Memories are made of this....

Frank McCourt once said “Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
I often fret about what kind of memories my kids will have of their own childhood. It’s obviously a million miles away from McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes but I want them to think back with fondness for our home, their parents, the adventures we had, the world-famous O’Neill holidays.
It’s the time of year we have to start thinking about taking ourselves off on holiday. In typical O’Neill fashion we have nothing booked and will probably head down south for a few days of relaxation and/or getting on each other’s nerves.
When I think back to my own childhood, my resounding memories of family holidays are blurry. My parents took us away somewhere every year ¬ – never foreign, we always stuck close to home.
We went to England one year and have an album full of photos of us at various historical sites, museums and general places of interest. I remember none of it.
What I can recall is the sinks on the ferry on the way to England positively swimming with vomit and the captain of said ship laughing as he announced that his superiors in Belfast told him not to sail because of the whole ‘worst storm in living history’ thing. He told us over the loud speak that it was his wedding anniversary and his wife would most certainly kill him if he missed their romantic dinner, thus forcing him to sail on. There were many prayers said that wet and stormy night. Many of them to the god of ceramic sinks.
On another holiday in Mayo my resounding memory is of my younger brother, Cathal, jumping on an old bed and unleashing a massive cloud of ancient country dust thus setting off my asthma. We also visited numerous touristy places of fabulous interest, which I don’t remember.
Then there was the time we went to sunny Sussex for two weeks; the windscreen of the car got smashed on the outside lane of the motorway and we all nearly died. And also we visited a few towns, museums and I think Glastonbury, none of which I remember.
I asked my boys what they remembered about our previous holidays.
We went to a hotel in Newcastle a few years back. We visited butterfly sanctuaries, mazes, museums, castles, had walks on lovely beaches, met a load of ducks. Caolan remembers absolutely nothing of our trip. Daniel’s only memory of the entire holiday was throwing up over his precious Ben 10 schoolbag in the car.
We went to Donegal last year to a gorgeous house overlooking an awe-inspiring scene of fields, cliffs and crashing waves. For 10 days we wandered around historic houses, dandered around beautiful lakes, went to adventure playgrounds, took on the wild Atlantic, relaxed on steam trains, had epic treks around mountains.
Daniel’s only memory of this particular trip is the husband struggling in gale force winds and punishing rain to determinedly dish up real BBQ food. He remembers us laughing out the windows of our holiday home as he threw petrol on the flames to keep it lit in the never-ending downpour. He even remembers the colour of the pathetically inadequate raincoat the husband wore that was so wet it became like a second skin. He remembers how he never gave up on it and we were eventually served delicious burgers in rain-soaked baps.
There’s really no point in us planning a trip to Disney World or New York anytime soon. The kids are too young. They would only come away from such an epic adventure with memories of chocolate ice cream and car sickness.
I dare say we’ll stick with Donegal again this year again.