-hysterical, semi-clad gang on the street, shrieking about being poisoned. And he’s only been gone for a couple of hours. I think I feel a massive toxic headache coming on.

A potentially blissful Friday night slips from my grasp, again. I google sites for advice and come up with the idea that, for safety, even though the alarm has given up, I’ll phone the local fire station to run through what happened and see if there’s anything else we should do. A simple, natural, reasonable step. Until I phone the local number to be told it’s no longer in use. If you wish to contact this station dial 999 of 112. As the sites recommend this, I take a fumey breath and choose the seemingly less dramatic 112.
‘Which emergency service do you require, ambulance, Garda, Coast guard, fire?’
‘Oh, well I was just hoping to chat to someone about something that happened with the fire earlier’.
‘Fire, putting you through now’.
Jesus.
‘Address where the fire emergency is?’
Feck.
‘No it’s not an emergency as such. We lit a fire and the carbon monoxide alarm went off and I just want to chat to…’
‘Where is the emergency taking place?’
God.
‘Where do we need to dispatch the fire engine to?’
I’m with Dougal. I want out… I didn’t know what I was getting into.
‘I don’t think it warrants the fire-brigade (again), I just want a chat, I don’t want to be wasting their time’. Or our money.
‘But you dialled 999 and that’s what they do – go out, check with rods, carbon monoxide detectors’.
It wasn’t 999.
‘Could they come without the truck?’ Don’t want to alarm the poor neighbours, again.
‘No’.
Great.
‘Will we be charged €500?’
‘I can’t say’.
‘Can I just talk to one of them?’
‘I can’t give over any numbers’. So understand this. If you are concerned at all, about fire related issues, there are no half-way choices. It’s all bells and whistles. Oh and the probability of a €500 charge. Or nothing. No helpline, where you can run through your concerns once you’ve handled the emergency yourself. Why the hell not?

I delegate. Hand the phone to the person who always knows exactly what to do. He is perhaps a little surprised to be talking to the emergency services. Even more to be discussing the imminent arrival of the fire brigade to our quenched detoxifying home. He’s wondering if I’m losing it. So am I. Oh well.

He declines the offer of the brigade on grounds of cost and drama. Just like me. Isn’t there perhaps something a little worrying about this though? We, and I’d guess many more like us, have to weigh up the odds, take a chance that all will be well safety wise. Otherwise invite a ginormous flashing truck and a ginormous bill. Are people risking their lives or injuring themselves putting out their own fires because of the bill? Shouldn’t there be a middle ground solution? A chat with someone, who might just pop by in a car, check it out, for an eighth of the cost? I know that the firemen themselves are unhappy about the charge. They told us so the last time they came out. It’s disgraceful to stress people in an emergency situation out further. But it’s not their call, it’s the Government’s. Aren’t we already paying for these services with our taxes? It is a bad, unsafe, governmental call. Something needs to be done about it.

He decides as a means to getting that middle ground to pay a visit to the fire station up the road. For a chat. But it’s hard to get into it. The doors are closed and everyone, it seems is asleep, storing up for the night hours ahead. Fingers crossed they won’t need it. He finds a fireman at a side-door, fixing it, and has the chat. He comes back with reassuring messages. No flames, no smoke, unlikely that there’s poison. It diffuses and dissipates apparently. Doesn’t hang around after the source is killed, waiting to kill. I feel a little better, I think.

Yet it’s like the Friday before Christmas when I lost my appetite due to a brush with a burglar. In case he decided to come back. And the night when the chimney was on fire and the brigade came for real. And the night when the burglars came for real. Tonight again I am on high alert. The fact that carbon monoxide has been knocking around all these precious little people. I tug the positives out of it, though. How lucky we are that it happened early in the evening, before we dozed off. Often on a Friday we all stay in the sitting room eating and drinking and watching the Late Late. Often, one by one, we doze. We bring the kids up when we are going ourselves. Carbon monoxide poisoning happens most often when people are sleeping. The incident helps to put being dressed down by a bank clerk into perspective too. We are here. We are safe. The rest will work itself out.

It’s Saturday morning and I phone a chimney guy. I tell him about the plumes of smoke and the poison alarm and the likelihood that something is suddenly blocking the chimney. He asks if I have kids (oh, just the five) and suggests something plastic might’ve gone up the breast.
‘That’s what happened to the family in Sligo’ he says. I had been thinking about them last night. The simple act of throwing a crisp bag into the fireplace, it getting sucked up the breast and stuck, preventing the fumes from being released out into the air. Silently dispersing them around the cozy room. No alarms to indicate their presence. I’m popping out to get the cash to pay the guy and I look up at our roof. Something is different. It takes a moment to work it out. The chimney pot – the orange thing that juts out of the chimney stack – is misshapen, at least half of it missing. Bingo. The chimney pot has broken and fallen, in all likelihood, back down the breast. Blocking it completely. We are very lucky.

