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A Diary for Bella, our Lockdown Lurcher

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April 14th 2020
Dear Bella
I saw a photo of you today and I think my dream of having a dog might finally come true. No pressure, but you looked adorable in the photo sent by Mary at the rescue group. You’re a lurcher, about a year old, quiet and sweet and housetrained, she said. Too good to be true, I worried.

All the rescue groups have been so busy, I had to nudge them a few times. The two big dog charities had to close early in lockdown as they operated out of shelters. So we’ve dealt with local foster groups instead who operate out of the kindness of people’s homes. Loads of people across Ireland are contacting them to adopt a dog, but they groups are really anxious that people adopt for the right reasons – a dog is for life, not just for Covid.

We’ve been thinking for ages about adopting a dog. Well, two out of the four of us have: Mags, our eldest, and myself. And it was only when Robert – one of those dog-sceptical men – met a gorgeous lurcher recently did he start to think he might cave in and say yes to getting a family dog. As long as it was a lurker… he meant lurcher.

April 17th 2020
Dear Bella
The kids loved the latest photos we got of you today and we also heard you did well at the vet and that you could be ready for us to meet next week!

It’s been over a month since we (humans) were told to stay put, to not go anywhere, work and study and play at home. No-one knows how it will all play out, but I think this could go on for months. We won’t be going to see the family in Canada this summer, and the big wedding there has already been postponed til next year. So it seems like brilliant timing to have a dog in the house, to get used to each other, train you, and train ourselves to look after you.

And when the time comes to go back to work, one of us was always working from home anyway. So we didn’t have to think that through.

All the rescue groups we talked to are so kind, and so careful about the dogs they care for. They had to come and check out our house and garden and family routine to make sure we weren’t an irresponsible bunch who wouldn’t manage a dog once life returned to normal. “If ever it does”, we laughed. One of the groups did their check after lockdown started, and we did that all by WhatsApp instead of meeting them, sending them videos of our garden and house to get their approval and get on their waiting list.

April 21st 2020
Dear Bella
I’m going to meet you on Saturday and probably bring you home with me. We’re so excited, it’s like Christmas! We can’t talk about anything else in the house – not that there was much to talk about anyway.

I just realised today we can actually pick up a few basics we’ll need – like a dog bed and leash, collar and food – because pet shops are considered an essential service and have been open all this time. I also checked with our local vet if they’re open. They were delighted to hear we were taking in a rescue dog but they’d only be available for emergencies and they’ll give you a full check-up when things “get back to normal”.

April 24th 2020
Dear Bella
Seeing as I’ll be coming to meet you tomorrow outside Dublin – and beyond our 2km range – I got a letter from Mary that I can show any Gardaí who might stop me along the way. The letter says I’m out and about for an animal welfare issue. It’s also simpler if I go alone. I’m a little nervous about it, it’s actually been quite nice to stay close to home the last few weeks.

April 25th 2020
Dear Bella,
Driving out of Dublin and into the countryside today felt a bit wild, like I was on holiday. I had my “get-out-of-jail” letter from Mary but I saw no checkpoints on the way. The motorway was full of trucks and lorries, all couriers bringing the homebound people of Ireland their supplies of summer shoes and garden furniture, books and PlayStations.

Mary drove up with you from her farm in Laois and our assignation point was an empty car park outside Naas. She had you out walking on the grass verge outside Pet Stop and I found you there. Your brown eyes shone when I looked at you, you stuck your long head into the crook of my arm and yourself into my heart. I took a quick selfie of the two of us and sent it to the breathless family back home. By the time they called me back with loads of questions, I had already signed off the paperwork (we had to sanitise the pen), figured out how to get you securely into the car, and you and I were already heading up the M7. Mary said I could go home and think about you first, but I wasn’t planning on coming back down again. This was it. You had a home to go to now.

Today will be known as your Gotcha Day. That’s what they call it – instead of having a birthday (as no-one knows when you were born) we’ll be celebrating your Gotcha Day every year on this date.

April 28th 2020
Dear Bella
You don’t know how much we love having you to distract us. And has a dog ever had its every single movement (including the digestive ones) talked about, examined, anticipated so much before. Maybe it’s just because of lockdown, and we were just all so ready to have something new to talk about.

You’re still a bit nervous, not sure of where you are, or sure about us. It will take a few weeks, or months, but that’s one thing we do have.

They say that when you pet a dog your body makes endorphins and it really is true – it makes you feel good and happy. God knows, we could all do with a good dose of endorphins right now. Maybe we should rent you out. Actually, no we won’t.

May 1st 2020
Dear Bella
We saw you run for the first time today out in the field and it took our breath away! Your legs might be long and bony but when they work with those big haunches they’re so powerful.

When we’re out for a walk, people often tell us you’re gorgeous, with your big brown eyes and fawn colour – that’s nice to hear but it’s hard to know what to say. I can’t really say thank you, as I didn’t pick you out of a beauty line-up. You were the dog we got, the one that was available and thought best suitable. And we couldn’t really wait much longer, in case the man of the house might start changing his mind on the dog plan.

May 5th 2020
Dear Bella
We don’t know what kind of life you had before you were rescued from that pound in Wexford and we got to take you home. But I do know that you’re frightened of the sweeping brush and the hoover, and the motorbike down the road. And you’re terrified of the two hurling sticks my husband picked up in Aldi with the hope of picking up a new sport with Aoife, which they’re working on once a day in the field beside us.

Getting the kids out for some kind of exercise feels like a full-time job sometimes. Other parents tell me the same. I don’t know if kids are nervous about the virus, or how to behave or just naturally want to stay idle. “It’s good to be bored” I tell them when I get them off their screens. I wish I had some time to be bored.

May 11th 2020
Dear Bella
You were sitting with us on the couch tonight while we watched the next episode of that old British Bake-Off on TV (we’re finally catching up) and we decided that you’re actually a cat-dog. You’re a lot bonier and about three times as big as a cat but you’re a watcher and a lounger. You don’t bark, you love to curl up on the chair by the window or spread your belly over someone’s lap or up in the air while on your back.

