Bath to Cork with Baby

Inspiration:

Before leaving UK Edel and I took Grace to Bradford on Avon. The purpose was to introduce her to friends and associates there, as well as to say au revoir to people who might come visit us in Cork.

The Swan Hotel had no where free from smoke. I mention this because one of the best things about moving to Ireland is that you can take an infant into a pub without feeling that you are shortening her life.

Dai Griffiths and Dave Mosely both refered to Yeats poem about his daughter. I’d never heard of this poem.

On the day Grace(31.08.05) was born I wrote a poem. So since then I’ve been meaning to look up Yeats’ collected works. My copy is still in the loft in Bath. It’ll follow us to Cork after we sell that house.

Last night I found it…

I found Yeats and a controversy on a website. Is this a great poem or a trite bit of woman hating envy? (That’s the row. I haven’t had time to take sides.)

See what you think. After Yeats, you’ll find my short celebration, called Grace.

A Prayer For My Daughter

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
It’s certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there’s no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all’s accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

— William Butler Yeats

Grace

She comes like a ray of sunlight
Breaking through a storm in the mountains.
Floods into arms
Treasure formed by the gods of beauty.
Loosed from her umbilical cord
She flips open a pair of dark blue eyes
That go to work at once
Soaking in joy that pours
From mother’s face,
Touching heat from the skin
Of a woman who has climbed
The peak of the world’s longest range.
The arrival of a magician,
Able to transform an exhausted and pained visage
Into a light infused patina
Intoxicated with joy.

— Paul Hugh O’Mahony

The airline everyone I know in Ireland loves to hate, despise, certainly look down on…

I was due for take-off from Dublin at 2025. I ran through the short term carpark not knowing which way to go. I should have been in the long term but ran out of time and turned back to break every speedlimit in my desperate dash.

RyanAir are known for being ruthless about imposing the cut off point: one second after the 40 minutes before take-off and you are bared and have to pay full fare for another flight.

This was the last flight to Manchester. Breathless I found the check-in desk. I was late by about 2 minutes. There were three people milling round the desk. I gasped out “Manchester, please, Manchester…”

The woman in RyanAir uniform let me go. She will probably get into trouble if Michael O’Leary ever reads this – that is what my friends would say.

It doesn’t surprise me that RyanAir are number 1 for on-time departures: they create a climate of fear, fear that you’ll miss the plane if you arrive late. I imagine everyone in their operation has been convinced that the best way to get customers to turn up on time is to lock a few out without apology.

RyanAir don’t apologise – unless they have to (like when a court imposes an apology as a condition).

They fill the planes. They don’t welcome you on board and I don’t expect them to say goodbye. They break all the customer service rules.

But I think they are great. They should be given credit for the huge increase in people travelling back and forth on short flights within Europe. They have reduced air travel to bus travel, a basic service. But they have made it work. I have no time for the sophisticated critique of Michael O’Leary. He swears in public. He once kissed my brother for a press photo. He is completely irreverent.

Surprisingly, she did say goodbye when I was getting off in Manchester.

The house is quiet… Grace sleeps, and Edel sleeps. I get to spend some time in my “office”.

There have been so many days when I have not written anything, when I have not had any time to myself. On Thursday I drove from Cork to Dublin airport on my way to Manchester to deliver two days training on customer service, time management, appraisals and recruitment, together with a short session on Johari.

Oh for a bit of daily time to compose. I’ve been looking Bill Whelan up on internet, reading about his Riverdance, his latest collaboration coming up with Charlotte Church, his firm scores. He’s been a great success.

I hope we meet up again soon.

What’s Cork like?

It’s spread out all along the river and over the back of the hills that run along the north side. Around here, in Douglas, houses have been built all over the hills and it looks as if they are going to keep on building.

No Green Belt here. It looks as if there is no end to the building of houses. How do they plan enough sewers?

We live on top of a hill, in a housing estate. You can see the other side of the city for ourside our rented house.

No one plays on the streets. Perhaps the children are too young to be let out of the houses. There is an empty air on the estate. Sad, a bit sad…

Would it be better if there were gangs of teenagers loitering on street corners looking as if they were bored and seeking action?