The excellent chimney guy arrives at the time he says he will, complete with a cherry-picker to get up on the roof. He sails up past the sitting room window, thrilling us all, and sets about plucking and mending. His partner is in with us sweeping and pulling and chatting away. Then he whips out some cement and fixes a few cracks on the fire wall.
‘Could you fix some more cracks while you’re here please?’ marque 5 pipes up, and I hush him while his brothers laugh. These are delightful friendly, competent folk and I’m waiting cynically for the sting. The ‘that’ll be €hundreds’ for all the mending and the cherry picker. Nope. They charge less than a sixth of what the fire engine would’ve cost, and of course the firemen wouldn’t have fixed the pot. So today we feel vindicated in the choice that we made last night. We got away with it after all. But we are left with a feeling of ill-ease about the likelihood of others being forced, through financial constraints, to choose to deal with their own fire-related emergencies and not getting away with it. That charge should be dropped or cut right back. And there needs to be a section of the service designated to deal with people experiencing minor emergencies or who are worried about safety after an emergency. A small, rational ask in an economy on the up.

Now I’m going to stop writing about hazardous fires and burglars in the hope that they will stop visiting. I think I’ll start writing about winning the lotto instead.

It is the eve of marque 3’s10th birthday and we, the parents, are pinching ourselves for different reasons. Now that the balance is about to be tipped in favour of the double digits amongst the kids, that is. I throw it out there, wistfully, and he picks it up, blissfully, and we are singing various hymns from the one sheet.

‘I can’t believe it. Three in double digits. How can that be?’

‘I know, phew’ he says laughing. ‘It’s great, isn’t it?’

‘Great? How can it be great? It’s going too fast. Flying along. I’d just like a little pause button you know? Freeze them all for a bit and just be here, all together, now, enjoying this time. Sure before we know it they’ll…’

‘But the really tricky years are behind us…’

‘They weren’t so tricky though, were they?’

‘Well compared to now they were. Broken sleep. Nappies. Buggies’.

Ah god, the buggies. Aren’t they great though, for stringing the old shopping on? Passing rice crackers (I swear) to the outstretched little hands. Climbing Killiney Hill recently marque 2 reminded me about the summer days when I’d take them for a walk there, and they’d have to help me to carry the buggy, baby an’ all up the steep steps. Ah god, those were the days. There were many, many buggies but some stand out more than others. The double buggy, a long heavy train of a thing. Two in it. Two holding on to the sides. You could get in through shop doors with it, slimness being the attraction, but then you might just have to reverse back out, turning it being the flaw. It was a sociable yoke though, inviting stares and comments and even friendship with others afflicted with the same type of a thing. Later on there was the red throne of a buggy – an indulgent purchase for the last baby – that we reversed over at Powerscourt Waterfall. Without him in it, thankfully, but unnerving nonetheless (you see, you see how stressed and stretched we were?) It was replaced by a not so regal sage green thing, which – possibly unimpressed – he mastered climbing out of within a week, and that was it. The last of the buggies. It took me a while to work out what to do with my arms at the end of the buggy days. Leave them to swing uselessly at my sides or fold them defensively across my chest? Ten odd years of buggy pushing will do that to a person.

I have a selective memory all the same. It weeds out that which will not serve me. Leaves me with the most perfect version of events. I pinch myself now to jog it along, to throw me some flash backs of the horror of sleep deprived nappy filled days. They will not come though. I can’t even remember any of them crying as babies. That’s how bad it is. Oh well.

‘We’re over the hump’ he continues triumphantly, which is just as well. Two wistful parents would be too much for any child to take.

Marque 5 is busy massaging the shoulders of the relieved parent while his brothers line up fighting for their turn. He has strong knot-sourcing thumbs and offers a variety of massage types – karate chops, piano fingers, the elbow speciality and the spider.
‘Hey, I could open a massage shop when I’m older and you guys can all come along’ marque 5 announces.
‘Yes, and I could open an art shop next door to it’ marque 2 adds.
‘And I’ll open a technology fix it shop on the other side’ marque 3 offers.
‘And I’ll design and build all the shops’ marque 4 throws in, and they all laugh as that’s exactly what he’ll be up to.

I look on at them, huddled together, being massaged by ‘the baby’ and projecting excitedly about their adult lives. The assumption that they will all still be huddled somehow, somewhere, is firm within them. Knowing that this will not be the case tears at my insides. On this, the eve of the tipping, I say nothing. Nothing at all. I hold the image close, take a deep breath and ready myself to embrace being over the hump. Whatever that is.

Happy birthday baby boy.

I’ve found the secret to successful adult birthday celebrations in early January. I’m prepared to let you in on it. Maybe. If you promise not to tell anyone else. I’ve been years searching and trying different places, eager to jizz it up. The collective ennui that follows the Christmas season makes this tricky. Not to mention all the empty pockets. As decorations are stripped down and the national mood seems to match this affair, anyone hoping to celebrate with more than a smile is, well, frowned upon. Until last night that is.

My sister’s birthday falls two days after the Epiphany. Elvis’s too which I always thought was pretty cool, a saving grace from Graceland. He would’ve been 80 this year which has me feeling old and young all at once. Old enough to remember enjoying some of the songs, young enough to be shocked that he would’ve been that old. As birthdays go though – and there’s nothing scientific about this – it must be one of bleakest dates. And I’ve been on a mission for years now to change this. To make it seem just as jolly and full of potential as, say, a birthday in June. Fooled she has not been though, as we sit in empty restaurants saying
‘Isn’t this great, all to ourselves, great service, sooo much attention, look at that picture, marvellous colours matching the wallpaper. Skedaddle for a pint anyone?’ Each year I feel personally responsible. Each year I feel I’ve failed her.