We were warned about lurchers loving couches so maybe we should think about getting another one to fit you. But, actually no: it’s taken so long for my new home-office desk to arrive, (once I had finally found one on a second-rate Ikea site) that I don’t think I’m bothered to shop online for a couch now as well.

May 12th 2020
Dear Bella
I’m really happy to have my new desk set up in the smallest bedroom, though Aoife’s not thrilled about her room being taken over. But it means I have a space where I can shut the door and do my work with no-one else in the room. From the start of lockdown I’ve felt blessed to have my job, to have something to focus on everyday and as it’s education-related, to help other people too. So many people are out of work, temporarily off, or facing really uncertain futures. It’s probably going to get worse. It’s awful.

But back to you Bella. Would you mind not trying to push the door open to say hello while I’m at my desk? My work colleagues have heard all about you, but they might think it a bit weird to see you try to get up on my lap. I know you find it confusing there are other voices in the little room where I am but these meetings with voices is the closest thing I have to an office (and the company of adults) right now.

Next time you want attention try another room in the house, see if one of the kids has finished her homework or facetime check-in with friends – see if they’ll take you out for a walk. That was part of the deal.

May 16th 2020
Dear Bella
I know you love people but would you stop trying to say hello to every stranger you meet. It’s really nice but not everyone wants to stop and say hi these days. People are a bit nervous, of other people, of germs, of human contact.

Even our neighbours on our road – we haven’t met as many in lockdown as I would have thought. Not every community, estate, or cul de sac in Ireland has seen the warm, fuzzy street camaraderie that has touched our needy hearts on the evening news. You were a bit puzzled by the people shouting and clapping out their doors every night, but that didn’t last too long around here. That’s just the way it is.

May 18th 2020
Dear Bella
Today must have been the fifth time we brought you to the off-leash dog park and it’s lovely you get your run in with your new friends – Molly and Ben, Harry and Hermione. But it’s actually been really nice for us humans too. We’ve been able to get to know random people, during these days when we can’t go to the pub, or chat to people on buses or have spontaneous chats with office mates about all kinds of things. It’s a bit like bringing the kids to a playground when they were little and you’d strike up a chat with other parents.

We’ve been able to see how other people are dealing with the lockdown and I think a lot of people already had a dog because they’re on the own, and perhaps quite lonely now, so getting out with their dog helps them deal with some of that. One man comes with his dog and sits on a bench to read his book, the dog staying close beside him and both of them keeping their own peaceful distance and getting the fresh air.

May 22nd 2020
Dear Bella
I realised today that when Mags and I take you out for a walk together, she and I have a proper chat. The kind of chat I think we had stopped having in the last year, and the kind that’s so vital between a mum and her daughter. It’s like having a third presence between us which makes it easier for her to open up and talk about all sorts of stuff. Which is so good, as life can be overwhelming at the best of times when you’re 14. And these are not the best of times. She misses her friends, her routine, and (she might not admit it) school. She’s managing great but it’s just not normal, being at home with her family 24 hours a day, chatting only occasionally with friends, and not knowing when things will settle down.

I had heard that a dog in the house is really good for teenagers, especially girls, and I think your soft heart and big brown eyes are only doing her good. She can give you a good hug when she might think no-one else in the house deserves one. Oh, and I hope you don’t mind showing up quite regularly on Instagram.

Her younger sister still says she wants a cat. But we’ll just have to wait for the next pandemic for that.

May 24th 2020
Dear Bella
We brought you to the beach for the first time today and you didn’t know what to make of it. We couldn’t get you to even dip your feet in the water – the kids thought that maybe the sound of the waves was too loud for you. But two of us went all the way in for a swim and it really wasn’t as cold as we thought it would be. We’ll have to start going regularly this summer. Especially if we can’t go to any warmer beaches, like we might have done normally.

There are loads of lovely places we can go to in Ireland, though let’s hope this amazing good weather will stay when “school” is “finished”. We’re really lucky that we have we have sea and hills and woods within 5km of us. It’s a bit annoying that every other family around is also exploring all these places too so we have to pick the right times to bring you out to enjoy them and have a bit of freedom. And find a parking spot.

May 28th 2020
Dear Bella
It looks like you’ve discovered the trampoline. I was working at my desk earlier and heard a strange squeaka-squeaka out in the garden. Then a thump. That was you jumping down off the trampoline, which doesn’t have a ladder. It’s good to see someone is using it – the kids have gotten a bit tired of it at this stage. It was a lifesaver early in the lockdown and their Dad got them on there once a day as a break from schoolwork. Until he pulled a muscle in his leg. And then they lost interest.

Anyway, you keep at it Bella. At this stage maybe you need some space of your own and that’s where you’ve found it.

June 5th 2020
Dear Bella
Home-school is all finished up now so the kids are happy, though I worry about them having too much time indoors. It’s hard to manage when I’m working myself all day in a closed room. Oh, and the lockdown started a new phase today, still no sign of hairdressers, creches and summer camps opening, but at least your cousins down in Shelbourne Road can start their mad greyhound racing again. Behind “closed doors”, however that’s going to work!

June 15th 2020
Dear Bella
I heard my office is going to reopen in August – just for two days a week for anyone who actually wants to come in. I’ll be there in a flash but my husband will keep working fulltime from home.

As for the kids. Well in September they might start going back to school, five days a week. School is a great – it’s this amazing place where they socialize with other kids, do arts and sports, and learn all sorts of things from teachers who stand right there in front of them. It’s a brilliant arrangement for all concerned.

Aoife was looking forward to taking you on the walk to school each morning with her Dad. You’re really like that as you’ll be smothered in attention at the school gate. So let’s hope you’ll get to experience that before too long.

July 21st 2020
Dear Bella
Well done for surviving your first family holiday. When you got in the car, you probably thought you were heading up to the dog park, but you did so well on that four-hour drive up and down to Antrim. How patient you were to sit for hours squashed in between the two girls and their books, blankets and crisps wrappers. Not a peep out of you, just the odd fart.

