retail torture, what may lie hidden under hats, ghosts amd ambidexterity

On the weekend I brought the boy shopping for clothes and shoes. This is a serious business for a number of reasons. Firstly there is the fact that we must spend hours (seemingly) wandering distractedly (me) and grimly (him) around a large and gloomy sportwear emporium, being the only establishment whose garments and footwear he will consent to wear.  Oh,  I have tried to insist on more mainline outlets, but the combined anguish and dissatisfaction on the boys face, as he is forced to try on non sportstype issue, is simply too disheartening, and I lack the will to persist.  Also I have been reassured by kind and more experienced  friends that he will arrive, at an unspecified date in the future, at a point where he no longer gravitates towards leisure wear.  Secondly, therres  the fact of his very determined ideas  about what he wants, and in what size, in denial of the  point that he is growing like a young oak tree, and what fitted two months ago WILL NOT FIT YOU NOW.   We have a number of heated discussions in this regard, as he produces various items from the older boy section, and I look for replicas in the small men sizing.  Its clearly a psychological stretch, which I have observed  in  his sister also, for him to leave behind the older boy sizes, and make for the mens section.  I suspect  that the mens styles are less cool of course. But the nub of the matter is self image, the replacement  of your internal  ID  photograph from child to adult, of perhaps even harder, to  the no mans land of undefined and gawky adolescence.  And that leads us  here, to the boy striding through the store,  picking out random items,   with myself hissing at the perplexed assistant (bringing  up the rear) to bring us the shoes etc, in a range of at least two sizes.  He is trying on shoes, when the boss appears, and proceeds to hover disgruntled and bored, as I enter into lengthy persuasions to try on various more suitable  sizes and styles, with the boy.  His brow is creased with a mix of boredom, irritation and anguish and this is a delicate operation.  I had dispatched the boss to window shop with her sister, elsewhere in the mall, and I am not pleased to see her. "Oh HOW  much longer will this TAKE, I feel  SICK",  she is quite pale, but that may be the articficial light in this windowless warehouse.  She is here, she tells me, because she has been been dismissed summarily by her sister," because I have the hiccups, and she says I look DISGUSTING everytime I open my mouth".  The boy, who has been trying to get my attention, (he has MADE A CHOICE)  is extremely uncomplimentary about both sisters, and I gather an armful of mixed items hastily for the check out as she begins to sniff.  Enough ! a sufficency of  retail torture for one saturday, I say.

"Mum, if I tell you something promise you wont get mad!" my first daughter, who  is looking winsome in a grey  peaked wollen hat,  flutters her eyelashes at me through the mirror from the back seat of the car,  as she utters this.  I agree that I wont (entirely without sincerity) but at least she has prepared me for the bad thing.  She tells me she has coloured her hair with one of those cheap packet colours, that morning. Now I have told her that hair culouring, wine tasting, a second ear piercing, and some other ardently wished for self improvements  which I prefer not to go into , may be considered on a phased basis when she is sixteen and three quarters.  So she is being premature here. I also realise why she is wearing the fetching hat, which I have complimented. her on, earlier. She had accepted my compliments with a bland smile too. Teenagers, acomplished fibsters all.  "Well darling, and how does it look, are you waiting for an opportune monent to unveil? "(I know scarcasm in low, but I have to have some fun). " Nooo, oh mum it looks awful. patchy, flaming red on top, and patchy for the rest.   "Dear me, is it permanent?"  "Nooo, it comes out in twenty eight washes.... And mum, can't I take Monday off school, it will be more faded by Tuesday. "Not a chance, darling, you took your chances, coloured your hair, and now live with the law of CONSEQUENCES".  "Or" said the boss "go home and wash your hair twenty eight times".  "And never mind cos you wont look look like a flaming hyena for more that a few weeks  sniggered the boy.  Well. we will draw a veil on the no holds barred three way battle of words, after that.  Suffice it to say that I had to resort to turning the car radio up to the maximun, which did shock them into silence, and I never do that until my back is against the proverbial wall.

At home, as I sipped gratefully on a very large glass of red wine, a text message pinged into the kitchen. "Babe, you were wonderful last night, did you get back allright. Micheal" I read wonderingly.  All three children, being present, read the (misdirected, in case I need to say) text. "Oh mum, you must text back, or he 'll think she got it and has' nt replied, said the elder daughter.  "Yes, and SHE  might think he never called" said the boss".  "Huh said the boy, bet she gave him the wrong number".  Anyway, mellowed by wine, I replied to tell him he had  got the wrong number. The phone pinged again  "are you sure"?, the kitchen rocked in hilarity.  I told him I was very sorry for his trouble , and YES  I was sure. There followed a thread of texting, whereby he enquired as to my availibility for a date, my location, and whether I was prepared to travel. When I declined on the basis that I was too old , too tired and too disinclined, he set himself out to perssuade me. Your never too old , he advised,  I bet you re beautirful." When I  again declined, he became reproachful, Eventually I took an allmighty sip of wine, and told  him ,firmly, to STOP  a .texting, and b .being insane. He continued  sporadically,  texting about how much he missed me,  as I brooded , in a (slight) wine haze, , on the absurdidty  of having to break up tactfully with a complete stranger,  particularly after the day I'd suffered.  Or, as my friend rudely told me later on, without getting it on, as a preliminary. But then, the tone of her mind was never very nice.