So last night as I set off in the gale force winds to meet her and my parents, at a destination chosen by me, again, I was feeling a little queasy. Queasy and also heavy hearted about the brutal murders in Paris. Humorists, cartoonists, journalists. Cultural producers, helping us to understand the world and its follies better. Police helping us to stay safe. Blown away. It’s all I was able to think about. I’d have to pinch myself under the table not to bring it up.

I decided to bring marque 1, her Godson, to twinkle at us and distract us from ourselves. Nothing like a kid to keep the adults behaving themselves. So when we entered our destination to the roaring hum of a thousand voices a disorientating pang embraced me. Something was wrong. We climbed to the second floor, a vast expanse looking out across the Irish Sea, and it too was jam packed. Not a place to sit down in sight, ginormous though it was. What the hell? Something’s on. Some big event I hadn’t heard about. I must’ve messed up again. I hovered by a table of nearly finished punters while marque 1 scouted around. He came back beaming having found them, already seated, at some long medieval style table with a gang of others. Students. We like students. We’ve never quite accepted the fact that our own student days are behind us. Maybe because we’ve been involved in third level teaching. That and the fact that we grew up in UCD with Dad at the helm of one of the Departments. We were all supremely comfortable sharing our table with these lovely male students, and if they were grimacing in return they hid it well. Oldies, those past the first flush of youth and a kid. They hid it well indeed. Mentally I’m catapulting marque 1 amongst them, ’tis only a short few years. That and asking them how their courses are going. Do they need any help with anything at all? Essays. Exams. Dinners. Clothes washing. We’re all in this together, after all.

I object. I have reasonable grounds. I object to the expectation of them being catapulted back into school when Christmas is not yet over. When everyone knows there are 12 days of Christmas and I think you’ll find we have reached day eleven, your Honour. We still have hibernating to do so that we can attack this new year with our full life force. In Spain the kids haven’t opened their presents yet, as they do so on the twelfth day. The Epiphany, January 6. School should not be returned to before January 7. When we all understand well enough that it is over, me Lord.

All this drums through my head as I search, on day ten, for lost beaker lids. As I crawl around hoping to seize upon a stash of ties that some organised person has squirrelled away for a day such as this. It cannot be over. We are in a sublime state of under the duvet hibernation. We peep out before midday to the glorious realisation that we can close those eyes again. The kids have taken to hauling their duvets down to the sitting room where they curl them around themselves, little heads just about visible, smiling in the bliss of having to be nowhere else at all. They seem to have stopped expecting food too in true hibernation style.

Occasionally we suggest a walk before the dim light fades altogether and sometimes we make it. Other times we don’t. We don’t much care either way, relishing as we are in our newly re-found teenage slob around days. Endless cups of coffee and tea are produced by marque 1 for his ailing parents as they lounge on their bed reading and snoozing and chatting. He also produces excellent toasted sambos for us in front of the fire at night – when we’ve forgotten our dinner and the red wine has the taste buds nagging.

So when marque 4 runs to the loo and bellows out that he has the runs, a little smile crosses my mouth. That’s one unfit for the big return. And when marque 5 wakes up before midnight on day ten, coughing his loaf off, another little smile happens. That’s two unfit. I assess the others for signs of ‘unfit to return’. They are hale and hearty though.

My dreams in the early hours of the eleventh day wake me. In them an Irish teacher has been trying to communicate with me since September. She has been writing an array of notes in the front of a copy-book – which I have never laid eyes on – arranging meetings which I have failed to turn up at. Her notes have been hopeful to start with, she signs off with smiley faces, blue and then highlighted in pink. Then the faces become neutral. By the time the dream wakes me she is drawing big frowney faces with ‘did not attend’ written underneath them.

I catch my breath and set about the daunting task of luring the fit from their slumber. Marque 3’s voice pipes out of the blackness of his room.
‘How many days ’til mid-term break?’
Ah god. Then I remember, too late, how some excellent mother was supposed to repair the sleeves of marque 1’s well worn jumper. That or buy him a new one.

I find myself on this eleventh Christmas morning ludicrously reaching for the sewing kit. Trying to thread a needle and realising that something has changed dramatically about my eyesight since I last did it. There is no way in hell that the big fat thread is going to fit into the tiny hole, if indeed I could actually see the hole. I hand the deed over to the young eyes of marque 2. And somehow I manage to repair one sleeve which is just going to have to do.

They dress and we leave – this half crew – in the darkness. It feels like evening time. As if we ought to be heading out on one of our late leisurely walks. This is cruel and unfair in a civilised society, your Honour. I plead for two more days. Just the two more days that are due to us all.

The scroll is growing mould, taking a shape that it shouldn’t (aren’t we all) and in danger of being turned into a paper aeroplane by any one of our playful sons. It’s been nagging away at me for years, lying there on top of the chest of drawers, looking as useless as it is in my life at the moment. It’s waiting, like me, for someone to come along and review it. Pick it up, look at it from different angles and in different lights, show it a bit of recognition, just say yes. Yes I see you. Come this way. This one’s for you.