You even climbed all over the Giant’s Causeway in the rain. The first time I’ve ever been there and me in my 40s. The whole area was wonderfully quiet, empty of the tourist buses that usually fill the roads with visitors from China, the US, all over. The peace was really nice for us but not great for all the local businesses.

August 4th 2020
Dear Bella
The latest news now is that the pubs are not going to open as planned next week – which doesn’t bother us either way – and that they’ll probably open now on September 1st. That was the same date Mags’s school was due to reopen but the principal finally sent us a message today to say that they won’t be ready by then as they have to follow the government’s advice on how to get the school ready for several hundred kids and teachers. Either way, it’s still obvious that the pubs will open before schools. That’s Ireland for you.

None of these really affects you, you’re just happy to lounge around a lot of the day, sniff around the kitchen, snap at bumblebees and wait for your trips to the park. All of which make you the ideal pet for us.

Live in the moment, that’s what you do. You could teach us all a lesson.

Published in the journal Pendemic.ie in August 2020

Happy Families?

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In an arts and craft shop in Dublin, I spot a pack of Happy Families. It was one of our favourite games when the kids were small, but we either lost our pack during one of our many moves or it’s still in a box in my father’s attic.

I grab the pack of cards, hand over the five euro, and bring it home to play with my own happy family that evening.

I’ve always liked this game because it teaches kids some basic concepts of card-playing: how to sort your cards into groups, hold them up in a fan (if you can), win tricks, memorise who has what, keep a poker face. All good practice for getting stuck into the Gin Rummy and Poker later on, two games popular in my wider family.

My own mother grew up the youngest in a large family where they played a lot of cards. She passed on her love of playing, the subterfuge, raised eyebrows, the patience, and even, let’s be honest, of gambling. Up until recent years, St Stephens’s Day parties at my aunt’s house involved a poker game that was played in the good room once the younger cousins realised it was time to head to the room next door for the harmless (but naturally rowdier) bit of Pictionary.

I don’t remember playing Happy Families as a child. Maybe it was too tame for my mum, maybe I only hooked on to it when I became a parent myself, liking the name of it and its key concept.

To create a trick you need to gather all four members of each family – say, Mister Muck the Farmer, along with Mrs Muck, Master Muck and Miss Muck. From our own set even our daughters could tell how quaint the naming conventions were, how English, (who says Master?) and the names for the families: Cod, Hammer, Green.

The game was devised by London games maker John Jacques Jr in 1851 (who also invented Tiddlywinks, Ludo and Snakes & Ladders). But in truth the game hasn’t changed much over the years, and you can join in with collectors keen to get their hands on older versions. Around 2016, a British games company did create a new version of the game based around family types, rather than occupations. It was hardly modern, and still very English in tone – they tried to target a broader market with the Family with typical teenager, Family getting through Christmas, the Gross Cousins, Disastrous Family Barbecue.

At the opposite end of the scale, a friend once showed me a vintage version he had, a hilariously horrendous packet of Happy Families from the early 19th century. The families were actually nationalities, so the more hard-core stereotypes were right there. The warring Germans, carousing Italians, etc etc. The worst card in the pack, for me, was of course Mrs Paddy, the Irishman’s wife – an astonishing, but no-less-than-unusual caricature of a peasant Irish woman (with a 5 o’clock shadow): pig, pipe, stick and all.

This time round, playing with our new pack I was so happy to find in that local shop, it just wasn’t the same. It seems that we’ve all moved on and the kids, now a few years older, are much more tuned into the ways of the world, having lived in different places and seen so many societal changes, not least in Ireland. Not only did these new cards in our hands feel flimsier, the ideas are just more old-fashioned, with pictures that don’t fit with what they’re learning in school and from friends about modern identity.

Why does Miss Hose have a toy and her mother a pretty dress, if their father is the Fireman? Why is it still four family members of two genders?

We start to joke around –

“Do you have Barker Field, the farmer’s dog?”

“Or Ms Stamp the Postman’s civil partner”

“Or Dr Hammer the carpenter’s academic wife?”

“How about Mr Sheaf, the farmer’s husband?”

“Or the stepdaughter or adopted cousin or live-in boyfriend or ex-partner-coming-for-weekend-custody?”

Of course none of us did have any of those. But I was happy to see that the kids could acknowledge that this old-fashioned notion of the happy family didn’t sit right any more. And without even realising it, they’ve become citizens of a more open modern society.

Maybe we should design our own family card game…

All happy families are alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Nana’s Gingerbread

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I’ve been running a blog for a few years so maybe it’s no harm if I put up a baking recipe from time to time. I’ll warn you here, it’s no healthy, non-vegan, low-sugar snack but an old-fashioned treat that’s full of butter and sugar.

This is my mum’s gingerbread, which I decided to bake, out of the blue, last week, for the main purpose of giving the house a blast of of sticky sugar and spices for an afternoon.

When I told the kids I was making it they were sceptical. “It’s not like gingerbread cookies” I told them, as they were thinking of the Scandinavian-style cookies we often make at Christmas, in shapes of reindeer and star-jumping men, or occasionally the kind you glue together with icing sugar into a gingerbread house and later smash and eat.

This is a sticky, sugary and soft cake which has to be eaten with a cup of hot (not warm) tea. Of course, the kids loved it, and the husband, as did my workmates, and the under-12s football team after the 10am Saturday morning match. It goes a long way, this one recipe.

I have no idea where my mum got the recipe. I’ll never find out, as she’s been gone now over 5 years. She would have sent it to me years ago typed up in an email, the only bits of correspondence I have left from her during my many years abroad. I baked it during long winter evenings in Toronto and Nova Scotia and a few times, later on, in Oslo.

The instructions are pure Shigs (my mum’s childhood nickname, short for Sighle) – bare-boned and concise, to the point of being vague. Not for her details like size of pan, or method of combining ingredients or even length of cooking time. To be sure, I checked her handwritten recipe in her old recipe book that still sits in my Dad’s kitchen. He suggested I take it with me, but the two of us gasped at the idea.