On Sunday I quizzed the boy about his brillant maths test result.  He told me about this on the phone,on Friday as I drove home from work,  I was starting a warm glow when he followed on to say that Miss figured  he was cheating. whaaaat!  I could not pursue it then. Anyway,  it turned out that the boy was having fun with Miss's look of (allegedly) incredulous approval.  " She didn't  actually say anything about cheating,  and  I did tell her that my sister helped me revise, A LITTLE  BIT I MEAN".  Yes and she will be helping you a little bit from hereon out, I silently vowed.  The boy does very well, in small  intimate groups, so to speak. He thrives on one on one interactions. Large groups, and he is now in a large class and has been more often than not all the way through his schooling , present a burden of intense concentration from him that it is very difficult to maintain. When he gets it, he gets it instantly, but needs a quiet and focused setting to take in what he is being told. His sense of hearing in particular   functions at a particularly  high setting. . Luckier the ones who are not disturbed or distracted by a large body of people around them, on a superficial or  a subliminal level.

"Would you rather not be visited by dead people? " the boss asks me,  in the evening. "Umm ...ahh,  yes, I'd rather not.  Eh why?  I knew she has been brooding recently. Is this it ?  I wonder.   "I would not want to, even if they had things to tell me, even if I knew them, I would do without being told" .  She explains that she had heard a radio programme about young people who had used an ouija board, and received messages from dead relatives etc, but later were quite haunted by the  messengers.  "I know, she said earnestly," that your relations and friends might want to communicate with you, but I think it would be just scary and not really helpful"  She went on to the subject of angels, and how a schoolfriend had told her that you could ask them (the angels) to drop a feather to prove their existance.  "But I said, you're all right,  theres no need". "Because" she went on "we  might have been disappointed, and also you should not look for proof of God, or souls or any thing like that,  SHOULD YOU MUM , you must have faith or you're missing the point. "Hmm I' m sure you re right sweetie.  Um  would dead relatives, even grandparents , people you knew well,  be very scary?"   "Oh yes, "she shuddered.".   I almost said, carelessly, "or parents" ,  because that of course is not to be contemplated when you are a child or a young person and are dependant.  I have undertaken to hang around until at she is at least fifty years old. She asked me to, a few years ago, and I agreed.  And of course,  nobody in her circle has died,  in her life so far. With the exception of my brother Eoghan that is.  His  death , childlike and extremly unwell as he was when she knew him , was unreal to her however.  I wonder if I would feel her  alarm  if I were TO   SEE HIM NOW. And how  indeed do you distinguish fear of death,  from  fear of the pain of loss? He was released from great suffering, from a range of ills  associated with Downs Syndrome,.  My  memories  of him, a series  of film clips, where he sits in his pram, wearing  his  bright  blue  sleeping  suit ,  the fleece well washed,  worn in patches,  a huge lopsided smile  splitting his soft moon face;  or  his anxious  infant face siting on a towel at the beach anxiously yielding to the  vast expanse of strange sandy  stuff stinging his toes and the hopeful ministrations of his (mad as march hare)   brothers and sisters; or  left off by the school bus at the end of the lane and running arms and legs akimbo, a daft joyous cartweel, a spinning piece of thistledown , home to his mother. His mother and mine, who watched for him through the long bay windows of the house and described this to me, unforgettably.  Another film clip.  I put it with my own.  A small ghost lying in waiting to ambush, a fist into the gut, unpredictably  when you''r getting  on with  other things.  I can barely contain those feelings now. Barely. And we forget too  easily a childs reality, frequently overwhelmed by feeling, not knowing  yet that pain ends, and begins, and ends, or joy returns, or the imperative of just going with it.  Who wouldn't freeze? There's the fear, acquired subliminally  from parent, family,  and there is  this; the power and depth of childrens capacity to feel, comparable to the raw colonisation by hormone of every  adolescent.  the intensity only receeding sufficently in adulthood to allow, with the aid of a few cognitive tricks, the hearts truest feeling without laying waste to judgement sanity and basic survival. My  film reel of Eoin is     precious and painful beyond any words here.  I 'm pretty sure this  is   true for each and every one of his family.. So the boss is  right, she doesn't want to  trouble herself with souls, visitations from the dead , the possibility of loss, she has enough to be getting on with, growing up,

                                             AMBIDEXTERITY

                                                 That boy came,
                                              unarmed to the world.
                                           Without birth fairy gifts of any sort,
                                              save for thatch of soft red hair
                                               and ambidexterity,
                                               his father's caustic eye,
                                               his mother's grace.
                                          His days acclerating, until
                                             poor body withering,
                                             something spilled
                                             through all the houshold,s rooms
                                               lapping warm
                                          enveloping all who came there.