When he asks what I’d like for Christmas I trot out my usual answer.
‘Nothing thanks, let’s just cover everyone else. No need to waste any money’.
‘But you got me something, so that’s not going to work, is it’. Damn.
‘Ok, let me think for a bit’. We have this nonsense conversation every single Christmas. We promise we won’t get anything for one another as it’s not about us, is it, and then I break it, naturally, just some little irresistible thing and then he has to too. Every single year.

‘I have it’ I tell him. We’re out for Christmas pints, all chilled, ish.
‘I know what I want’. He’s looking a little alarmed now. I must have that determined look in my eye. Very scary. Usually I point him gently towards some book or other. A sniff of old perfume perchance. Anything along those lines, love, will do. Not this time.
‘I want a frame. I want you to take the neglected, disintegrating scroll into a frame-it shop, if one exists, and get it framed’. His lack of an immediate gung-ho response says a lot. He’s not too sure about this. It’s dodgy territory. What if something happens to the scroll in transit? Fragile thing that it is. A gust of wind. A cloud burst. What if they lose it in the shop. Christmas chaos and all that it is. What if the frame is wrong? What will the consequences be for him then.

‘That’s it, it’s all I want. I don’t care what it looks like. I’m not exactly going to hang it on display. I just want it to be protected, minded, taken care of, you know?’
He’s still got a little scared look about him which his pint of Guinness is failing to wipe off. He knows as well as I do that it’s about a hell of a lot more than that. That there’s a symbolic parallel game being played. A game about identity loss and the quest for re-emergence. Much and all as the thesis was. Through humour though. Funny that. A frightening game is on the table. A game that needs to be played.
We order another round.
‘I’ll do it’ he says, three gulps in, banging his pint down on the beer mat, sealing the deal. That’s my boy. I like it. A willingness to play no matter how scared. That’s what has got us where we are after all.
Now get this man a whiskey chaser, he’s going to need it.

He does it well, all cloak and dagger sneaking around, plucking marque three to assist him, whisper, whisper, and I am ridiculously excited. A child again. I almost suppress the urge to quiz marque three on his return. It wouldn’t be fair, would it? Perhaps a little question falls out of my mouth. What did you get up to then? But he’s good. Details some things they did, dead-pan, and avoids the trap. On Christmas Eve he summons his dutiful, loyal assistant again and they disappear. I do manage to get other things done, stuff the turkey, dust the mantle-piece, wrap presents and the like, all in a bubble of sweet anticipation. On their return he tip-toes past me up the stairs, smiling a no-peeking smile. He’s enjoying the game now too. Making me wait.

On Christmas morning the kids wait until all are awake. They prod gently-ish at the tired old parents. Then we all go downstairs and they line up outside the sitting room door while he checks to see if Santa Claus has been, and I have my fingers crossed that no-one else has been in to relieve my children of the joy of their gifts. All is well and in we go for the bliss of the discoveries, the whoops, the laughter. An intoxicating hour with the kettle on again and again.

The gift is handed to me. I tear at the wrapping and the bubble wrap and it emerges, mounted, shiny, embraced by natural wood. It exceeds all expectations. I had no idea it could look this good. Beautiful even.

‘We should put it here’ he says whipping down an old picture in the corner of the hall and hanging the gift which I don’t want hung, not at all, until I see it and, fickle creature that I am, agree that it’s a perfect spot for it.
‘And then, every time you leave the house, to pick up the kids or whatever, you’ll pass it and remember who you are, your past and what lies ahead for you’ he says and he laughs, a kind, appreciative laugh. He has played this game far too well. The excitement for what lies ahead drums merrily in my veins. Now get this man a prize.

Thanks to all of you for reading and every good wish for the new year.

The woman in the queue behind me, but one, is keen to talk. We are snaked around the aisles with our returns for exchange at customer services. All these people who have made mistakes with their purchases of late are in this punitive queue. As mine is a direct swap for an undamaged replica I try a floor assistant first.
‘I just want to swap this deflated item for an inflated one’ I say reasonably.
He shakes his bureaucratic head and mumbles about customer services, pointing a hard worn finger towards the front of the shop.
‘But there’s a ginormous queue and look, here’s the good one, here’s the damaged one, here’s my receipt’ no-one need know my eyes try to tell him. It can be our little secret. There’s a flash of an understanding look about his wearisome face. Maybe he just needs to be bribed I think as I slot onto the tail-end of the snake. The kids are out early from school today so queueing here will mean I forego taking something else off my list. I’m about to feel sorry for myself when the woman behind me but one pipes up.
‘This is going to take forever’ she says about the static snake. I look up at the two customer services staff, at their grouchy non-festive faces and their painstakingly slow movements as they ignore the length of the queue.