I’ve met Trassa and her son Daniel and daughter Maeve. They live in the house that back on to ours. She’s a business analyst at the Health Board. I went round there and rang the door bell while I carried Grace in my arms. I used the excuse of having found a football in our garden that might have belonged to Daniel. Trassa was friendly and invited me in. Wonderful difference from UK where that would not have happened.

Also met Ciaran and his wife and son James. I forget her name. She’s due in two weeks but doesn’t look anything like 38 weeks pregnant. He was planting a tree in the garden helped by little 2 1/2 year old James. Yesterday I introduced them to Edel who thought they were really nice.

There are about four houses nearby expecting babies. This is so different. The shopping centre is full of kids hanging out, kids being fed from bottles: such a young society compared with Bath, especially compared with Weston.

Supermarkets are crap…

The ceilings are low. You can’t read the signs because they are hidden by adds for Christmas. They haven’t half the choice of biscuits. There is hardly any organic fruit and veg. Balsamic vinaigre costs about E20 a bottle - exorbitant. Tesco’s and Dunnes each as bad as the other, but Tesco marginally better.

You can get unpasturised camenbert and Brie de Meaux. You can get humous. But it takes ages to find them.

Chip & Pin is in its infancy. I tried to use Edel’s card today but the machine would not accept it. It did accept Mastercard, but it means that I’ll have to pay something for using a sterling creditcard.

The sea is out there…

Choppy water, white horses, light streaming down through dark clouds, a strong wind blowing, the smell of seaweed, little bays deserted on a Sunday afternoon…
We “toured” the coastline between Crosshaven and Kinsale without going any closer to Kinsale than 8 kms.

Everything is measured in kilometres: except the sugar, the milk, the price of apples…
They changed all the signposts but some of them have been turned to face the wrong way. There is a tapestry of narrow roads loaded with potholes, crisscrossing the fields, miles and miles of rolling slopes. Small-holdings adjoining small-holdings.

Last week a farmer who lived alone on his farm in Mayo was sentenced to prison for shooting dead an itinerant who tresspassed and broke into his house. He shot the intruder in the back after a fight, and while the man could not move. The local GAA looked as if it was going to support a march demanding release for the sentenced farmer. The Bishop (Walsh) came on the radio and said he was not in favour of the march going ahead and the march was called off. The protest was called off because the march had given the impression of being anti-itinerant.

I saw farmer Martin from Norfolk on the Late, Late Show. After his time in prison, he looked and sounded well.

All this made me think how hard it must be to live along on a farm. So easy to suffer from depression, feel isolated and cut off from society, from community. So likely to turn paranoid. Imagine what it would be like to be holed up in your house with a dog and a gun for company, fearful of strangers, convinced you were under siege…

What does code stand for?

I’m writing this in HTML, I think, and there is a line of “quicktags” across the top of the window into which I type. I don’t know what the tags stand for.

(more…)

Saturday afternoon we got here.

Edel was delighted to open the kitchen door and find a bouquet of flowers from JoAnn Salmon, together with lovely food in the fridge: cooked salmon, couscous with peppers, potato salad, organic smoked salmon, brown bread, a bottle of white wine chilling.

That’s what I call a welcome. That’s what I call a friend.

It was a relief to find space and time away from the close attentions of family. Edel had spent a week in Limerick with her mother making up for lost time with Grace: that sort of a situation is difficult for everyone.

Paul Cresswell went back to Bath by ferry to Swansea: he left wondering whether there was a place for him in Ireland. He’d had several days with families and he’s not used to being with family all the time.

This is what it was like leaving Bath:

The leaving of Bath (Monday 7 November 2005)

Paul Cresswell helped me pack and load the transit van. He proved to be an expert packer. Without him I’d have been lost.

By 1730, we were running out of time.

I walked through the house for one more time.

• In the parental bedroom, a wastepaper basket was full and lying on its side, women’s magazines hanging out.

• The bed was still away from the wall revealing dust which I’d intended to clean off.

