As I am away sailing around the reputedly 30, 000 islands and skerries of the Stockholm Archipelago, in a beautiful gaff rigged ketch built in 1905, and I amn’t able to write on my phone, I’m posting these pieces I wrote when I lived in East Lodge, the first of which was actually published in an anthology called Cork Words 2, so I was very impressed with myself, and reading the second piece evokes a very special time when my eldest grandchildren were still little , instead of the awkward generally unreachable teenagers they are now.
The Day Vouchsafed Me
‘No matter that the fields have been shorn for unromantic silage, rather than the hay of former times, the cut grass lies in mounded rows across the meadows behind my house, upon the newly scoured land pale gold in the evening sunlight and I relish the smell of new mown grass.
I take the dogs and climb slowly up the hill, for the first time in weeks, for the fields have been rank with long grass, too tiring to wade through, far above the heads of my two small dogs, and too difficult for my long-legged collie to negotiate, wobbly since his stroke.
Watching the dogs bounding ahead, savouring this first day of renewed freedom to roam these fields, on this first properly hot day, at the back end of May, I take photographs of the first yellow flag iris flowering, the first foxglove in full bloom, responding to the long awaited sun heat, eager to record their beauty, although I know I do this every year; for they appear reliably every year.
A cock pheasant rises from the hedge, disturbed by the dogs, in flustered clumsy flight; the crows pick over the remains of small mammals; the grim harvest of the reaping, and I return through the field entrance, the gates all left flung open, after the day’s tractor work, and up the three flat stone steps which lead through a wicket to my front garden, to my home, to see the bees busily flying back and forth from under the eaves of my bedroom roof, where they have had a nest through many years , and I full of gratitude for this day vouchsafed me in the midst of our perilous future.’
The Best of Days
A great all-embracing thank you forms in my mind as I sit on the back step this morning, after the blessing of drenching night rain.
Bees busy amongst the banks of sweet marjoram , birdsong in the air , dogs lying stretched on the grass in the warmth of sun.
The back door left open last night for Jack, my old collie, to sleep in the lighted porch so he wouldn’t pee inside.
This morning then a multitude of daddy-long-legs on the ceiling .I rescued them one by one, de-cobwebbing their delicate legs to leave them fly into the sun-warmed air. I sit embraced in the world around me. The cat dozes under the fuchsia bush.
The best of days.
The peace all the more satisfying and complete after the energy expended, albeit completely willingly , in resurrecting my long- buried maternal arts during the last few hours; how did I ever manage my own three children in their younger days, day after relentless day?
I had , as always, been a little in dread of the effort of having the grandsons to stay overnight. But all was harmony; the two of them curled up on the long sofa in their habitual way, with Medusa the cat, who used to be their cat, and my little dog Bella too and Harry Potter on TV .
Colm to my bed then, to read his favourite stories with me; ‘George and the Dragon’ – a tale of a dragon who is afraid of mice , and ‘Owl Babies’ – I notice with pleasure and memory the dedication to my daughter on my battered old copy – ‘ To Finola. Christmas 1994. Love from Mummy and Daddy’ and her name written in a wobbly 5 year old’s script and the address ‘Bocare’ ; that old house in the Kerry mountains behind Sneem which still has the power to evoke long lost dreams and wistfulnesses
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Reece and I watch X factor and play draughts which, unusually, and to his chagrin I win, …he creates mad rules to try to change the outcome of the last of the three games and I let him, until in the end he gives up and admits defeat. He tucks up on the sofa, on the Snoopy sheets I have since college days – (brought back forty years ago from Berlin as a present, quite surprisingly, from a guy I was vaguely going out with for a while, before he left his Russian studies course to go back to Berlin permanently and live with a girl he had got pregnant.)
I leave Reece reading Asterix, and Rupert Bear annuals, long left and forgotten by my son Jericho; the clock set on the coffee table so he knows not to disturb me before 7 am.
At 7.20 lying heavily asleep in the bed, I hear something; I sense a presence in the room, and sitting up half conscious, see Reece standing in the doorway. ‘Nanna, Nanna,” he is whispering. ‘can you put the tele on” and I get carefully out of bed, not to disturb Colm or dogs, and stumble downstairs to do so, and then back to bed while Colm still thankfully sleeps.
Bella jumps into the bed again and we sleep on til 8.30 when Colm wakes and wants to get dressed, so I sit up to help him put clothes on and he goes down to hang out with Reece watching C Beebies. I stay 10 minutes more in the bed before , bowing to the inevitable, I go to make cereal and juice for them both, while I come out to have breakfast here on the back step in the September sun.
It’s not long before Reece comes asking to make a cake; Colm wants toast with my new-made blackberry and apple jelly. So we make a chocolate cake iced with vomit-green icing – it looks like earth and grass with silver balls for daisies.
Mid- morning my daughter Fin comes for them and stays for coffee. When they have gone home, I sit and smile; the rituals have been fulfilled, traditions of my family have been re-enacted , and I am content with the satisfaction of doing again with my grandchildren the things I liked to do with my own children when they were young; and with their pleasure in those simple things which they get to do when they come to my house.
And now I am content too to be alone again, with my dogs and cats, sitting here in the late morning sun, in this small world I am so blessed to live within.
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