                                          But ah, he's gone to soon from
                                             the howling empty rooms where
                                                we waked him.     

the universe spinning, savage worms and choreography

"His worms are savage" . The boy and two of his fishing buddies  climb back into the car, clutching a dirty looking sack, after a stop at the fishing tackle shop on our way to the  Heritage Park  where the lake is stocked with large rainbow trout. Today  is his birthday, and this is his chosen way of spending it, a long, uninterrupted day of fishing  in the rain that has been coming down steadily since last night.  I listen to their rusty , see sawing voices , comparing  the merits of various, obscure tackle shops, in the back of the car, where they are a tangle of knees elbows and long limbs, and I hope that the seedy looking bag , plonked  down in my line of vison , is not actually moving .  The boss, who is   partial to a bit of fishing sits up front with me. We have agreed to remove ourself after an hour or so of  fishing, and leave them at it, "because you dont need  to hang around mum, you can do shopping or something".

We trudge, the boss and I,  behind the purposefully  striding youths, along the track leading through the  tall  lugubriously dripping trees  to the lake.  The morning is cast in a greeny grey light and we could be wandering about in a fariy tale forest, quite  insulated from the rest of the world.  Coming here has become a ritual over the past few years on  the boy's birthday,  but in earlier years, the boys would take their forest exploring, playing outlaws  in the wood time , on the way to the lake, and I would  shepard them through the day.  They are already setting up the rods, when the boss and I  reach the lake and I leave her with the boys for her hours fishing, and head to the beautiful old restaurant in the centre, feeling distinctly in the way.  And having the peaceful coffee there is most pleasant, as I  contemplate the boy's growing independence,  advancement towards adolesence proper. The tricky time where you re not required till desperately needed, because they can and do take on the world, without having , sadly, much in the way of  judgement, caution , or common sense.  (Foolhardy)  I  feel ready for anything, in the peace of the restaurant redolent of coffee brewing  and calm.  Also I'm pleased  that the boss is with them.  Its one of  the few  places where she and the boy can share the same space.   I think it may be to do with the fact that there is very little talking involved.  And  it is true that I have come accross them  from time to time crouched together on the stair  landing at home,  caught up in a game with his carefully preserved collection of minature cars or lego, in perfect amity and co operation. 

When I go to fetch her for the "shopping or something" I am  mesmerised by the vision of the tall heavy young men, stock still, planted on the muddy bank, the rods an extentsion of  hand to water,   unmoving heads framed by the overhanging branches. Where did my little boy  go? And when exactly?   where that  child I glimpsed at six o clock one brillant summer's  morning ,  reading quietly in his bedroom,  fair head bent, absorbed and oblivious, as I descended the stairs for an early work start, for whom I wrote this:

                                          Morning Breaks For Him.


                      In downwards drift throught this sleeping house
                        my stray gaze pinned
                           by the golden child silent and still.
                             Morning breaks for him.

                      The blinding motes part to frame
                          (sweet) fool green and gleaming,
                              he, headbent and reading
                                 of warriors, heroes.
                                   He takes the bridge on the river Quoi
                                      singlehanded
                                         dreaming.

                        For him the bright sun burns, the dawn birds sing.
                        For him the brave day comes, the dark night done.
                        For  him the sacred myths stir, the world begins.
                        The universe spinning. For him. For him. 
   
                  