• On the carpet was a pile of postcard size papers waiting to be sorted and packed.

If I hadn’t done that last inspection, the place would have been left with the air of a tip.

• Three bedside lamps sat on the carpet in the spare room hoping they’d be included: they had to be abandoned.

• The bathmat was on the floor after Paul’s shower.

• The sofa in the sitting room hadn’t been pushed back. The pillows were unsettled and unkempt.

• The coffee tables were all over the shop.

I’d given no thought to the possibility that the estate agent would be showing the house to a prospective buyer during the week, before the cleaners came to tidy up. Selling the house wasn’t a prospect that distracted me.

The last rites :

We were running out of time. I’d expected Paul and me to set off at 5pm. It was now 5.45. We might even miss the boat. I didn’t say this to Paul who was getting agitated to leave. But he’d taken a lie down and a shower between 4 and 5.30 while I packed the car and fussed round the house. So I wasn’t going to be led by him.

I checked to make sure I took the right keys from the hooks underneath the crockery cupboard (I’ll have to relearn to call cupboards by their Irish name “presses”.).

As I turned the key in the front door, Paul asked whether I felt sad or something. I repeated that this has been the best move I have ever made: tiring, straining – of course. But not depressing.

Driving away from Blossom Cottage:

I watched Paul climb into the van which he’d packed so well, every square inch loaded to the ceiling. Then I realised he wasn’t an experienced driver: he hasn’t driven for over a year and god knows when he last drove a van load. How much driving has he done during his 60ish years? I was encouraging an inexperienced driver to take the most cherished possessions of Grace, Edel and myself on to the motorway in the dark!

Mad and blind. Blind and mad. It was too late to do anything about it, but I wished I was the one driving the van.

I went first, round past the Moravian church on Weston roundabout. I drove gently up Lansdown Hill. Within seconds he was way behind me. Then I realised that it would take him a long time to get confident in the van. He would drive slowly. I’d calculated our travelling time based on me in the Saab. And we were cutting that fine. As a convoy we would move at the pace of our slowest member. I could only ignore the worry that had swamped in.

I slowed down for him to catch up. It would not be easy to spot the van in headlights in the dark.

Eventually, he crept up the steep hill and we turned past the race course and Lansdown Golf Club. The heavy traffic was coming against us into Bath. A car nipped in and separated us. I pulled over to re-establish the continuity of our convoy. I hoped there wouldn’t be much of that manoeuvring. It was all slow motion. I was doing 35mph and still had to ease off the throttle.

The crisis deepens:

We did well on Freezing Hill, taking the right turn as if glued to each other. On past the potter’s place to the junction with the A420, Bristol to the left, you must turn right to get to the filling station at Pennsylvania. If you go straight on across the junction, you miss our target: the diesel tank had only a few litres left by the previous hirer.

I thought we’d established that Paul knew where to go, that we’d fill the tank together, that he knew the road. But it was a difficult turn to get out across the traffic. I went first, saw that he’d been caught by the heavy traffic, but couldn’t pull in for over a mile. I waited for ten minutes scouring the blinding headlights in the hope that the van would emerge. When I thought to phone Paul, he’d gone the other way and was already on the A46 heading for the motorway without fuel. He turned round and we agreed to rendezvous at the Shell station.

Fuelling passion :

Neither time nor tide waits for any man. He was incandescent when he arrived, cursing the woman who had held him up at the crossing, cursing the fact that we’d got split up, cursing the darkness, cursing everything except me, directly. I’m sure he came close to throwing the keys at me.

I kept my mouth shut, except for proffering the view that I thought he knew the way to the filling station. 65 litres later, I asked the woman at the till whether I could have some ‘cash back’? Not possible, so I had a frantic search for a cheque book. They don’t take plastic at the Severn Bridge River Crossing.

It was a good thing that Paul and I were in different vehicles: he would have flayed me and I’d have repressed my explosive temper. We were in serious trouble.

The funeral procession proceeded gingerly back onto the A46 aiming for the M4 westbound.