I turn to the woman. She is looking frazzled and dazzled all at once.
‘I wouldn’t mind but I’m really up against it today. I’ve to collect the twins from Montessori and get all of us to the school for the nativity play’.
‘What time do you have to be at the school?’ I ask, not sure why, just joining in.
‘Quarter past eleven, but I have to get the others first. That’s if the car starts’ she says beaming at me. ‘It usually starts on the sixth try. It’s just back from the garage and it needs big work. They’ve fixed a couple of wires but it’s not as simple as that, apparently, it’s a much bigger job’.
‘Oh dear’.
‘And I wouldn’t mind but that’s come on top of a string of other things. The heating went kaput last week. My phone is broken, so if the car doesn’t work on the sixth try, I can’t call anyone. The TV is scrambled and my husband is trying to fix it. Mind you he managed to save his sports channels’ she says laughing.
‘And the in-laws are arriving from abroad on Monday for three days, I’ve nothing prepared for that’ she says continuing to smile. I’m dying to say something that might relieve her a little. Instead the more she talks, the less burdened I seem to feel. A symbiosis that I hadn’t been looking for. Or had I? Perhaps. Everyone is feeling the pressure at this time of year. But some a lot more than others. I think I’m feeling a smidgeon of guilt or something like it. It’s all throwing me off kilter.
‘And I wouldn’t mind, but I’m self-employed, I try to work from home in the mornings while the kids are in Montessori and school. To make the money to pay for all the things that are breaking’ she says, still smiling.
‘It wouldn’t pay for me to go out to work and have them minded. So if working from home doesn’t work, he’s going to have to get a better job’ she says, laughing.
‘Exactly’ I say laughing too, in useless solidarity. How can I help? If she wasn’t in such a rush I’d take her for a coffee. A complete stranger clearly in need of an ear. Instead I look at the woman directly behind me and she nods.
‘You should go in front of us’ I say, ‘if that’s any use to you’.
She is so grateful for this small gesture that, as she thanks us, her eyes glisten. She turns again when the dour customer services staff have done their job. She waves and thanks us again.
‘Merry Christmas’ she calls out, smiling still.
‘Merry Christmas’ I call back. I hope it all works out for you.

My turn. The grumpy customer services guy asks if I left my deflated item in a hot room. Yes, I stored it in the hot press, or was it the sauna, I forget, wasn’t I supposed to? Silly me. There must be a new sort of staff-training about. Blame the customer. Always blame the customer. Especially if they’ve just travelled inconveniently to this hell-hole and queued for half an hour to exchange something that shouldn’t be damaged in the first place. The cheek. But I’m not going to bother getting bothered by this ignorance. My thoughts are still firmly with the smiling woman on the verge. My fingers crossed wishing hard that her car starts, that she makes it to the play, that her in-laws are kind to her, that all her broken essentials are mended and that her work is a success. Deo Volente.

There’s a deliciousness in the air. It’s 5.30 on Friday. The friends have just been collected from our house and we are retrieving one of our own from another. The school bags are still in the car. There’s no homework or lunches to worry about. It’s been a busy week with Christmas tests, secondary school assessment tests, secondary school exams, plays. The fire is lit. The Christmas tree glistens and winks at us from the corner. There’s a bottle of Prosecco and a curry waiting for us in the fridge. We’ll delay the gratification though. Save it for the Late Late Show. The Domino’s pizza is about to be ordered for the lads. Friday night treats. There’s a knock at the front door. I open it expecting to see sunny marque 3 but it is not.

It is a small stocky ginger man with a story up his Nike sleeve. He begins as Marques 1 and 2 join me in the porch. As he pours his sorry story out I think now that I must’ve been having a mini-stroke. I listen as he pulls all the emotional punches. A recently deceased mother, Miss, a special needs little brother, Miss, only doing me best, Miss, but it’s so very cold in the mobile home, freezing Miss. He squeezes his little eyes hard together and, with the wind on his side, a tear dutifully, beautifully, falls down his freckled cheek. After coming over here on the dart Miss, just to do me best for the family in the wake of the poor old mother’s death. If you could help us at all, Miss, for to get a bit of heat, Miss.

I know as he talks and I glance at my boys, soaking up the hardship, that I will not turn him away. If they weren’t in the porch with me I would, no problem. This is an empathy lesson unfolding in front of us. He will not leave empty handed. There’s a fiver in my pocket. I know this because I’ve just given the other note – twenty euros – to himself to get a bargain on briquettes in Woodies. Five for €20. Saves you a fiver. A good deal. Heat for a week. This aids my already over active empathy muscle. The fiver we’ve just saved on heat will be given to this poor sod for his heat. A karmic circularity. Oh, come on. I know, I know, but I didn’t then. Clearly. The stroke an’ all, bleeding into the empathy section of the brain, wherever that may be, reeking havoc. Look at us, I think, with our tree and our fire and our food. Then he says something which should have me twigging big time. But it doesn’t.
‘I’ve even put duct tape on the windows in the mobile to try to keep some heat in, only doing me best, Miss’.
‘Sure we’ve duct tape on our own windows…’
‘I know Miss and I’m not being funny or an’thing but it is much, much more freezing in the mobile’.
We’ve duct tape on our downstairs window since our robbery earlier in the year. The window needs to be replaced and will be, presently, perhaps. The window and tape are not visible from where he’s standing. How does he know? And I think I’m processing all of this, mid-stroke, as I reach into my pocket to dish out a Christmas empathy lesson for all. Off he goes.