The boss sits beside  me  knitting and chatting, as we drive into town. She loves to talk and for me it has   become  soothing background noise,  like the warm hum of a large, kindly and superbly functioning  computer, computing nicely, as she does .  I tune in and out of it, which can get me into trouble  when she occasionaly requires a response.  I get the sorrowful enquiring look, like I'm getting now, as she realises I have NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION.  "No, sweetie, of course I was listening, just ah  run that last bit by me again?".  "Do you think they 'd notice if we measured the baby's head?.......I mean what size is a four month  old baby',s head?  Like how fast does it grow?.  Ah right, I realise where shes going here. The boss has taken to knitting with confidence, determination and creative flair. She has downloaded a knitting pattern for a wollen hat from the internet , and intends to bestow as christening gifts two brightly coloured hats on the two new baby girls who have come to our  extended family,.because its winter now and how many cute little babygrows  do they need?  And, like, probably no one else will THINK  its more importanr to KEEP THEIR HEADS WARM.   But how to be sure  the hats fit? And its a gift, so we can't ask the parents outright, and my lack of knowledge about relative skull sizes is most dissapointing, but we COULD  go visit,  smuggle in a measuring .tape tomorow.  COULD WE?  "  uh well...We'll see". Anyway she tells me her friends  would like the knitting pattern, and want to know where she got the wool. I could tell them that an exhaustive trawl through various shops was key.  The boss is thorough.  I  ask her whether she will share the knitting pattern, and she says maybe.  Maybe? This is quite unlike her, and on enquiry it turns out  she is having another pained episode with the said schoolfriends. She is almost always in a threesome, of friends, and periodically has a sad little tale to relate,of backstabbing,  exclusion, knotty misunderstandings.  I am alternatively sorrowful and enraged by these tales. I  rage on her behalf, much to her disapproval, because "you can't say that sort of thing mum , NOT ON PURPOSE , its mean."  "Be  mean!, be mean back!, serve em right"`I  disgracefully say. .  And I have to admit here that I never cracked the girl friendship bit when  at her age. Being the perennial outsider, I stuck , thankfully, with my nerdish  friend (we shared a taste for books) and steered clear. I found it  a hellish  and coundfounding puzzle, the business of female group dynamics, which only improved  for me as I got older (much older) ( and could pick and choose a handful of the likeminded).  I asked the boy about  this,  on one fraught occasion as I tried to comfort the first daughter, dumped by  a school friend who had promised to be her partner for the school tour  just the day before they were due to go  "when its too late to ask anyone else mum" . "Who do you sit beside on the bus darling?.  (he never never wrecked my poor old heart about this stuff  ) He  looked at me blankly before replying "which ever seat is empty of course, no one SITS BESIDE anyone...whatdya mean mum?" And there you have it, the entire trajectory  of female suffering, the excruciating  machinations ,unknown and unrecognised by the lucky other sex. A slight tweaking of DNA and a sweeping  male sidestep past the quagmire of female yearniing and paranoia to be befriended,   in powerless  bondage to the herd.  I have never wanted to be a man except in this.  (Oh yes indeed,  only Women Bleed)  However, the boss is a bigger  and a  better person than me. "I knew quite well that she was trying to make me feel   left out .... and  like sometimes we get on, besides it was obvious, and also it was  too silly to mind  and like I pretended not to hear but INSIDE ME I SMILED.

We returned for the fishermen, laden with catch, after some damp and half hearted shopping.   Again they colonised the back seat of the car, saturated with rainwater, giving of a mighty whiff of muddy river and fish.  The boss cocked an eyebrow at me as we listened  to the stories about the catch, the one that got away (and the one that didnt), the raucous jokes told  in lowered tones till they forgot there was women present, or the deep discordant voices segued  into a near falsetto  , on the punchline.   Neither of us spoke, her bland expression mirrored my own, but its surely a fact  that INSIDE ME TOO  I SMILED as I brought them all home in the drowned, blurred aroud the edges, Irish evening. And this  for the boss:

                                                      Choreography

                                                 Unable now to forgo
                                             warm vigour in a childish clasp,
                                                   my life become,
                                                    choreographed.
                                                    Time after time
                                               your hand slips into mine,
                                                     I dont look down
                                                      I'm reaching blind
                                                          to fond you.

                                               The clattering streets,
                                                    our winter walks,
                                                       that visit to my father's grave.
                                                Your hand my anchor,
                                                       holdsfast
                                                          a skittering heart.

A bear caged, a crab perling; let loose the dogs!

"You did! You nearly knocked me down"  the boss's voice is implacable,  on this warmish  grey September morning, as I mount the stairs to see what (the bloody hell) is going on. The boy stands stock still on a stair, brow lowered, eyes stormy and shakes his head.  "He pushed me, as I went up and he was coming down" , she is having satisfaction for  this.  "Did you?",  he shakes the head again,  "He did!, he's not speaking to me, so he pushed me instead".  I look  up at him,  surely he has grown upwards some more, and outwards, his shoulders bulking up, his schoolbag perched incongrously on his back. It seems  as though planes of skeletal growth, spurts of hormonal driven energy project   out  of him in jagged fashion,  his growing frame  simply unable to contain it all. The wonder was that he didnt take the walls down with him, never mind the boss, as he made his driven gloomy way downstairs. "Ah, I 'm sure it was an accident, and he will be more careful....eh wont you?".  The boss is outraged.  I ignore a forensic examination by her of how IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN  an accident. "Are you, in fact not speaking to her"?  I  feel compelled to ask,  "I am not, as, if I do I will probably  say something she will not  like" he finally speaks. "And then...yet more ....trouble".