Adventure on the motorway :

Slowly everything improved. As we stayed glued to each other down the ramp onto the motorway, we hit 45mph. Mile by mile we edged past 50 and crossed the bridge at 55. The transaction at the booth on the Welsh side went well, £14.50 for car and transit van. I deliberately didn’t ask the woman how far it was to Swansea.

South Wales is well known for the ferocity of its speed cameras. There is some chief constable who has made a name for himself catching every transgressor. For once, I wasn’t in danger of getting points on my licence. Nor was I sure we’d catch the ferry.

To my shock I found Paul up my arse pushing me along towards 65. We were lucky with the roadworks that took a lane out near Port Talbot. For us it was easy to slow without feeling we were crawling. I began to see that Swansea was 21 miles away. Then 15, then 11. It was now close to 8pm and it was obvious that we were on time.

My only regret was that the service station nearest junction 42 was 8 miles past the exit. I couldn’t fill up with petrol at Lucent’s expense. (Edel has a petrol card entitling her to free juice.)

The police, the kiosk and a Polish gentleman :

We found our way on to the ferry. I had to show my passport. Paul had to get out and open the back of the van to show he wasn’t carrying illegal immigrants. The police were probably glad of the company. Everyone else was on board.

The woman in the kiosk checking tickets told Paul that the sailing had been delayed until 0030. (As we left Bath, I’d phoned the company to check for delays and cancellations: a wooden voice recorded that there were no delays or cancelled sailings.)

We were both in transformed humour as we hopped out into the ferry and reported to the purser’s desk. A tall Polish gentleman showed us to our cabin.

_______________________________

All is packed. We are done. The end is nigh…

The beginning begins. The rest of my life stretches before me. I am present and attentive.

The UK is a wonderful society. It has nurtured me well. I have learned here. I am now ready.

Migrating again. This time back to the fields of my ancestors, to the waves of my foremothers, to the place where I first became me.

Blossom Cottage has cared for me and mine.
May Huntersway do the same.

1618.

0112: Clearly too late to be writing. Couldn’t let this historic night come and go without saying something about it.

I came to London in May 1975 intending to stay for about 8 weeks. I sleep in this house for probably the last time tonight.

Never have I had a better move. Always, until now, I’ve hated moving. Office moves, house moves, they’ve always found me in foul temper, even depressed.

This time, it hasn’t been easy but it has been good.

Of course it’s been a struggle. There were three of us in it. How could it be otherwise?

But deep down, where it matters, it has gone well. And it is almost over, so the best is yet to come.

There’s a feast of details that I’ve wanted to write down. Maybe I’ll make time to do that later.

On the desk which is littered with things like:

cheque book
highlighting pen
empty case for Andrea Bocelli’s Romanza
mobile phone charging
empty box from Waitrose plain chocolate butter biscuits
Canon portable printer
BT Voyager205 ADSL router
metal pot loaded with pencils, 2 rulers and many pens
pocket diary for 2005
pile of receipts
hole punch
photograph of brother David, Progressive Democrat candidate for Ward1 Limrick
a few business cards for o’mani & co
2 work notebooks
card with Thomas Clark’s details
tax voucher from Aviva plc dated 17 May 2005: tax credit £1.46
2 dictaphone tapes in their cases
a card saying: “welcome Grace Much love grandma”
and

these quotes on a card:

this storm is what we call progress
walter benjamin 1940

… life must be understood backwards…
it must be lived forwards
soren kierkegaard 1843

experimental - that is, searching for new ways of conveying
meaning
anni albers 1965

a hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action
ralph ellison 1952

The Arnolfini opened again September 2005, in Bristol. I missed it. But I must have picked up the publicity. I like the quotes.

I like quotes.

It’s been a good stint.

