Ar Ócáid Ár bPósadh

Andrew and I were married in the registry office on Love Lane yesterday afternoon, at 3.45pm. "You have to be there at 3.30, Kitty, or they'll cancel our wedding!" I said. "I will, Pussycat" he said "I promise" and we repeated the same two sentences ad nauseum until he dropped my over to my nana's, where she fed me rice pudding ("your sister said you'd like egg and chips, but I didn't think it would suit today") and I pretended not to be nervous.

My parents picked me and nana up and we drove to Grand Canal St. "Ring me when you're ready for us" I said to mam, and I clambered into the front of the car to wait with dad. Andrew saw me get out and then in again, and decided that I mustn't want to marry him after all. And he'd been so careful crossing roads on his walk there, anxious not to get run over on the way to his wedding. I did still want to marry him. I always have.

My dad walked me in to the tune of Married Life. Well, he walked me in and they'd forgotten to press play, so he walked me out and in again. We sat and stood and sat again and signed on dotted lines, my head so close to the page as I scrawled that I look like I'm blind in the photographs. Andrew read a poem that he'd written for me the night before, and I read something as Gaeilge, because I never miss an opportunity to show off.

Bí Ann agus Leanfaidh Mé

Bí ann, bí liom
Be there, be with me
Bí gasta, bí cróga
Be quick, be brave
Bí cliste, bí cinnte
Be clever, be sure
Bí casta, bí glic
Be complicated, be sharp
Bí grámhar, gealgáireach
Be loving, light-hearted
Bí socair laistigh
Be steady inside
Bí doimhin ach bí éadrom
And be deep but be light
Gan teannas ar bith
With no tension inside
I do chorp, i do chroí
In your body, in your heart
I do cheann,
In your head,
Ins a tslí ina chuireann tú tú fhéin i láthair
In the way which you present yourself
I pé chomhluadar ina bhfuil tú
In whatever company you happen to be
Bí ann liom
Be there with me
Bí láidir il-dána
Be strong and be able
Nuair a chasann an domhan
When the world takes a turn
Bí ann dom
Be there for me
Agus buailfimid le chéile
And we will meet together
Nuair a thagann an t-am
When the time comes
Fiú má chothaítear fadhb
Even if there is a problem
Leanfaidh mé ar aghaidh
I'll keep going
Tá saol agam, tá súil agam
I have a life, I hope
Tá rogha agam, tá rún agam
I have a choice, I am determined
Tá bád agam, tá cuan agam
I have a boat, I have a bay
Tá tonn ar an trá
There is a wave on the shore
Tá scéal agam, tá siúl agam
I have a story, I can walk
Tá deis agam, tá duais agam
I have a chance, I have a gift
Tá cás agam, tá cúis agam
I have a case, I have a cause
Tá fonn ar mo ghrá
My love desires

I didn't have words of my own for the occasion (ain't that a rare thing! Rosie struck dumb!) so I borrowed some of Rónán Ó Snodaigh's. Mo bheannacht ort, Rónán, beidh mé buíoch díot go deo as d'fhilíocht. Agus mo bhuíochas duitse, Andrew, as an ngrá a bhronn tú orm.

Review: His & Hers

"I want more for you than that, Pussycat" said Andrew. And we left the cinema mildly depressed and determined never to move to the midlands.

Rinne An Ghealt Meangadh Mór Mantach Gáire

I wiped the condensation from the bus window, soaking my sleeve with everyone's catfood morning breath, and then sat staring balefully through my porthole at the pedestrian traffic. Bean na gcos crosáilte, and a cross little face on me too. Another Wednesday morning.

I miss my canal bank walk to work. I find it hard to think on a cramped bus with steamy windows and screaming schoolkids. Everything's all up in your face, you can smell them, with their haircuts and misery. The girls from Loreto on the Green squeal marble-mouthedly about choir practice and holiday homes. They sound like their mothers. Thank fuck they get off at Earlsfort Terrace. There's a lull then, the silence broken only by the sound of Morning Ireland leaking from the headphones of the suits bound for the IFSC. The bus clears out at Connolly and there's two stops of peace before the North Strand kids stomp up the stairs.

I shouldn't complain. It's an easy commute. Besides, I could take the car. I often do, but I feel bad about it. My colleagues cycle and walk to work. I make hard work of the trudge from the bus.

Instead of crossing the college campus to get to my office, I usually cut through the school playground. I feel vaguely fugitive, neither parent nor teacher, weaving through the lines of little boys in the school yard. I should take the scenic route across the campus. It's nice, full of chattering magpies and romping squirrels whose bottle-brush tails ripple like chiffon scarves when they scurry up the trees. I should take a walk at lunchtime too, but I don't. I eat sandwiches while my colleagues eat salad, and I wonder if I'll ever get it right. My self esteem runs low and my temper runs high when I'm hungry. Once I've eaten I'm in love with it all again, with all of them. It lasts until I get back to my desk.





I wrote this post one wet Wednesday in May when school was still in session. Annie asked me recently if work is better now. "No" I said "I just complain about it less". Which is progress of a sort, I suppose.