‘Wait a sec Mum, I could give him that box of chocolates – should I?’
Marque 1 had returned to the house minutes earlier, beaming, with a massive tin of Roses chocolates under his arm. An elderly neighbour had borrowed him for an hour to help her set up her new mobile phone. Handed him the chocolates to thank him when he was leaving. While he was working on the phone she was telling him stories about some voluntary work she does. Heart wrenching stories from the recipients of meals-on-wheels. Marque 1’s empathy button was already well and truly engaged.
‘Yes’ the wise mother instructed. ‘We don’t need them and his family would devour them’.
So he goes after him up the road and I go out onto the path, just in case. I notice a car down the road, engine running, head lights full on. It reminds me of something. Think brain, think. Then I hear him, sounding not too grateful for the chocolates – ‘would you have any money yourself lad?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Would you have any money for me in your pocket there?’
Jesus. ‘No I don’t, sorry, I don’t’ my brave son replies. He comes back in but something is niggling.

He goes back out again to witness our poor unfortunate frozen friend run down the road, jump into the car with the headlights and zoom off.
‘We’ve just been scammed’ he says and explains it all to my leaking brain.
‘Just like the time when we were robbed, the car at the bottom circle, headlights full on so we can’t read the reg. It’s the same gang’.
Jesus.
The father arrives back plonking the great value briquettes in their box as the kids battle to be the first to tell him the story. I phone the guards to let them know that there’s a gang checking out houses for robberies in the area. That’s why he knocked on the door. To see if we were really in. Or just leaving the lights on to fool the likes of himself. Sob story at the ready in case someone opens the door. He probably wasn’t expecting any eejit to actually hand over some dosh. The kind Garda suggests that I keep the station on speed-dial. They could be back. And he sends a car to check the surrounding roads.

The empathy lesson is re-delivered by himself. He tells his sons never, ever, to hand out money at the door to people they don’t know. Anyone calling should have ID otherwise they have no business calling or asking for anything. All this as I sit, sheepishly, on the couch pretending to be relaxed, reading the newspaper. The appetite for the delicious evening ahead has gone. Better not have that Prosecco. Mightn’t wake up when my ginger friend comes back for more.

‘He was playing on the stories that have been in the news, about the homeless and the freezing cold, you could see that’ marque 2 tells me later.
‘Could you, at the time though?’ I ask. And if so, why didn’t you tell me, intuitive son, telepathically of course.
‘Yeah, I thought it was pretty suspicious the way he chose our house, I mean why our house, and you could see he was trying to cry’.
Jesus.

I tell my mother, looking for a bit of sympathy for my foolishness.
‘God, and your sister was scammed only last Saturday over the phone. Have I no daughter who can sniff these creeps out? Your younger sister, maybe’ she says hopefully.
Yes my younger sister living in Dubai would be onto them. Would have no problem telling them where to go before they had a chance to get going. I say this to Mum and she sounds relieved. One child with a bit of sense, ’tis all we can hope for. She suggests a dog for the future. Something to look after us all. She must be really worried. I spend the next couple of hours looking uselessly out my bedroom window trying to catch him. And I wake up in the middle of the night with a bang. I get up and run around the house looking for him. Then I gather any stray bits of technology and hoard them in my room. I sleep fitfully cursing myself and him. The empathy lesson turns into a full-blown lesson on the usefulness of cherry picking paranoia. Ho-hum.

I hover outside the sitting room door catching the tail-end of marque 4 instructing marque 5 on how he came to be.
‘Mum had an egg inside her and it cracked and you grew’.
‘No she DIDN’T’.
‘She did, in fact Mum had too many eggs inside her. That’s her disability’, and he cackles.
Cheers mate. I hadn’t quite looked at it like that.
‘NO SHE DIDN’T. GOD put me in mummy’s tummy. AND THEN I GREW’. I enter the room as marque 5 seems on the verge of thwacking marque 4 for suggesting he came from an egg. He doesn’t like eggs unless heavily disguised in a cake.
‘I think you might have a few eggs left in you Mum’, marque 4 continues.
Cheers again mate.
We haven’t mentioned God or eggs or anything at all to them. They’re creating their own stories, cherry picking their way into being from whatever they absorb around them. They don’t look for validation from us. Long may it continue.

Overhearing their fresh snippets as they navigate and make sense of the world has been a source of laughter and inspiration over the years. Some of them stick and float in my mind. Like when a much smaller marque 2 observed: ‘You have 5 sons shining down on you – but you’ll get too hot’. Indeed I will. Or when marque 3 told marque 4 that he would find the ball on the beach because he was very good at finding things: ‘I can even find God and He is VERY hard to find’. He was four at the time. The younger the snippets are caught the better – before too many influences creep in. We swore we’d write them down, each little interesting one, to show them when they’re older. Must jot that down later, I say in the muddle and the mayhem of the day. Then later, if I remember at all, I reach for the quotes in my frazzled head, grasping and grappling but they’re gone. I tell myself that next time I’ll stop what I’m doing and jot on the spot. If I did as I said we’d have tomes of them. Oh well.