Did she get it from her own mother, who died before I was born? Most likely. But it’s just one thing on the ever-expanding list of things I’d love to ask her, as I and the kids get older, to ask her about her own experiences of health changes, perceptions of the world, of driving kids to school matches and music lessons and to their sleepovers with new friends, slowly but surely moving off into their own lives.

She might be amazed to see me writing on my own blog, and her recipe but how else can I let a recipe like this die out if I don’t share it?

Nana’s Gingerbread

Looking at the old recipe, I’ve clearly updated it over the years. My key, authentic ingredients here are the treacle and golden syrup – cans of which I would actually bring back abroad after a trip home to Dublin. Sometimes. But you can substitute molasses for the treacle and most countries have their own form of light syrup (or just use honey). Brown sugar is also hard to come by but oh is it worth it!

Ingredients

  • 4oz treacle
  • 4oz golden (light) syrup
  • 8oz dark brown sugar (or light brown)
  • 1/4 pint (150ml) of olive oil or 6oz butter
  • 10oz white flour and 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
  • 2 oz wholemeal flour
  • Pinch of salt
  • 3 level teaspoons of ground ginger
  • 1/4 pint (150ml) mlik
  • 2 eggs

Method

Preheat the oven to gas mark 3, 180 degrees celsius
Line a tin 8 x 11 inches

  • Melt together in a heavy saucepan the treacle, syrup, sugar and oil (or butter) over a low heat so it doesn’t burn.
  • Mix together all the dry ingredients.
  • Beat the eggs and milk.
  • Mix the whole lot together, pour it into the pan.
  • Bake for 1 to 1-5 hours. Leave in tin to cool.
  • I have a note that says it’s better overdone than underdone, but I’m not sure about that.

Get the kettle on!

At Last, Our First Halloween in Ireland

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This will be the first time my daughters will be celebrating Halloween in Ireland as we’re not going away for the mid-term break. I don’t know what to expect from this celebration, though I’m sure it won’t be the same as when I was young, the mystical memories of which I carried around with me during my many years of living (and parenting) abroad.

For years I’ve been telling our two girls: “ah well an Irish Halloween is the real thing, it’s all genuine there, spooky and authentic. The bangers and the bonfires can be a bit annoying but it’s all good fun with real meaning”. But has it all become commercial and over the top, as I’ve been hearing from friends and colleagues? Or is that unique Samhain spirit, which never really translated abroad, still something a child can feel in Ireland?

Our daughters grew up in Italy and Norway two countries which, like other European nations, are still catching up to celebrating Halloween. It’s seen as another American holiday, one that’s quite like Carnival season (celebrated at the beginning of Lent) but really quite foreign and plainly just an opportunity for kids to dress up with ever-grosser face makeup and expect free sweets from disgruntled neighbours.

But our girls did get a nice taste of an Irish Halloween when they were very little in Norway. The ever-resourceful local Irish mammies of Oslo organised a party in a church hall each Halloween year where apples-on-a-string and other fun and games helped give the local half-Irish kids a blast of their ancient (non-Viking) heritage. One year, I even put in the considerable effort to make a barmbrack from scratch, just to get free entrance to the party.

READ MORE AT THE IRISH TIMES

Coming home was the hardest move

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At 8.20am we leave the house to walk to school. I’m still processing the question my daughter asked me the night before: “Mummy do you feel settled here?” A few minutes into my long-winded answer, I think she regretted asking. How can I sum up what I’ve been analysing in my head this whole year and a half: how is life since we moved back, after living abroad for more than 20 years?

The short answer is: we’re getting settled, it always takes time, but this has been the hardest move we’ve ever done.

As we leave the house, the traffic is right there on top of us, and hovering above that is a pall of stress I feel in Dublin, which feels more like a big city than I remember from when I was growing up. A bus crawls past and it’s sporting an ad for a world-class theatre show, reminding me of one thing we love about choosing to live in a creative, top-class capital city; in a country that has seen such changes while I lived away.

One year here and the feeling of strangeness has mostly gone. My accent merges in with all those around me, making me almost nostalgic for when I was the foreigner, the Irish person in the room.

KEEP READING THIS STORY, IN THE IRISH TIMES

An Irish Mamma abroad

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During my years abroad, I became a mother. I’ve been back in Ireland now for a while. Yet still I stop and look around me when I hear a child shout “Mummy”. I forget that in Ireland that’s what kids calls their mothers. Up until recently, I was the only “Mummy” in a blowing gale of “Mammas”. Mummy or Mamma said loudly in the playground, quietly on the bus, thankfully at the school gate.

There are many ways to refer to your Mother. According to the New York Times anyway. Here’s a screenshot from their recent dialect quiz for the British Isles.

Mummy

That’s the basic word we use isn’t it? “I want my mummy”. But then you have Yummy mummy and Mummykins. And even “mummified” – a term many other mothers might agree they’ve felt on occasion.

For most of my life as a mother, my kids have called me Mummy. But I was usually the only one around, all the other kids were calling their mums Mama or Mamma.

Mor

This is the superbly solid Norwegian word for mother and a large part of my identity during the 7 years I lived in Oslo. I was a mor. Solid and strong? I tried to be.

Even the way you say the word is great. Mor is pronounced to rhyme with “moore”, just add a bit of a Kerry lilt on the R. To me it’s a word for a large, serious-looking, wise woman, who has full control over her family (in all directions) but probably also runs a large company. My second daughter was born in Norway – she and I were under the care of a jordmor (midwife), a word that literally translates as “earth mother”. I never once saw a doctor during those 9 months (including the free home checkups afterwards). I was in the best of hands.

From Colm O’Regan’s book Isn’t it Well for Ye? The Book of Irish Mammies

Mama

This is what little Norwegians call their mother. “Mama, mama, se på meg!” (Mummy mummy look at me). Typically heard in a playground and nowadays heard more as the modern child tries to distract their mama from her phone screen.

Those were the first words my 2 year old learned – “se på meg” – look at me, see how brave I am, think what I can do. Because in Norway kids are left to explore and experiment. I learned there to be a mother that could relax and am forever grateful for it. If the kid fell off the monkey bars – chances were the ground was designed to be soft enough to manage the impact. “Opp igjen” (up you get).

