It’s half past two. One child keeps dawdling behind (then running ahead) while another is sad because something happened at school but she’ll tell me at home, and the third is annoyed because I keep interrupting what she’s telling me – to find the one who’s dawdling behind (or running ahead). It’s three
Way back in 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, when Justin Bieber was knee-high to a grasshopper, and the boom was surely going to last forever, my husband and I said “I do”, then danced the night away in Cabra Castle. For perhaps the first and last time in our
Looking through old photos in my dad’s house one afternoon, I found a picture I had never seen before. It was taken in the early 80’s and showed a group of us on picnic at the beach. Studying it gave me a surge of nostalgia for a time I don’t remember at
I was going to call this Snapshot of a woman on the edge but that was just too melodramatic for what really comes down to wishing away the long, final days of school before the summer starts. So it’s a snapshot from the cusp instead – from one tired mother
I’m a bit fragile today. It’s a little bit down to last night’s wine and tapas – the ratio of rioja to patatas bravas was not in my favour. But it’s a lot down to the Last Supper – the goodbye dinner with the mums from my middle child’s class. After four
As anyone who works mornings and looks after kids in the afternoon knows, it’s a day of two distinct halves. The morning is busy-busy, trying to cram in every last drop before the imaginary school-run klaxon sounds, and tools must be downed. Like the no-nonsense bell in a TV game show,
Wednesday morning, 5am. Pulled from sleep by a tingling feeling, not unlike childhood Christmas mornings. I slipped out of bed and looked out the window. A glistening white carpet – covering the garden, the slide, the bicycle we forgot to take in. I fell back to sleep, dreaming of magic words
“Okay, five minutes reading time, then lights out,” I said to my smallest, after his story. “Six minutes? Pleeeeease?” “Okay, you can have six minutes reading time,” I said, earning me a best mum ever badge that was much shinier than that worst mum ever one I’d got earlier for
On Monday morning, when I called the kids for school, they had many questions. Here are just some of them: “Is it Saturday, can I watch TV? Okay, well even though it’s Monday, can I watch TV because it’s still kind of Christmas?” “It’s still the middle of the night,
Outside, the garden is shrouded in fog, but the kids haven’t noticed, because they’re on the couch watching Gumball. They’re eating melted butter toast. I’m drinking coffee. They’re in pyjamas, and for the first morning since sometime back in August, they can stay in them. No swimming, no hockey, no
“What was your favourite bit about Christmas when you were a kid?” they ask me every day. “First tell me yours.” I always reply. And they roam through the rituals, turning them over one by one – the hot chocolate when they write their Santa letters, putting the star on the
As I surveyed the entire contents of my shopping bag yesterday – two packets of similar-but-not-the-same crackers and nothing else at all – it struck me that this scene, and the lead-up to it, quite aptly summed up my parenting. It started when we realised we were out of cream crackers,
A day off while the kids are in school? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done it. As for a whole week? Never. And I’m guessing most parents are the same – it feels like a waste to take a week off when the kids are in school or in
At 9.34pm on Monday night, I pressed send on book 2, and off it went into the ether. Obviously nobody was at the other end of the email at 9.34pm on Monday night, and it wasn’t due in until Tuesday but I needed to stop editing and let it go.
It was five o’clock Thursday, rush hour in Dublin city centre. One of those beautiful sunny Autumn evenings we get in early October every year – the Indian summer my kids didn’t believe existed. I was among throngs of post-work walkers – marchers really, marching towards buses and trains and
Oh September, I had such plans for you. A fresher start and a newer year than January. A turning of leaf. A chance to get back to work-proper after a summer of juggling kids and deadlines; the smell of new shoes and new pencil cases promising routine and productivity and
An entire decade has passed since you rushed into the world, two and a half weeks before your due date. I hadn’t finished work yet, and perhaps it was your way of setting the scene; letting me know that nothing would ever be properly planned again. And indeed, of all the
“How was your summer and how does she like the new teacher and how is he settling back in?” The voices change but the questions are the same. “They’re tired this week, I’m tired this week, how is it only Monday?” Stopping at the corner for a conversation worth an hour
“It’s not fair, everyone in the class got lovely new books and I got one with scribbles all over it.” “It’s not fair, we all got moved around and we were allowed to be with our friends, but I was too shy to ask.” “It’s not fair I have to colour
“The summer holidays are too long” “I took parental leave for August and I’m dreading going back to work” “The kids are up the walls and could do with some structure now in September” “I hate having to get her up to bring her to the childminder every morning when there’s