The boy was dispatched in isolation to his room the evening before for saying something I did not like, in a tone I liked even less. He had presented me with a very poor maths test to sign, which was inscribed by his teacher with the very reasonable request that he pay attention and work harder on maths homework. The boy and I have a rapprochement regarding homework. He has moved from the position that fifteen minutes was more than adequate,  to an hour or so after which we run through what was  allegedly revised. I have moved from a rosy vision of the boy putting in three hours (as suggested brightly by the school), in the face of his cold horror at "WHAT! THREE HOURS...IMPOSSIBLE . It  ocourred to me then  that maths was not a subject included  by him  in the  said revision.. "I uh dont actually need to revise maths, |I listen, in class, I always get it, except for this test, but hey its not a a problem because I got it afterwards..I ah know it now. .. He is an expert re assembler of the facts, where his comfort zone might be in danger, I have consistantly found. I presented the test paper to our resident mathematician,  fresh from her  A in honours  maths. "Hmm ,algebra (who knew ,with the boys scrawl), basic stuff,  these are basic mistakes" and she offered to help him with the revision.  The boy fought hard against this prospect of" WHAT?  MORE homework," and that culminated in  the aforementioned  period in isolation : Not because of his resistance but because of his raw dismissive tone, his impatient barely  surpressed fury. towards myself.  I tell him that I will not tolerate disrespect or indeed agression verbal from him, although , in fact I do tolerate a certain level of contrary sniping  from  (the front) him, because I know he literally cannot help it and it is necessary to him.  Its a matter of crossing a line , beween us. His sisters fail to see the nuanced  line I have with him, though , and the boss is voluble in her criticism of how HE ALWAYS GETS AWAY WITH IT,as I put the dog in the garden  and sheperd all three into the car, for school.  The boy trudges, rawboned and ackward to the car. Its clear that he would rather be nibbled to death by ducks than apologise to his sister, or acknowledge her in any other way .

I am aware of him sitting behind me in the car, crouched like a caged bear, his knees jutting ackwardly, his face a study in unyielding male stoicism.  I can hear the  dog too, barking mournfuly as we exit the driveway. He has an oscar deserving collection of wistful, mournful  and tragic barks in his armoury  , depending on circumstances. Sometimes, with the boy,    I wish I could just stop. Bring to a dead  halt  the programme of homework, routine, lectures and tellings off, directions to be...civil to you sisters...in control of your temper...accepting of correction.....unresisting of discipline...to take in food as though your body was a temple and not an old junkyard....and  on  and on  and on.  I wish I might just let him be, to fish all day with his monosyllalbic fisher boy friends, and when not,  to devour large quantities of carbohydrates with no trace of green stuff or most  of the fruit family;  to watch tv shows about aliens, wildlife, haunted houses, crimecall, family guy,and all  the fast moving ridculously violent chase movies, until he falls exhausted into his bed.  A crab in comfortable retreat in his shell, without irritant of clever knowing sisters and HOMEWORK.   But.... but ....he is a proud one, and an ambitious boy and so we must poke at him till he delivers up his pearl. Yes we must  persevere.

The dog and I have  companionably co existed for the weekend past, the children being away for rest and recreation  with their dad (the other half of the parenting team). He becomes a sort of surrogate child, or children even, a  silent though faithful shadow, at these times,  in contrast to  his usual role of yougest family member cum guard dog, cum slightly irritating younger  brother of the boy.  When the children return  he finds the re adjustment  difficult. He is a smart one, a wheaten terrior of slightly nervous and entirely benign disposition. A slavering lover of meat, who tracks down and sleeps with the boy's smelly socks at night (his bed in the house) and  a raucous lover of company.  He is to be found sitting in the middle of  childrens noise, his element giddy activity.  Like the rest of them, he has his own agenda to pursue,  the hunt for red meat or any of the other food groups, hanging with the boy, cozying up to the girls and .....walks,  no, not walks, but glorious crazy dashes through the front door opened by the unwary.  He lies in wait, and he is off! a blur of light brown doggy fur, galloping, a racehorse,  across the green and home free  to  the nearby fields.  No leash  required  thank  you all the same.  He comes back spent. I have often glimpsed him through the glass panel on the front door, lying like an abandoned fur coat, prone on the doorstep, many many hours later.

I felt  nudged , whispered to, about  his real job,  over the weekend, when he went missing for one night, and I was home alone.  I would not have expected to mind this, apart from a slight concern about his whereabouts, ( I knew he would be back, its has happened before) but I slept poorly, often waking with a sense of unease, the house seeming strange,  empty, with an unsettling feeling of absense. As I lay awake,   I found my self thinking of another evening  when a man from the gas company , or maybe the ESB , was outside our house reading the meter, and the  dog, who was shut inside with us, transmogrified into a hound  (or four) of the Baskervilles, menacing and powerful. The scene in the bedroom where the dogs guarded the child in the movie the Omen come to mind.  I looked out to see who or what had disturbed our ridulously friendly mutt, and there was an  unthreatening  looking man, though  a stranger, at the side  of our house. It was  odd  when you consider that the  dog welcomes all sorts of folk, adult and child,  known and unknown,  with madly swishing tale and grin.  Why this man.? And then there was the times when the low menacing growl would begin at someone or something approaching the  front gate, a long way back from the house, when you would again find yourself , unsettled,  uneasy, hissing  at him to shush! shush! for  the love of God!", before you checked to see if you  had locked the door.....closed the windows....gather the children in.

He retured  in the morning, and my normal sleep pattern, the  descend into exhausted oblivion,  resumed.  Sometimes I think we get a  fleeting glimpse of a common  invisable network , of pivotol roles and presences designated  unspoken  in each human household , the actual glue keeping body and soul together, making life  safe, bearable, possible even.