Mamma

Like Mama – but it’s got two Ms. Mmmmmmm.

We moved to Italy when my girls were 6 and 9, and they had to quickly add in that extra “m” to the Norwegian “mama”. The longer sound was almost more precious, less practical. But it was beautiful. Mam…ma. They’d rarely call me Mamma, it was how they referred to me to other people.

“La mamma” – the mother figure that is Italy. Just the sound of it is stronger, more obvious and public than the slightly nervous “mum” or “mom” of English speakers.

For example: “My mamma cooked for 20 people yesterday and she’s going to mind the kids at the sea for most of July”.

versus

“My mum’s going to have a word with my dad about minding the kids on Saturday night”

Mamma mia!

Yes they do say it, often shortened to just “Mamma!!” One of my daughter’s school friends used it all the time. Driving them both home to our house one afternoon, she was being shown all the wackiest photos from the Guinness Book of Records in the car:

“look at this one”–“mamma mia”. “And see the size of that one”–“mamma”. As we drove past about the Madonna carvings stuck in the wall of our country road, I could only smile.

Mammy

Living in a country where your kids only speak your own language at home, you have to make a conscious decision about what you want them to call you. While every other child around us called their mother “mamma” or “mama” – I got to choose what my kids should call me.

My husband has his “mom” and I had my “mum”. But I was an Irish woman abroad and I thought I’d get them to call me “mammy”. This is a word that brings to mind a hard-working, hard-done-by but devoted mother, a superhuman status comparable to the Jewish mother. Or, of course, Mrs Brown and her boys. I thought I could elevate myself to the level of Mammy by suggesting I’d be called a proper Mammy, not just a Mummy.

What was I thinking? It only occurs to me now how at odds it seems with the “mammy” of the American south, the matronly older black servant of plantation days. It would have sounded odd to any passing American mum in the streets of Florence if they’d heard a child yell “mammy can we have a gelato?”

No-one in my family growing up was ever called Mammy. We weren’t inner city or deepest country. Like it or not, I’ll just never be a mammy. It never took off.

Emma

One morning when she was about 4, my elder daughter decided to stop calling me Mummy and started to use just my name. You might think she mixed the two together: Emma and Mama sound similar, but she was old enough by then to know the difference.

And then she started calling her father by his first name too. Maybe she picked up from a German friend, we never got to the bottom of it.

“Don’t!” I’d cry. “You are one of only TWO people in the entire world who can call me mamma, mother, mum – whatever. But not Emma. Everyone else calls me that.”

This went on for a year or two, long enough for her younger sister to start doing it too. And then it just stopped and I became mummy again. And I was happy then.

Mum

After a visit last summer to my husband’s family in Canada, this same daughter picked up on all the “moms” she heard her cousins and friends use. When we came home (and she started big school) she called me “mom” for a while but now she’s settled for just Mum. That’s what big girls call their mother. And I’m a little sad.

From Colm O’Regan’s book Isn’t it Well for Ye? The Book of Irish Mammies.

Mother

I talk regularly with my daughters about my Mum, or Nana, as they called her. We keep her in the conversation, don’t shy away from her not being here but keep her memory alive. We only ever called her Mum, as did my Dad. She was never “mother” except when I hear “you look just like your mother”.

My mum’s mother was known as mama (pronounced with a broad Irish Aaa). I never knew her as she died long before I was born. But I have her baking trays and Christmas pudding recipe.

My mum mothered us, never smothered us. I didn’t really get to mother her, but I’m trying to mother my Dad now we’re home.

Look up the word mother and you’ll find hundreds of related words. The most special words in the language. The most difficult.

Nurture, protect, cherish, tend, raise, parent, pamper, cosset – that’s an awful lot for one person to do. But we do.

The tooth fairy is dead. Long live the tooth fairy.

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It’s the end of an era. The tooth fairy is no more. The family myth was foiled yesterday morning by the youngest in the family. An upper tooth had fallen out at school and even though it was lost on the way home, she went ahead and left a book under her pillow (a habit our kids have/had was to leave the tooth inside a book). The only problem was, she didn’t tell us she did it because she wanted to send a signal directly to the tooth fairy. When that magical creature did not show up next morning, the game was up.

My daughter’s distress as the myth crumbled during my pre-breakfast dismal admission of subterfuge caught me by surprise – “so that tooth that fell down the armchair… you really did find it 4 years later didn’t you?”. And her distress made me remember just how young she is. When you’re only nine, why wouldn’t you want to hang on to that kind of belief for a little longer? Indeed how could you, at that age, even get your head around a concept like suspending belief, of not going along with everything your parents tell you about something unseen?

Charlie and Lola discuss the Tooth Fairy

When the real story was revealed to her, it was like a switch – and quite a painful one – from one of those pillars of childhood to an unfamiliar adult one. With no going back.

Many parents choose not to “deceive” their children with modern myths, like this tiny winged creature who takes charge of every baby tooth across the world. (Just do the calculations.)

Watching her be so upset, I wondered if we had done her a disservice. When her father and I chose to take the path of mythical beings – familiar to both of us from our own childhoods – we realised it was all or nothing. And that sometime it would end. When I was a child I remember the truth dawning on me slowly, from hints and comments of friends and older siblings, but it didn’t upset me. And I thought it was worth it.

My husband and I have chosen a mobile, rootless, family life for ourselves. We have adapted and made up some of our own traditions as we’ve moved our children from Canada to Norway to Italy to Ireland. We probably thought that Santa, the Tooth Fairy and just a hint of the Easter bunny would bring some stability from our own family backgrounds. And they have indeed proven to be a constant in our lives as we have moved language, friends, schools and houses.

What has been amazing to watch is how our two intelligent children have managed to go along with their parents’ official version of all these myths, for years, all the time ignoring what their friends around them in whatever country believed.

In Norway, for example, where we lived for most of their early childhood, everyone around us would expect Santa Claus to knock on their door and say “hallo” before handing over the presents – on the evening of December 24th, a full 12 hours earlier than us. But there was never any question in our house that Santa would graciously come, unseen, down the chimney (though we didn’t have one) during the night while we slept. And he certainly wouldn’t have looked like our neighbour in a red suit. What a notion!