What sort of father will I be to my new daughter?
A ferocious Wotan or an ubersexual, multitasking pram-pusher?
Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian 12.09.05

- a response from another father.
_______________________________________________________________________

Wednesday, 14 September 2005 @ 0829

I put you (Grace Violetta Clancy O’Mahony, born 31 08.05) down in your cot. You cry as if devastated. You cry as if protesting. You howl. You keep it up, taking in a breath between desperate sounds. 0830 you keep going, on and on. It feels as if half an hour has passed in a minute. You have such energy. You are tired, I know that. Your eyes were shutting. You shout in your own way. This is no singing. 0831 and so you go on, pulling at my heart strings: I am a cruel, cold, unforgiving father. I can listen to you and not be moved to burst back in through the door and switch on the light and cuddle you to bring you solace. 0832 the time is moving faster now. I am about 10 yards from you, one door open, another shut. You are crying all the time, barely pausing to breathe in another roaring breath. You are a strong headstrong little thing. However beautiful you are, you are fierce. You will probably have a fierce temper. You certainly have stamina… 0834 another minute gone, more energy spent. You can’t keep this up for ever. You are well fed. You are well cared for. You need sleep. You are protesting. You don’t agree. You are going on and on. Do I detect a slight lowering of the tone. Do I notice a greater gap between howls? Yes, there is a quietening happening, but only I would notice it. To anyone else you sound in terrible distress. I hear you as a strong voice, in protest, marching for a cause without fear and loaded with anger to vent. You are indeed venting. 0837 this is now seven minutes during which you howled six minutes twenty seconds and the rest of the time you sucked in breath to fuel.

Silence. I don’t believe it. That was a define halt, a hesitation, like “just a minute”. You definitely stopped for a couple of seconds. There, you did it again. 0838 there is no way you can resume and carry on without me knowing that you must be tiring and calming. But you won’t give in easily. Silence, and this is going on and on and on. Now you start again. You can keep it up. I hear your voice vowing not to give in and to stay fighting to the bitter end. You might be a prisoner but there is no way you’ll accept the demands of your gaolers. Another silence. This time a pause rather than a silence. Is there more to come…?

12 minutes and your mum can’t listen to you. You have found more energy from somewhere. I have a bottle here beside me. Do I give it to you and calm you, or do I listen on and rely on you to calm yourself down? Do I trust you to do it for yourself or do I rescue you from your distress? You need sleep. You howl, howl, howl. You go on and on and I think it is time to stop you going on and on, and I think I will give in. but you are quieting and perhaps I should wait a bit longer….

850 I cracked. I went and lifted you and you went quiet at once. I gave you a suck from the bottle. You took it and then you came off it and I gave you no more. I sat for a minute on the blue ball and you were still. I put you down and you stayed still. I closed the curtains ever tighter and you cried. You cried as I closed the door.

851 you cry. You cry with a lower howl but it is still a howl. You protest still. You keep up your end of the argument. You are not a quitter. You have a long protest to make and you have not yet reached your punchline. But that was a pause. I heard the loud sound of a pause. It stood out to me more than the sound of your cries. Now you change the rhythm of the cry. A bit of staccato and bit of a strong note there. You are mixing it up rather than repeating the old points. How much longer can you keep this up? You have been going on 24 minutes including the 4 minutes I was in with you. You want to keep awake. You do not want to be down.

I am fed up with the sound now. It is past a joke, no fun any more. You are irritating me. I have heard enough. You have made your point. Stop please. Stop, for the love of mercy. Be fair Grace, we gave you a decent bit of attention over breakfast. It’s not fair for you to demand every last drop of sympathy from me. I am getting so fed up I feel like going downstairs for a refill of coffee. Refuel needed. Enough, stop now. I’m telling you I’m going to stop your pocket money if you going on making this fuss. I have heard enough of you for today. I am going to want you quiet for the next 24 hours. It is now 58.

Oh please don’t go on past 9 o’clock. That is the end and I won’t take any more. If you are still crying at 9, I am going to go back in to you and and and cuddle you, you poor thing. It must be awful to be abandoned like this. To be left alone in your room without any companion to pass the space with. Time that goes on for ever and ever. Time and space without end. Abandoned for ever. You don’t know for sure whether anyone is ever going to come back. You need re-assurance….