                                                 GATEKEEPER

                      The dog's cocked eye awaits
                                     the spillings  of crumbs
                                               the shavings of beef,
                       in the silence at my back as I prepare the meal.
                       each  dog muscle poised to leap on the intruder,
                                      whose footfall
                                                has disturbed
                                                       the air at the end of the lane.

                       His bark weaves in and out through  fallen night
                       as I lie in my bed adrift between this place and another.
                                         Guardian,
                                               of this house, and all here.
                                                   Gatekeeper.
                             

Psychosis shopping aliens and Jane Eyre

On the weekend we went shopping with  a movie to follow in order to properly celebrate my genius  girl's exam results.  Jane Eyre was her movie  choice, and mine.  The boy came along, having reluctantly agreed to this movie choice, "Is there any battle scenes, fr'instance" he wanted to know, although  he knew quite well not.  I considered this. "Lets see, there is arson, insanity, child abuse, bloodletting, disfigurement, abandonment, bereavement. and last but not least a compelling love story (compelling to me anyway) but eh   no actual battle scenes.  As I said, he lent himself reluctantly to the expedition.

Shopping done;  clothes for the genius, a cunning book on drawing your own clothes designs for the boss, and books and a cd for the boy, we headed off down the motor way to the cinema.  The car for once smelling sweetly, of violets,  the boss having tried a sample bottle in the shop, and when she was told there was none left, bargained with the hapless assistant. to sell her the  sample bottle for one euro.

The boy's voice intruded on my casual road observance  "whats weed. ...I mean is weed the same as cannabis...hash...i mean".  "Why do you ask" was my cautious enquiry.  "Oh I heard someone mention it,  people  I know smoke it you know"  (ingeniously). ..people my age.  I told him that I did know, it was hash and people his age were in the greatest danger of developing psychosis, and a life long diagnosis of psychiatric illness, where they used this drug.  " oh  but  more likely if you use speed" Mum.  "No! I mean hash, dope, cannabis".  We have had this discussion before as I am particularly aware of these dangers from the work I do, and I am always curious as to what children  take on board , from the many many warnings, and serious talks one gives. "What s psychosis" the boss wants to know.  Now I 'm always hopeing for the appropriate interval, the  space in which to have these little discussions, and I am usually finding myself addressing them in the car,  or in company, or running late etc etc (watch the road!). "Yeah , well thats when you are out of touch with reality, like, um ' you might hear voices, or see thing that are not  there".  There is a short silence.  "Then the doctor will medicate you, and you will be diagniosed with an illness that may be permant.  Another silence.  "But, but what about Jesus, and the bible  hearing voices, god. and also spirits, ghosts" says the boss sternly.  "Well umm, the psychiatrist will very likely say thats all a departure from reality, as I 've said.  "Well thats justWRONG  to say hearing voices and seeing things cant be real just because THEY  cant hear it. How can they get away with that.  I hear things all the time.  "WHAT? YOU WHAT"?.  "Sure,  when I'm thinking, its like I can hear myself, the different voices thinking",  "Ah well" I say with relief, " you know this is you, you are doing this in your mind".    "Yeah, unless, like you, you are OUT  of your mind" the boy tells her.  "Muuum, Im trying to have a  SERIOUS CONVERSATION" , muuum".  I reprimand the boy, and switch lanes, as I have been behind a slow moving lorry for the past while,  sucked in to all this.  "Hah  IT WASNT ME, IT WAS THE VOICES" says the boy.  And suddenly the car is rocking gently with  hilarity as each child gives a rendition of  THE VOICES .  "But nonetheless I add firmly, this is a very good reason never to touch the stuff.  The damage might never be fixable. There is a lull and then "But Hey, thats .... what about the aliens" the boy is not laughing now.  He is a devoted fan of all theories  extra terrestrial, and lives to see a fully manifested alien one of the days. "What if you, I mean they (the mad people) saw an alien? " .  "I m afraid an alien is a complete no no for your average docter darling "  I say.  " Best keep that one to yoirself ....when the day comes,  " adds the dreaming genius.  And on the conversation meanders until we reach town and cinema.

"Not my cup of tea" the boy offered on the way home, "But it was quite good and if I couldnt have my preferred option, ie a day spent fishing, I'm not sorry you made me go!".  And that  vote of confidence is as good as it gets from the boy jury folks.   Truely  my cup it overfloweth. ."She wasnt plain enough though, ...the actress" our super girl  opined. I agreed and we talked about the fundamental inability of the movie industry to cast a plain, or even an ordinary looking actress, where it is required.  "But" I got in " she was plainly adorned and she managed to convey the essence of the idea that Jane was unburdened by the tryanny of appearance and , the slavery of  identification with the female peer group, she valued SPIRIT and hers was mighty,  a triumph of survival against great odds.  "And "I finish, on a roll, "her skill as an artist, her ability to create, was highly valued by herself and Mr. Rochester, and came from her unquenchable spirit."   Jane Eyer and me go a long way back.  She  was  the poster girl  for plain girls, intelligent girls,  girls who coundn't be doing with all that claustrophobic female fuss and clutter,  when I was a young woman.   That was a different era of course, and now the concentration on the outer, the preocupation with appearance, the  hair strighteners, make up, perma tan, designer garments, the  industry of diets,  and consequent eating distorders, self harming ; a deluge    overwhelming every female from tween to crone,  which  may be far more corrosive of the spirit, heart and soul than the horrors of Lowood,  the neglect and poverty experienced by Jane.