Unlike the routines of Christmas, teeth can get lost at any time of the year. Anywhere. And so the tooth fairy has been our constant companion, moving and travelling the world with us.

We came up with a way to ensure the tooth fairy could always find us by explaining that a red light would show outside the window of any child that had lost a tooth that day. A red light that’s invisible to human eyes, of course. 

This fairy has been especially good at currency conversion depending on where the local pickup/drop-off needed to happen. The conversion isn’t totally accurate, but we wouldn’t expect her to carry change. 2 euro does not really equal 2 dollars (Canadian) nor indeed 2 British pounds nor 20 kroner (Norwegian or Danish). But this worked out to be a handy on-going maths and retail exercise for the kids, who always expecting the amount to be rounded up.

The most global adventure we dragged the fairy on was when our elder girl lost a tooth while we were visiting friends in Oxford during one big summer trip. She wanted to hold on to the tooth for longer so it came with us to Dublin – our next stop – and for some reason she wanted to get it all the way to her other grandparents’ house in Canada before finally agreeing to put it under her pillow and to trigger the red light there. She was thrilled to wake up to a two-dollar coin (a Toonie) the next morning and now she always associates that coin with that day.

Our younger, more rational, child (who I had thought was the one more likely to smell a rat) asked questions like: How does she carry all that money? Why only money and not also a present? Why doesn’t she come to grownups? The older sister would tell her that the fairy takes away all the teeth and builds up a great big store of them – but we’ve never figured out why.

A few times during our couple of years living in Italy, it came up that Italian children sometimes expect a tooth mouse, not a fairy, to come and collect their dental indiscretions. But we never heard much talk of it, and it doesn’t seem to have the same superstitious punch as the northern European tooth fairy.

So now, the tooth fairy has made an abrupt departure from our life but our girl has been assured that 4 euro (yes it’s gone up) will still be paid out for each tooth. She has yet to face up to dealing with the Santa issue, but she’s smart – it is only 3 weeks to Christmas and I can see why she’d let that conversation slide.

An old parental-guidance letter is doing the rounds again on social media this Christmas season, which begins with the words “Dear Daniel, you asked a really good question. Are mummy and daddy really Santa?… The answer is no, we are not Santa.” The letter goes on to explain that Santa is the spirit of Christmas, the magic and love and spirit of giving that is kept alive through parents. He lives in our hearts, not at the North Pole, and is there to teach young children how to believe in something they can’t see or touch.

Shall we go along with that advice, and stay close together as a family as we let the hard beliefs of childhood fall behind us and move on? I think we will.

A cartoon Tooth Fairy man in a tutu.

One cup of family baking

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It’s a slow family Saturday morning in Dublin. Our eldest daughter has offered to make one of our favourite breakfasts, waffles. Norwegian waffles.

We have a standard recipe (with its secret ingredient*) but I’ve never written it into my recipe book. Instead it’s bookmarked on the iPad at Norwegian food site Matprat.no. I could of course find one in English but this is more fun and reminds us of our old home in Oslo where we lived for 7 years. Our daughter traces down the list of ingredients and measurements with her finger.

And the questions start.

  • What does ss mean again? (it’s a sugar spoon/dessert spoon)
  • What’s 4dl? Is that the same as millilitres? (It’s 400 ml, use the measuring jug)
  • Should the flour be plain or self-raising? (plain)
  • Can you take over? (sigh)

I’ve lived in a lot of places over the last 20 years (the US, Canada, Norway, Italy, now Ireland) and in each one I’ve been preparing food for myself, the husband and eventually for our kids to eat. Not only does each country have its own cuisine, but also different cooking techniques, tools and measurements.

I am neither a serious foodie nor brilliant at numbers so I feel I’ve done quite well to adjust to all the different methods. I’m a decimal kind of girl. Grams, kilos and litres suit me fine, and the best cookbooks include them as well as pounds and ounces. I would have grown up with both. Moving to the US was my first wake-up call. The American use of cups and spoons for measuring is ingenious and it meant that for a few years I got by without buying a decent weighing scale. But when I’m on this side of the Atlantic and baking from my US days, I still get stuck when I see a recipe call for “2 sticks of butter” as that’s how they package (what they call) butter over there.

Liquid measurements are all over the place. There’s the British (and Canadian) 20oz and American liquid pint (16oz) and little-used dry pint (um, 1/8 of a dry gallon). This makes a difference when you’re working through a recipe like festive rum and liqueur eggnog from your Joy of Cooking, my first cookbook. I’ll just take a litre, or liter, thanks.

My husband is, thankfully, brilliant at numbers (and we’re training up our younger daughter for this level of mental maths) and he’s used to my panicked shouting over the years from the various kitchens we’ve had, for on-the-spot conversions. “How many grams will 6ozs be?” or “If I double the sugar is that 7/8s of a cup?” I have of course been able to Google conversions for the last 10 years but it’s just not the same.

Our usual moving box marked “Kitchen” carries most of the basic tools for international baking: my two basic weighing scales, (the nice digital one is only for good occasions), my trusty nested cup measurements (bought one rushed New York lunchtime away from the office) as well as the plain plastic baking bowls I somehow picked up at the convenience store next to our hotel in Hawaii. I’ve managed to keep the same brownie pan, long hand whisk and the little stone that keeps brown sugar moist in the jar. Electrical aids like blenders have come and gone as we moved from one country’s electrical system to another.

I’ve managed to master all types of cooker (gas, electric, induction or just temperamental), though I still struggle to remember that boiling an egg in sea-level Dublin takes less time than at my in-laws’ house 1km above sea level in Calgary. Or is it more time?

Now that I’m back in Ireland I love to hang around the baking aisles and enjoy the long-missed offerings like caster sugar, golden syrup, several types of brown sugar, self-raising flour, proper oats and other heavy things I couldn’t smuggle back abroad with Ryanair. And let’s not forget the butter! Nothing nowhere compares to the golden taste of Irish butter – the only foodstuff I’ll admit to bringing back to Italy.