905 You sleep.. I lifted you and you stopped crying. I carried you over to the ball and I sat down on it and rocked you up and down and you quietened totally. You slept. I moved you about on my shoulder, on my lap, against my chest and back to my lap again. I simulated the position you’d be in on the mattress. You stayed asleep. I laid you down and tucked you in and didn’t stir. You are gone. You have given up your protest. You have made your point. You have won, again. You are indeed a winner. Bless you.

Coffee, coffee, give me strong coffee. Peace at last. …

But wait, isn’t that her again? 0915… indeed it is. Is she cold? Isn’t she swaddled? Shouldn’t I give her the dummy, the soother? Dermot’s rug, that might do it; at least she won’t be cold with that on. I go tuck you in with that. You cry. You haven’t kicked off your clothes. This nothing but protest. Rank protest. I have no sympathy for you. You have gone over the top, you precious creature. You are so delicate, yet so insistent. You have the strength of an ox. There is no stopping you. I am not lifting you again. If I lift you, you will go quiet and limp.

But you are not going to prepare for life by being lifted every time you feel uncomfortable or want to sleep in my arms. You are going to have to look after your own needs a bit. Bit by bit, every day, you are going to grow up and develop an ability to care for yourself. You are yourself as well as dependent on me. I love you by not picking you up. It will do you good to struggle with this. There is an easy way out, but I am not going to do it for you.

Quiet, quiet yourself. Calm down, it is getting late and it will soon be time to wake you up again and you won’t have slept. Maybe I should not have put you down in the first place. That is what Edel said and I think she is right. I am certainly not right. I have got this all wrong. All my notions are rubbish. There must be another way.

I’ve picked you up again. I’ve offered you the soother. You are peaceful as if you are exactly where you want to be. You are in my left arm. Your eyes are open. You are glazed. There is not a flicker of energy escaping from you.. . It is 0934. you are sleeping in my arms with one eye closing ever so slowly. At last you have gone out and there is nothing I can do except celebrate your persistence. Wretched demanding, wearing me out and down.

0937 eye open. We go on in this bubble you and me. One finger typing, soother in my mouth, my nose smelling your urine not knowing if there is poo too. You awake still, now moving your neck towards the light. Your breath audible now. Are you a bit nasally? Now you head slumps backwards as if signalling your move to another realm.

0941 the mouth moves as if conjuring up its own satisfaction. You are open-mouthed one second, and suddenly go limply into sleep-posture. It has all been posturing: you never intended to srop out of society, and go companyless into the night of sleep. You are a character in a drama but this time you have been the conductor.

0944 eyes wide shut; you heard everything I know, even my most quiet thoughts and feelings You have been reading me like an easy book. Lolling over my arm, your tummy warm against mine, your hands inside your clothes, you have me at your mercy.

947 hurry up 10 oclock. Then it will be time to wake you for your next feed. Then it will be your mother’s turn to sing your tune. You are a divil, not a devil as spellcheck suggests. A real divil. One of the little people who rule the world. You are now grimacing and twisting your face, as if you want me to make eye contact with you. You are resuming the command position but I am on to you and I am going to hold on until it is handover time. You have shut those tricky eyes again. Another bit of subterfuge for me to discern.
948 My back is killing me. You are heavy lump now; you are straining me more than ever. I can withstand the psychological games you beat me at, but I can’t stand the aching back. I must stand up from the laptop and walk round to relieve the pain.

This has been one hell of a 90 minutes. You have vanquished all my plans, actions, thoughts and feelings. You have reduced me to a humble unsuccessful one of a couple of parents who are dedicating all their life to you. And I wish you would settle for most of my attention. A wee bit for me next time Grace, please.

0958 and I am watching the seconds tick down to the dregs in the bottle of spirit with which I began this vigil. It is always like this, only it looks and feels different. What changes? I have been tested and I will be tested again. Bless you Time: you have at least arrived when you promised.

I wrote a piece on the relevance of Chaos Theory to caring for an infant. It got lost. I had it ready to publish when I noticed a tab I’d paid no attention to before: it said “write page”, so I clicked it and another proforma came up. I decided to write the next chapter there. That was a stupid thing to do, venture into the unknown without covering my tracks: I forgot to save what I’d already written.