 And she and Mr Rochester were fine and satisfying lovers, spirit to spirit," we agree (mistily).   Yeah, butreut how coud they get away with paying Jane £15 a year?" dermanded the Boss,  "How could she be expected to live?  I mentioned faintly that it was "all Found". "Pardon?"  "All found, ie. she had bed and board, and only needed funds for dress and other personal items.  "Hmm said the boss unimpressed, that means she had NO CHOICE  about what she ate, or WHERE HER ROOM WAS , and she continued to ruminate about how much exactly £15 would be nowadays and what she herself would have insisted on in the situation., as I drove.  And I found myself thinking with  some  degree of wistfulness of having bed and board in Mr Rochesters house, and wandering through the grounds with my drawing pad, to commit  what ever took my fancy to canvas, including his dark and thrilling   face.

Well then WHEN CAN I have a drink, mum?

"Put  on your coat"....."put on your coat"......."YOUR COAT",  I find myself addressing my daughters back on the way to the car,  this grey and rainy morning. "Dont need it" "s not really raining",  I hear this as I take in   her long freshly shampooed hair, whipped this way and that in the wind and  the long pale legs (dotted  pink with goose pimples). "Yes, IT IS , its raining, what do you mean not really, Yes, it is,  its raining. ITS EITHER RAINING OR IT ISNT!"  Oh dear, oh dear, we had the Junior certificate results on Wednesday and I hav'nt quite . .  recovered . Nerves still a tad frayed.  "She thinks the school coat makes her look fat,"  the boss explains, warmly wrapped herself.  The goosepimpled one beats a retreat to the house  for the coat, as I splutter confounded "fat"? She thinks what!". "she thinks.....what?"

I deliver myself of a short lecture on the idocy and skewed judgement of people. who WILL NOT KEEP THEMSELVES WARM  and do not understand the proper function of an appropriate leval of body fat.  There is a fair bit of eye rolling in the back, but I know she' s listening.  And   far from an idiot she is. Her exams results were very good. Even she, her most exacting critic, is pleased. She got an A in honours maths and this was greatly wished for.

She was always a  good maths student, but  found herself struggling at the beginning of this exam year. "Mum, could I  uh  maybe do a few private tutorials in maths, " a tentative request, in October.  I have to admit I brushed her off then, on the basis that she is a very bright student.  And it was early on in the year. And its a good school with a good reputation.   I told her to tell the maths teacher when she didnt get it, that it would come.  Frankly I felt that this was a reputable school , and it was yet another expense I didnt need.  I  mentioned this to the teacher at the parent teacher meeting some time after, and was blandly assured  " oh well they will find themselves challenged this exam year" and "she SHOULD  have no problem". However, she achieved a very poor mark in  the mock exams, so I did what  she had asked me to do in the first place. She recieved a tutorial from a retired maths teacher, who gave her three hours and after wards told me that all  my daughter  needed was to have some vital concepts explained to her,  that she had no problem grasping same, and that she needed no further tution. My daughter told me that  it was an intensive three hours, most areas were   covered, and she was confident  now that she "got it."
I was not aware, then,  that there is a major  issue with  maths teachers' qualifications in our schools. Was anyone else? Should I have known?  I so regret the fact that my anxious daughter had to look for this herself, because , despite the knock taken to her self esteem, "I know I SHOULD  be able to get it" she was determined to do herself justice in this subject. And you find yourself wondering what abut the other subects ?  How rigorous and thorough are standards set, and required, before taking on teachers to teach specific subjects? And are  we  to know know, before demanding standards of performance from the hapless schlars?

The exams results were released two days ago now. Though outwardly calm, " oh well its done now" my girl seethed with expectation and fear from the night before. They assembled at the school  at ten am, and a sort of mass hysteria embraced all, for the rest of the day, and evening, when there would be OMG a DANCE.  As it turned out my calm was outward also. She phoned me from school to tell me her results, and my hand, suddenly nerveless,  struggled  to hold the reciever. Its a rite of pasaage, this I know, and I suspect that the fevered worry and expectation  of the  entire  examined student body leaks quietly into  each childs household. 

