Brood
My mother's not been well. She was in pain and, true to form, didn't tell anyone for three days. Irish women: tough as old boxty, but...unbiddable. In these situations I am conscious of my exile. I live on a different island, and sometimes I feel a long way from home especially when a family member is not well and especially when it is my mum, who is not young. I mean, you've seen me - imagine how old my mum is. Luckily while my phone call rings uselessly around an empty house - we are both so ancient that there is a landline involved - the other members of my family have sprung into action. My brother Barry had already whisked her away to hospital, my sister Laura, a pharmacist, was dispensing medical advice. I heard about it from my brother Edward in the single gnomic sentence: "Mum is fine." Minutes earlier we had been discussing the relative merits of an episode of "Boon".
After a lengthy battery of tests, including the delightful revelation that she had a previously undiagnosed and now healed spinal fracture - Irish women: tougher than a hexagonal basalt column battered by the sea - she was allowed home, with a shit ton of pain-killers and a future hospital appointment. My brother was with her all day. My sister went down today and my other brother is going down tomorrow. Only one of these kids is doing his own thing.
I'm blessed to have my family. They are such thoroughly good eggs, such utterly decent, thoughtful and empathetic people, that I sometimes forget other people aren't like this. When your baseline of human experience, the people closest to you, are so remarkably GOOD, it can be a disorientating experience being in the wider world and encountering flotilla after flotilla of solid, copper-bottomed shits.
There is a condition called "Paris Syndrome" exhibited mainly by Japanese tourists in Paris when they experience Parisians being, well, like Parisians. The tourists can suffer from delusional states, hallucinations, feeling of persecution, depersonalisation, tachycardia, sweating and vomiting, just because the French can be a bit abrupt and their dogs poo in the street.
In many ways that's what its like meeting people who aren't members of my family. What's wrong with those horrible bastards? Why can't they be alright?
There is a shared language with the Higginses: a gibberish argot compiled of quotations, stolen scraps of nonsense and family mythology which can be impenetrable. We talk rubbish a lot, but it is our rubbish. A comfortable, companionable murmur; the hiss and groan of a deeply silly sea. When we were growing up other mums used to ask our mum how she coped with four kids, didn't they fight all the time? But the truth is we never did. Why would we hit one another? We liked each other. And we still like each other.
They're taking care of her. She's in the best possible hands. The kids are alright.
After a lengthy battery of tests, including the delightful revelation that she had a previously undiagnosed and now healed spinal fracture - Irish women: tougher than a hexagonal basalt column battered by the sea - she was allowed home, with a shit ton of pain-killers and a future hospital appointment. My brother was with her all day. My sister went down today and my other brother is going down tomorrow. Only one of these kids is doing his own thing.
I'm blessed to have my family. They are such thoroughly good eggs, such utterly decent, thoughtful and empathetic people, that I sometimes forget other people aren't like this. When your baseline of human experience, the people closest to you, are so remarkably GOOD, it can be a disorientating experience being in the wider world and encountering flotilla after flotilla of solid, copper-bottomed shits.
There is a condition called "Paris Syndrome" exhibited mainly by Japanese tourists in Paris when they experience Parisians being, well, like Parisians. The tourists can suffer from delusional states, hallucinations, feeling of persecution, depersonalisation, tachycardia, sweating and vomiting, just because the French can be a bit abrupt and their dogs poo in the street.
In many ways that's what its like meeting people who aren't members of my family. What's wrong with those horrible bastards? Why can't they be alright?
There is a shared language with the Higginses: a gibberish argot compiled of quotations, stolen scraps of nonsense and family mythology which can be impenetrable. We talk rubbish a lot, but it is our rubbish. A comfortable, companionable murmur; the hiss and groan of a deeply silly sea. When we were growing up other mums used to ask our mum how she coped with four kids, didn't they fight all the time? But the truth is we never did. Why would we hit one another? We liked each other. And we still like each other.
They're taking care of her. She's in the best possible hands. The kids are alright.
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