There’s also that staple – bicarbonate of soda, poetically called bread soda in Ireland. When I first moved to Norway I needed to find some to make a batch of my (Darina Allen) scones. I was finally enlightened by a woman dressed in 19th century peasant costume. She was doing a live demonstration in a smoke-filled hut at Oslo’s National Folk Park, baking lefse (a delicious potato-based pancake) and she explained that the stuff I really need was hjørnsalt, a traditional Norwegian raising agent which originally was the powder from a deer’s horn. I tried it out but then had to find something resembling like buttermilk to go with it – any Irish baker abroad will sympathise with that ongoing quest.

From country to country my favourite cookbooks have come with me, as well as the orange-coloured notebook I bought at the Bay in Toronto just after my eldest was born. In it I’ve been slowly recording the recipes that work best for us as a family, copied in by hand from books, websites, friends, aunts. And even more useful are the back pages where I’ve written down the party food menu for the kids’ birthdays in three countries: what a gift it’s been to see the names of the friends who came, kids and their parents. Memories we’ll keep for the next chapters – and recipes – in our lives.

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*And The secret waffle ingredient? A good pinch of ground kardemomme, or cardamom.

 

This story was published in the Irish Times on 20th November.  

A lifetime of needles

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I’ve been scrabbling through old boxes of folders and files, the ones that hold the history of my little family’s health through the years of our peripatetic life. Having moved to a new country three times in as many years, you would think that I – the mother – would have kept tidy the folder of “important family paperwork”.

Never mind the kids’ artwork and sports medals, what I really need to find quickly is their vaccination records. I finally find the random bits of clipped together, each one showing a list of dates, signatures and stamps from doctors and nurses who administered these life-saving injections into the thick skin of my precious babies’ legs and arms.

It seemed a lot simpler for my own mum who would just reach up the bookshelf in the front room of the Dublin house that is still the family home. In the back of her Doctor Spock book she recorded all our vaccinations, episodes of mumps and those other pesky poxes we used to get back in the 1970s.

The first of my own daughters was born 12 years ago in Ontario, Canada, but we moved around to two other provinces in eastern Canada during the first two years of her life. Childhood vaccinations in Canada are done at 2, 4, 6 and 18 months and so her yellow record card has tracked all her different visits, from health clinics in three towns thousands of miles apart from each other. The names and locations of these clinics mark the course of our lives over those two years, triggering memories of places explored, friends made, dinners shared, winters survived. This card is our only record of her early vaccinations – as each province had a slightly different schedule (see below). What’s even more amazing is that I’ve managed to hang onto it.

I don’t remember much from each of her injections, she was a tough baby, except for the last one, in New Brunswick, where I remember being generally fascinated with our impressive, charming GP who was mother to 17-year-old quadruplets: two boys and two girls, the girls becoming our (interchangeable) babysitters.

A few years later we moved to Norway and our younger daughter was born there. Naturally enough, as a country that often tops the top-everything lists, they’re big into public vaccinations. That was totally fine with me. For some reason they run on a different timeframe:  6 weeks, then 3, 5, 12 and 15 months but that wasn’t a problem as we (thankfully) didn’t go anywhere during those years. Not until she was 7 years old and we moved to Italy.

Now, this kid isn’t as tough as her big sister.

A year into our new life in Tuscany we learned there was a local outbreak of meningitis; a nugget of information I might have missed if I didn’t regularly read the local paper, or keep in with other international mums on Facebook. After checking Norway’s vaccination schedule online, and having my old GP there email me our records, I realised that she had never been vaccinated against Meningitis: a slight panic ensued.

Her big sister had had it done, as it’s part of the Canadian schedule at age one. It’s also done in Ireland and the UK – these being of interest as we might plan to move there some day, and I was starting to realise I needed to have all this straight in my head. Our GP in Florence – who we trusted and could easily talk to – advised us to go ahead and get the vaccine done. It wouldn’t be complicated, she said.

This meant I had to order the meningitis vaccine through the village pharmacy, and with so many anxious Tuscan parents doing the same, this took a couple of weeks. Once it came in and I had handed over 90 euro (the one time I’ve had to pay for any of this), I physically carried the vial that contained minute traces of this vile disease which was already killing off several young people around Tuscany up the stairs to the GP’s office next door. The pharmacist had looked at me blankly when I asked for the skin-numbing plaster which had saved this baby many tears for earlier needles. Turns out that was a purely Norwegian invention, and in Italy this was going to be done old-style.

We were the last appointment of the day and being the kind-hearted village doctor she was, la Dottoressa was well past schedule. Her kindness quota already used up, she quickly got tired of waiting for my needle-shy daughter to bare her upper arm. She cajoled and smiled and argued with her until she finally enlightened her in accented English that “if you don’t get this injection you could get a horrible disease which can make your ears fall off”. My daughter was so surprised, the point of the needle slid quietly in, but the tears when they came, were ever greater.

In the car driving home, my girl was untypically quiet. “Mummy, can we please not move country again and not have to get any more needles we missed from last time?”

So now, in 2018 we’re living in Ireland. I gather together all these records and memories to share them with our local health clinic. Hoping that the girls are both on track and haven’t missed out on some major public health issue their peers are already immune to.

Our older baby – who charmed all those Canadian doctors – is now in secondary school. As in many countries, she is getting her HPV vaccine – an amazing, potentially life-saving injection that didn’t even exist when I left Ireland as a young woman 20 years ago. This is not the year to imagine the reality of any woman getting cervical cancer in Ireland, after the scandal of the faulty cervical check programme brought to light a few months ago by some amazing women who are dying of it, and partners of women who already have.

For myself I’ll admit that I’m grateful that my own women’s health issues have been dealt with outside Ireland. And now that my daughter is at the beginning of her journey with women’s health, I’m not going to pass up the chance of her getting a vaccine that has been proven safe and able to reduce the risks of getting this cancer later in life. In an atmosphere of trust misplaced and betrayed I have to take a leap of faith that this is the right step, better prevention than cure (or in current cases) even diagnosis.