123, 123, 123, 123

I stood at the bus stop on Griffith Avenue, leaning against a lamppost and humming Lili Marleen to myself as I admired my shoes. I like to imagine myself as a sexy wartime siren in my dolly shoes and polka-dot dress as I loll against the street furniture, twirling my curls. Should you ever pass a distracted, lumpen figure wearing old-fashioned clothes and tugging at her frizzy hair, waiting for the 123, give me a wave. Or a lift.

I could have taken the car. I was headed for a meeting in the Dáil, which made me feel much more important than I am, but not so much so that I was willing to fork out €6 to park in the Setanta. The spaces are too small and the other cars there are too big.

As I stood waiting for the bus, the crowd shuffled out of the Church of St. Vincent de Paul after the ten o' clock mass. I was like a scene from a geriatric Dawn of the Dead. They wandered straight across the oncoming traffic on Griffith Avenue, making a beeline for my bus stop, like arthritic zebras at a crossing that only they could see. Cars screeched to a halt either side of them and were thanked for their courtesy with regal little waves. Two elderly ladies came and stood beside me, all lipsticky wrinkles and Monday mass glam. They looked me up and down, then turned their attention to an elderly gent running the gauntlet with the traffic, ten paces up from the lights. "Isn't he after getting very old looking" said one with a lemony snicker, her head poking out of her mac like a tortoise peeking from its shell. "Oh yes" said her friend, lips pursed in disgust. You'd swear he'd aged to spite them. He stood a ways away, sneaking peeks at them when he thought they weren't looking, then he scuttled along three-legged with his stick when the bus rattled towards us.

I sat beside him all the way into town, and there wasn't a peep out of him. I felt sorry for him, in that horribly patronising way I do for all elderly folk. Or for most of them, anyway. The other pair didn't let up on their cogar muggering for a minute. They reminded me of the teenage girls I see on the 128 in the mornings, who stink of cigarettes and temper and talk about their fellas like they're randy Jack Russells.

Lifetime Guarantees

I sat in Nana's kitchen last week, making idle chit-chat while she made dinner. "We got a present of a canteen of cutlery last week" I told her. "It came with a 50 year guarantee. I put it under the bed, with the glasses". We have nowhere in our little home to keep canteens of cutlery or crystal wineglasses. Other people's aspirations for our married life exceed our means at the moment. "At least you won't get any holy statues" she said. The Child of Prague is up in the back bedroom in her house, a sellotape collar supporting his head and his painted robes all chipped and faded. She keeps the coins herself and my grandad exchanged with their rings tucked under his base. Her luck money. I must get her to leave the statue in the garden the night before the wedding, to guarantee us good weather.

She has a statue of the Sacred Heart in her bedroom. "I wouldn't part with him for the world" she says "he was a present from your grandad". She means my great grandfather. Sometimes when she's talking to me about her life and how she's lived it, she confuses me with my mother. But she doesn't talk about these things much at all. She went on to point out the glass cupboard in the corner of the kitchen as another of their wedding presents, this one a gift from my grandfather's aunts. In it she keeps the trinkets and souvenirs she's been given over the years, little knick-knacks brought home to her from holidays. When we were little we were allowed to play with them, but only sometimes, if we were good and we were careful. There's a little stoppered bottle there with notes written by my me and my brother stuffed inside. I took one out a few years ago with a pin and some patience. The ink had run and our signatures looked childish. Names and ages. We couldn't think what other trace of ourselves we might like to leave.

She went on to tell me about how, when they'd married, she and my grandad moved to a small flat in Rathmines, like the one Andrew and I share now. It had two rooms, again, like our own. She spoke about it with affection, though it can't have been easy, having two small children there. When she fell pregnant with a third (my mother) her own mother suggested that they move back into the family home on Mount Tallant Avenue and apply for a house of their own from the council. So they moved to share the small two-up-two-down with her parents and brothers and stayed there until they were offered a place of their own, two more children later, and a fifth child on the way.

The new house was across the road, which was handy, she said, because at the time she was nursing her mother. She was suffering from cardiac asthma, and would often take ill at night. She'd wake up wheezing, unable to breathe, and the doctor would have to be brought up to the house. "She smoked" Nana said. They moved into their new home in October, the house she still calls home. One morning the following January she called over to check on her ma and found her dead in her bed. She went and found her da, told him that her ma was very sick, "though I knew she was dead" she said, and then walked down to Clarnico Murray's factory at the end of Mount Tallant Avenue to fetch her brothers.

She doesn't remember anything that happened after that. The following two or three days, she says, are just missing. She didn't even remember them at the time. She supposes that there must have been some fuss, but she couldn't say. A month later, on February 21st, she gave birth to another healthy baby boy. 21 years later, on February 21st, my mam gave birth to me. My nana says little about her ma and how much she misses her, but when I shared this story with my mam she said "write that down, will you?"

So I have. And in 50 years time when we're all living on Mars and skitting around on hoverboards and my granddaughter asks me about how it was for me and her grandad when we first got married, I'll have more than just my story to tell.