Anyway, we had THE DANCE". And who knows with parenting, when you will be confronted with major  if not actually   life altering issues. . "Mum, can I have a drink, with my friends, tonight". "No",! "God no". But she comes prepared and tells me that her brother, my oldest child, now happily launched. told her he had his first drink on the night of his  junior cert results.(thank you for that  son) " but he was a year older" I say firmly. "Well then how old were YOU when you had your first drink.  I mean if not now when?.  When can I?".  "uh, I was  uh surely  nineteen  maybe twenty"?.  "Oh, right, ok" she says and I think there is some relief on her part,  she can let that particular one lie for the moment. And I know, I know, she asked me, and thats good. I also know she may do it anyway, but I dont think so. My own parents found  an irish parenting solution to an irish parenting question, on this one, ie, if you do it  dont let me know anything about it.  And I certainly was not nineteen or twenty when I first tasted alcohol. There was an adventure with a bottle of poitin at 12 or 13, which my father had been given and  shoved into the back of the drinks cabinet , where it lay untouched  awaiting my curiousity. One glass of tortured sipping and I was adrift at sea in a leaky  vessel without a paddle. It was weird and wonderful and very very scary. And that did put me off for a time.
So when can she.?  I struggle with this one.  I realise my preferred answer is never. I want for her to experience all the rights of passage,  the  exams results, the  birthdays, the  first love, sober, lucid with all the neurons firing straight and true, all the memories clear and stored where she will later find them.  I sometimes  wish I could  go back and do that for myself in this drinking culture, and I know its even less likely for somone of her generation, that one could might travel  seemlessly,  soberly and above all safely  to adulthood, but hey  I' m on the case, or  should I say, I m holding this line for as long as I possibly can.

And then there was the trip into our nearest town at 11pm to collect her from the dance. (its all over now).  And driving past  the line of bare   legged glamour  girls, be killer heeled and beautiful, sitting on the  wall at the supermarket waiting for their mothers and fathers to come and get them, to take them home.

Laryngitis as a mothering tool

I  can not  speak above a strangled hissing whisper this morning. My flu is taking its course, as I explained to my enquiring children, when the youngest asked me if I shouldnt stay at home, take the day off work. Also we have Mr. Lemsip.

In the car, on the fifteen minute drive to secondarty and primary schools I am unable to  adjudicate  for  the  usual heated arguments and I can see  the terrible threesome  are at a  bit of a loss.

My eldest looks dreamily out  of the car window, beside me. Hmm, I wonder is this a sulk? or not.  She  does have a lot on her mind  after all. She has started  transition year  and clearly can 't decide whether this is a good thing or a tragic mistake. . She is doing this transition  year ast my insistance, "I dont want to waste my time" "I want to get on with things, do my Leaving Certificate, go to Harvard". Harvard???   why not Trinity, or UCD which , as I said pompously, was good enough for me. Anyway, it may be sulks after all, as she was ordered to "pull down that skirt"  , " pull down that skirt I said" in the driveway, by her   hissing whispering mother.  I got the supercilious look, "oh come on, everybody wears their  skirts at this length. "Not midthigh, they dont" I hiss some more, and she  looks at me in puzzled enquiry  before  giving in and pulling it down. Now I would have expected more argument there.

There is a low key argument between my 14 year old son and the elevan year old in the back. "today is the ten year anniversey of nine elevan" he says. "oh no,  oh no,  you re wrong, its on sunday,  actually your confusing nine and elevan". "shut up! what do you know?".  "mum tell him!" . "yes" I whisper, "  "yes, its an easy mistake to make but its sunday" . And I hear some nervous murmering from the back "oh," " ok".  I think they just want me to stop croaking. Its astonishing how often I have to re learn the simple fact that, if you shout you raise the sound barrier all round, and if you speak quietly (not to mention whisper), they seem complelled to lower the noise levels,  to actually strain to hear what you say.  Speak softly and carry a big stick  I say ( now the stick is metaphor).

The dreaming one has poured herself out of the car, the boy has clamoured over the youngest one's knees and strode off towards the christian brothers and my baby is climbing in over the seat to sit with me and chat. ( "dont do that" I hiss), now that the boy is gone, on our way to her primary school. He is formally referred to  as  "the boy " by her, because ,she says , he gets to do the fun outdoorsey things like cutting the grass and walking the dog, while she and her   sister are asked to wash dishes and the like, on account of the fact that HE IS A BOY. This I deny, though he does get asked to do some heavy lifting, on account of the fact that he has morphed into a tall  and lumbering male person over the past year or so. And its his policy never to obey an instruction unless under a firm order, where you find yourself saying BECAUSE I SAID SO. Anyway the verbals between himself and the tween are legendary and they usually like to have a warm up in the car on the way to school. She brings devastating logic and implacable staying power to the table, he ,lightening darts of wit coupled with quite  quite brutal insults.

My baby is the boss. she has an opinion on all matters practical, and esoteric. She departs from the car in a lesiurely fashion, talking all the while. She plants a firm kiss on my fevered cheek, as she goes and tells me to "take it easy mum, you're not well , you know"!