——–

If you’re interested, or you’ve lost track of your own vaccination records, there’s a fantastic tool to compare the schedules of different European countries.

https://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu

A Neighbour’s Kiss

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We’ve been to lucky to set up our new home just outside Florence, a rental apartment carved out of a beautiful old villa. It’s 15th or 16th century, says our next-door-neighbour who introduced himself on our first day. Cinque o seicento. I’m not sure which. Luciano is in his mid seventies, more of a grumpy charmer than a flirt, good humoured and, soon, ridiculously complimentary of our children who can be a little noisy, even by Italian standards. Think, Walter Matthau with a twinkle in his eye and that’s Luciano.

Our gardens run alongside each other, but his is much neater and with a much-better view of the Duomo, down below us in Florence. We often hear him in his garden, pottering, talking loudly to his wife in a way you soon learn is normal for Italians.

I know that he’s the one responsible for leaving a plastic bag for my daughters on our hallway door. This bag contains some of the little plastic figures that are part of a tokens campaign at the big Florence supermarket. These figures are hot currency at school and our neighbour seems to realise how valuable they might be to an 8 year old.

It’s not surprising he keeps his gesture anonymous — the first time he knocked and delivered his offering in person he was mobbed. It was one of those rare moments when my children were actually shocked with gratitude. They even gave him a hug, un abbraccio, something they wouldn’t normally do— he is an old man, who often smells of too much lunchtime wine.

It’s been a couple of weeks since his last door-handle dropoff, so I suggest to my girls that they bring something over to him as a present. Not necessarily to remind him to clear out his grocery bags; more to thank him for his kindness.

In a rare rush of baking last night (this is Italy, who bakes?), I made a cheesecake. I suggest they give some of it to Luciano. Oh they’re all over this idea and have to be persuaded to give him only a third, not half the cake. They want to go to his apartment together and give it to him, my husband and I are not to come with them. This is their thing.

They also decide to make something for him. They attack some sheets of coloured paper and produce a little origami box and a paper swan. As we write out a card none of us can remember the name of Luciano’s wife. We don’t see so much of her, not as much as we hear over the hedge.

With cake and presents in hand, our daughters head out the door, across the cool terracotta floor, to the older couple’s apartment across the hallway. We stay near our door to listen in as best we can.

The wife — with ultra-red hair and dark mascara, also in her mid-70s, childless — hears the bell and her voice echoes from inside their pristine home. A home which has never — and never will — host a grandchild. Chi è? she asks sharply, who’s there? Siamo noi, the girls voices tumble together, it’s just us. She pauses, then realising they’re genuine, she opens the door. Her voice softens. Buonasera. Then another pause while she goes back inside to get Luciano, who is surely the main recipient of what they hold in their hands. After a few seconds, his deep bass voice joins hers and my girls are swept inside with obvious whirls of hugs and exclamations — che carino! ma che bello! siete cosi gentili!. “You’re so good!”

We can only picture the scene from our side of the hall, our hearts pounding to listen in to this moment of independence.

Just a few minutes later we hear the other door close, and they come back in to us.

Their faces are glowing. Alive from realising how one kind thought and a bit of creativity can spark absolute joy in a surprised, older receiver.

Did you remember to tell him to put the cake in his fridge? No, they smile.

I kiss my younger girl’s head and I can smell the perfume of the older woman. I kiss it again and the smell is gone.

Back to the schoolroom in Ireland

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Arriving back at school last week, our youngest nudged us away from the door on her first day – “I’ll go in by myself”. I took this as a good sign as we start into our second year of school in Ireland.

A big pull for us to move here from Italy a year ago was to settle our daughters into what I’ve long claimed to my Canadian husband is an excellent education system.

With three years of school experience from Norway and two from Italy, has it worked out for us here? For the kids definitely yes, but the system (or lack thereof) has been difficult for us to slot into.

As people told us before we moved, “you can’t go too wrong with any of the Irish primary schools”. They could have added, “if you can get into one”.

Here’s the full story as published last week on the Irish Times.

The ups and downs of returning to school in Ireland from Abroad

 

 

The Beaches of Dublin

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Dublin, and the whole of Ireland, is currently melting in an amazing heatwave. The beaches are as busy as they ever get, blankets out, old bottles of sun lotion tossed around, feet gingerly dipping into the water to cool off, 99 ice-cream vans at the top of the path.

My family and I actually started to spend time – and fall for the charms – of Dublin’s beaches back at the end of last summer, when we moved here from Italy.

“Like a decent pub, an Irish beach is full of chat: people talk to each other from their picnic blankets, teenagers make a show of not having fun, parents yell at (or shout for) the children they’ve lost track of. Skin tones can vary wildly but with prolonged sunshine such an obviously rare commodity here, you can feel the genuine joy-which is even better with a 99 in your hand.”

Here’s a link to the full piece I wrote in last week’s Irish Times.

Watching the Eurovision back in Ireland

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The week of May 7th saw the lead up to this year’s Eurovision song contest – and Ireland’s strong entry (for once). It suddenly hit me that it would be quite exciting for me and my family of foreigners to watch it here, having followed it before from Italy and Norway – and with my Canadian husband now a big fan. I wrote this piece for publication in the Irish Times the day before the competition final.

After many years abroad, it’s my first year back home in Dublin and Ireland has made it to the final of the Eurovision song contest. Finally! On Saturday I’ll settle down to watch it together with my family of foreigners. We’ve never really followed the X-Factor or TV dance-shows, but every May we more than make up for it, wherever in the world we happen to be living.

This year we’ll have the huge luxury of turning on the telly in the corner and being able to flick back and forth between RTE and BBC. We won’t have to magically conjure up Graham Norton through the laptop, playing his brilliant commentary over the poor-quality picture of our local Norwegian or Italian TV, putting up with a two-second delay.

I loved to watch it as a child, and now it’s even more fun with my own kids, though no-one enjoys it more than my husband: he grew up in Canada and once he finally caught on to it, he’s been boring his nonplussed friends back home with explanations of its appeal.

Read the full story on the Irish Times online.

San Marino’s entry needed robot backing singers – that’s how small the country is