They seem to arrive on this planet with a clear philosophical mind and a fresh moral compass which if left alone – without the cloudy ‘guidance’ of the elders – would probably do just fine. ‘Let the children show you’ is a line I heard once that stuck with me. The context was a bereft, struggling grandmother seeking counsel on how she was to be with her young grandsons after their mother’s death. ‘Let the children show you’ was the simple response. I thought then, as I do now that this could be a guiding principle. If we can remember to do that instead of imparting too much of ourselves everyone might be a little better for it. We might just learn something along the way too.

So one day, when I must’ve forgotten that mantra, I was busily tidying for guests coming and giving out to marque 3 – age 5 – for making a mess and wasting good art paper, scrunching it up instead of drawing something nice.
‘But look Mum, it’s a crab’ he said, indignantly, holding up the screwed up ball of yellow paper. I stared at it waiting for the crab to emerge – much like staring at a cloud that a child says is a giraffe, wait, wait, ah yes now I see it – and the body revealed itself but I had to stop myself from asking which bit of crumple was the claws. Perhaps I looked a little confused as he looked up at me waiting for the ‘ah yes, now I see it’ moment.
‘Maybe you just don’t understand our world Mum’ he said, eyes glistening.
Maybe indeed.

So now whatever it is they say they see in the clouds, I see it too, fingers crossed, wishing it was that clear to me. And I’ve bought a little notebook for the snippets. Now I just have to find a pen.

‘My animation teacher says I’m good at caricatures’ marque 2 says, pencil in hand, staring above my brow.
‘Does she now?’
‘She does. Do you know what a caricature is? It’s where you take a feature and exaggerate it to make it look funny’.
‘I see. What are you doing looking at my forehead?’
‘Oh nothing’ he says, scribbling away.
Sometime later he produces his creations.
‘Look Mum, it’s a whole family. You see the way I’ve exaggerated the teeth here, made them longer and…
‘Who is the old woman in it?’
‘That’s the granny’.
‘Phew, I thought it was me’.
‘No, I just borrowed inspiration from’ and he doesn’t finish, looking suddenly afflicted with a terrible shyness.
‘From what?’
‘Well, from the little lines there, the two ones that go down and the ones that go across and…’
‘So you copied my forehead for your granny?’
‘Not copied, just borrowed and exaggerated a bit, you know, it was the inspiration’.
‘Well I’m glad to be of assistance to your artistic endeavours’ I say staring at the granny. Her forehead a complete replica of mine. I’m wondering if throwing a little insulted strop is called for. Instead I hook the ends of my hair, sweep them forwards and hang them across the brow.
‘Perhaps I should get a fringe’ I say and he’s looking pretty concerned now. He seems to have become mute again too. Maybe the scraggly ends going into my eyes fails to give that immediate carefree look I’m after. Oh well. Time to let him off the hook.
‘You know your great grandfather was a famous cartoonist and caricaturist?’ He’s nodding, still unsure if speaking could make matters worse.
‘Maybe that’s where you get it from’.
Show don’t tell I say to myself, a writer’s mantra, and I jump up, whip the old dissertation off the shelves, blow the dust off it and start to flick through.
‘See here, this is one of your great grandfather’s cartoons – look at the exaggerated foreheads and…’
The troops gather around.
‘Wait a second mum, did you write that big book?’ marque 4 asks.
‘I did’. Irish humour and identity. I’d have a rake more to add to it now.
‘Oh my god, how many pages are in it?’
‘Don’t know, three hundred or something like that’.
‘How long did it take you?’ marque 3 asks as I flick and point to the cartoons with the great-grandfather’s signature. CEK.

‘Well it wasn’t all written in one go’ I say remembering the painstaking stages from conception to birth of this tome. How it was started before marque 1 joined us and completed as marque 2 joined us.
‘I had to have the first draft in before you were born’ I tell marque 2, thinking that was probably when the furrowed brow began to take hold.
‘I really wrote it while pregnant with you’. That’s why you’re my sidekick little friend.
‘I submitted it on the Monday and you were born on the Thursday’.
They say a few wows about all the words and pages and then run off to find paper and pencils. They spend the afternoon sketching and cartooning. A theme started by marque 4 gathers steam. He draws a big beaming oblivious woman holding five little kids in her arms. A terrified little man stands in the background, holding a bill for the cost of such a family.

‘Look at Dad, he’s shocked with that big bill’ he says cackling.
They all do variations of it. Some swap it around, my feminist rantings haven’t gone unnoticed, and the woman holds the bill behind the cheerfully oblivious man. It’s an afternoon of laughter as they connect with their inner cartoonists.

‘Were you doing anything interesting when you were pregnant with me? marque 3 later enquires.
I think for a moment. Should I tell him this or not? Oh what the hell.
‘Daddy and I were celebrating, big time, after I got my doctorate. That was in April 2004. You were born nine months later’. A grin spreads across his face.
‘So I’m the celebration baby?’
Yes, and how it suits you, you cheerful little soul.

Just as well I can’t afford Botox – we wouldn’t have had this gem of an afternoon. Now where the hell are the scissors…

Nothing could have prepared us for it. I wrack my brains to see if there’s anything I could’ve done to save him from this morning. In fairness we did a few things. So there should be no guilt. And yet.