If I was Proust, I could write the full account to what happened next over 40 pages. Today, it is enough to lament that I wiped all my evidential basis for trusting Chaos Theory. I lost the argument. So there is a hole in this blog = between the last two entries, there was an entry that is no more. Never again will I approach the subject in the same manner. If, and when, I elaborate those thoughts that have been dogging me for weeks, I shall write something different towards the same end.

This morning I found myself with time and space to write. I shared that place with Grace because as soon as I began she started up, complaining about her incarceration in her cot during daylight hours. She hates being awake in the dark during the day. The nights don’t bother her.

So I wrote about how important it is to be counter-intuitive when seeking to repeat a successful bit of childcare. And I interlaced each paragraph with an account of the battle between Grace’s wails and my humour.

This reminded me of another day that I spent 90 minutes attending to Grace while she cried her refusal to sleep. I’ll put that episode on record next.

I did indeed. The crying got too much for me. I went in and spoke soothing words to her while opening the curtains. I moved the mobile which plays tunes, so that she is now in her cot looking intently up at a bear, a giraffe, horse and something else. She is saying nothing. I can hear nothing and now I’ll go back in to re-wind the music.

A duck, that’s it. Perhaps she is in love with the duck? Now I have a content baby who has been used to sleeping at this time. So today is different. Every bit as different as she is different. Overnight she has transformed into a newly constituted collectivity of cells. She has re-invented herself. A radical morph… I have a fresh challenge to face. How can I decide what to do?

The key I’ve stumbled into is to do something that didn’t work before, something I’d given up as hopeless. That has a better chance of working than anything else, especially if I can’t remember doing it before.

The smile, the extraordinary mechanism that babies use to enthrawl adults, the way they wind us round their little dimples, melting us to distraction. She beamed up as I re-winded the spring. I got a hit, a buzz. The “I am a good father” buzz. The “I have the most beautiful girl in the world” buzz. I left the bedroom captured, completely unable to remember what I was trying to write and where I’d got to with it.

You must do something you don’t think will work. Because you are dealing with a re-constituted infant, if you do the same as last time, you will fail. The result will be different. You got peace last time; do the same and you will get tears.

The molecules with which you are interacting are in a different state of flux; you are in a different place yourself (even though you may deny it). Seeking the same result is like digging for buried treasure in the same place: it’s either not there or you’ve found it already.

Chaos theory suggests that a minute difference can make a huge difference through a chain of interacting variables. The butterfly in Patrickswell flapped its wings and there was a hurricane in the ocean off Mumbai.

The connection is impossible to trace.

Traceless links criss-cross
an ocean of feeling there
twixt mother and child

waves in every feed
thunderstorms within mite’s burp
beaming smile breaks through

we dance without steps
singing without melody
etching fresh daylight

father and child smile
each delighted and joyful
the fairy creeps away.

The day has come. The day Edel flies to Limerick (Shannon) with Grace is here. And it is a great relief. The lead up to moving has been difficult. I have been grumpy, agitated, irritated and irritating during these recent days. They say that moving is high on the stress rickter scale and they are right.

One of the most bothersome aspects has been my inability to make time to write. Writing gives me a release from the emotions, gives me a chance to paint experience on a canvas and look at it with a degree of detatchment. It’s also a release.

Right now @ 0902, Grace has just been put down and she is complaining. Edel and Joanne (her sister) are heading into town to do last minute shopping. I’m in charge again. This reminds me of another day, much earlier when I listened while she wouldn’t sleep for 90 minutes. Hope fully she’s settle soon.

This space gives me something I crave, the blank page. Bliss to have time for the blank page. I’ve learned to start anywhere and just see what comes out without worrying about anything. During the summer I used to write, almost every day, “A diary for Itsy”. There I usually began with the weather and how the sun rose over the blossom tree or how the shadow of morning cast a shape on the day.

Silence at 0907 - just after Joanne said “she’s not having any of it..” Goes to prove again that infants do what you least expect.

I’ve been hovering on the edge of writing a piece on how only one theoretical framework seems to adequately fit with the experience of caring for a newborn: chaos theory.