Some weeks ago I rocked up to the school dentist with marque 4 complaining of a sore tooth. A swift check had a cavity diagnosed and it was quickly filled. Great. Until five days later in school when he sneezed and the filling flew out across the classroom. A couple of weeks later the complaints began again. We traipsed to the school dentist. An abscess was diagnosed. Antibiotics were prescribed. I asked, perhaps a little suspiciously, why the filling had flown out of his mouth. I was told that the abscess probably pushed it out. Silly me. I had been wondering if it was made up properly. Off we tootled to try the antibiotic route. Great. Until three days later when the vomiting bug visited and he couldn’t continue to take his medicine. A week or so after that we were back at the school dentist. Along with hundreds of others, it being the Monday after Hallowe’en. We waited two and a half hours to be seen. A different antibiotic was prescribed. And a conversation began about saving the tooth versus extracting it. I was told that for a HSE dentist the only course of action in situation like this is extraction. But I could make an appointment with a private kids’ dentist and see if root canal treatment plus crowning would be possible.
‘That’s what I’d do if it were me’ the sage dentist said. ‘As he’s only eight and has another four years before the second tooth is due to appear. It’s entirely up to you though. We can pull it out if that’s what you choose’.
Well that wasn’t a choice was it? What parent would say ‘ah just yank it out there’ when it could possibly be saved. When the good dentist herself would do that for her child. We made an appointment with the very busy private kiddie dentist. For an ‘assessment’. Two weeks down the road. I forgot to ask what an assessment meant or what it might cost. Silly me.

I managed to dodge that appointment and father and son took off to a whole new world. By the time we met up for a coffee, after dropping marque 4 to school, he was reluctant to speak about it. An acute form of allergic claustrophobia had kicked in as soon as he set foot in the plush colourful waiting room and it only got worse. He was drawn into the lair and performed to in a sing along fashion. Shown how to brush his teeth – the father that is – and told that the tooth in question might well be for the tooth fairy. But sure we’ll X-ray and see what’s going on. €150 euros later he left with a treatment plan heading well north of a grand – for milk teeth – and with the knowledge that the troublesome tooth could not be saved. Oh and with a food/tooth brushing chart. Worth every cent so. ‘Do you agree to this treatment plan?’ the form asks us. Sign on the line. No we bloody well do not.

Back to the lovely free no-frills non-performing school dentist it is. We play tag on it. He gets him there on time. I get the others to school. Then I get there and take over. Just as the anaesthetic begins to take hold. Just prior to the job in question. He scarpers merrily off to a meeting. We chat – the dentist, her assistant and myself – about how marque 4 is a super long distance runner. How he can out-run all his brothers. We are, I take it, relaxing him. But he’s not worried. Neither am I. I’ve told him he might be getting a day off. Depending on how feels. Which he knows really means he’s getting a day off. Even if I’ve dressed him in his uniform. I’m wondering how soon it will be before the local anaesthetic wears off and I can take him out for a treat. Before I’ve had time to sing a few more of his praises she’s up with her wrench.
‘You might feel a little tug’ she says ‘and there can be some sound effects’ and she smiles knowingly at me, in cahoots as we now are, but I know not why. Not yet. She tugs and she pulls and he lets out a whimpering groan and there’s an almighty elongated crunch and his legs are wriggling and I’m up holding him, my eyes stinging, telling him how brave he is and there’s more tugging. Brutal, brutal, horror show stuff. He is groaning ‘no, no’ as the colour drains right out of him and a sweat breaks out around his little nose and on his furrowed brow. I hold his clammy hand and tell him that it’s over but he’s still in agony and suffering from shock, murmuring ‘no’ repeatedly. Like after an assault. A floored, bewildered victim. No, no, no. But no one can hear. He thinks he’s going to throw up so the assistant produces what looks like a bed pan and I think I might throw up too. I just want to grab him and run the hell out of here. But there are instructions for care being mouthed at my frozen brain. He now looks like he’s going to faint rather than puke so we prop him and pull his legs up – they’ve been dangling over the side of the chair in a bid to escape. The assistant swears she sees a trace of colour return to his cheeks, invisible though it might be to the mother, which means it’s time to go. I scan the room for a recovery corner and have a little chat with myself. Surely there’s a recovery area in here for query fainting patients? You can’t just turf us out onto the street keeling over, can you? Can you? Is it just me or is everyone deaf and blind in here? Did you not hear my son saying no? Can you not see him now? Where’s the heart? Maybe sing along Sue should’ve been given a chance after all. I bet she’d have somewhere cosy for us to sit a while.

I can’t carry him out as there’s another little boy waiting to be seen and we don’t want to scare him. Or his mother for that matter. The boy is from a younger class the dentist informs us. Marque 4, it is hinted, heavily, is to go out looking like a big brave role model. So he gives an encouraging little ghostly wave as he wobbles gingerly by and when we’re out of sight I swoosh him up in my arms. I strap him into the car and as the seat belt clicks he goes out cold. His body just shuts down with the sheer shock. I’ve never seen anything like it. It is all of 9.20 in the morning. I just want to get him home to the couch now and see his eyes opening with a glimmer of trust left in them. Please God. And then we’ll clean up the grisly tooth for the lucky fairies.