What, no dramatics?

My baby boy Finn turned three last week and he started playschool to celebrate the occasion.
I wasn’t sure how the boy would take being separated from me for three hours a day, saying as how we’ve spent most of the past three years in each other’s company.
When I left him at the school I was anticipating a bit of screaming, a bit of leg hugging, maybe a spot of banging his fists fiercely on the nursery door with a touch of high-pitched wailing about not leaving him there all alone thrown in. I was highly disappointed that while all the other Mums had to contend with clingy, sobbing children, my little guy waved me a cheery goodbye and headed for the building blocks.
I even went over and reinforced the fact that I was leaving now, going away and leaving him here all by himself in the hope that it might spark a bit of dramatic reaction. He bid me farewell and went on about the business of building a castle with plastic blocks.
I resisted the urge to accidentally push over and annihilate his multi-coloured creation so that he’d cry and I’d have to hug him like all the other Mums were hugging their offspring. His lack of dramatics was making me look bad.
So I shuffled and huffed off back to the car, turning back in the hope that he’d at least have the courtesy to run to the nursery windows, put on a bit of a show of crying after me. I’d settle even for one solitary tear.
Nothing.
When I returned a few hours later I asked the nursery assistant how he had got on. Had he shown any signs of missing me? He had had a great time, she said. They had sung Happy Birthday and he had worn a silly king’s hat. Was there any tears, I enquired? Yes, she replied. He had shed a tear or two when the staff had told the children it was time now to go home.
She commented that my boy was very quiet. I laughed. His nickname in our house is ‘the curly-haired lunatic’. Wait until he settles in, wait until they get him full throttle. Then they’ll be banging on the nursery doors, crying for me to take him home.
After playschool the husband took the boy into town for an ice cream. He was wearing a big blue star badge that read ‘I am 3 today!’ – the boy, not the husband.
By the time the husband had reached the ice cream parlour he had made a profit of £4. Random people – female, average age 80 – kept stopping to admire my boy, his birthday badge and his curls.
When the husband reached the ice cream parlour the owner gave my boy extra helpings and refused payment. Whilst sitting outside the shop in the sun the boy made another profit of £2.70, a badge with a tree on it and a red balloon.
If we continue this way the husband and I calculate that we will be able to retire at 40. I’m sending them both into town next Saturday, adorned with several birthday badges and the husband will be sporting a curly wig for extra effect.

Don't let hatred build a home in your heart....

Ten years ago I was 26 years old, making plans for my wedding and greatly enjoying my early years working as an Irish News sub-editor. My children were not even a twinkle in their Daddy’s eye. The future was bright and laid out before me to do what I willed.
On September 11th 2001 I drove down the New Lodge Road to work listening to a song on the radio when the presenter cut in to announce that two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York.
When I arrived at work my colleagues were transfixed by the images being beamed through the newsroom televisions. No one spoke. The phones, which rang constantly, fell silent. I watched, as the world did, in horror and disbelief as the towers burned. I watched as human beings – people’s husbands, children’s fathers, mothers, wives – fell like burning confetti to the ground below. I watched as live feeds brought images of people hanging out of the skyscraper’s windows, sick to my stomach knowing that there was no conceivable way those poor souls would ever find a way out.
I watched as a man, who looked around my husband’s age, waved his white suit shirt desperately out the window. The camera zoomed in. He’d written SOS in black marker on his shirt. The black smoke from the crash consumed him. I walked to my desk and closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch any more. The image of that shirtless man falling through those black clouds to his death is seared into my memory forever.
I could not imagine that man’s wife, his mother, his children watching their televisions, seeing their loved one’s last moments being played over and over again on the news. I couldn’t imagine sitting at home watching my husband’s building turn to rubble.
For all who remember that day, witnessing and experiencing the last moments of life and death through our television sets from the safety of our offices or homes it was surreal, disturbing, heartbreaking. What must it have been like for the families of those that perished that day?
In the days that followed we went to work, we relayed the news as always. Part of our job was to trawl through news from American reporters, condense and organised the stories for inclusion in the paper.
I read hundreds and hundreds of heartbreaking stories; saw hundreds of heart wrenching images. Some of the details from the more graphic reports had to be omitted in case they would upset our readers. But I read them and I remember them.
I read dialogues of last phone calls to wives, viewed pictures of grief-stricken fathers searching the savaged streets of New York for their missing daughters, read of how entire fire departments had been wiped out. Thousands of miles away from the events of that day, sitting in a newsroom in Belfast, I cried for people I had never met. Just months before I married my husband I cried for the wives whose husbands were never coming home, the children who would never see their fathers or mothers again.
Ten years on the horrific images are on the television again. I have four children now. Two of them are old enough to be aware of world affairs, but too young to fully understand the viciousness of world we live in, the hate that drives people to kill their fellow human beings.
They have asked me, “Why did those bad men do that?”
It’s complicated I say. I have told them there were men who hated America. This hatred was so intense they turned themselves into human weapons and destroyed what they thought were the two great symbols of America.
I tell them that America went to war after that attack and that there are families in Afghanistan and Iraq who are suffering the same horror of having their loved ones ripped from them, just as those on 9/11 did. Entire families have been wiped out. Innocent men, women and children, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters slaughtered as those were on September 11th. That soldiers were sent off to war in unpronounceable places and have never come home again.
I wonder what kind of world I have brought my children into, I worry for them as they grow. As a mother I hope to teach my children that there are no winners in war. Hatred is like poison I tell them. People should never let it build a home in their hearts.
In the days, weeks, months and years after 9/11 there were a lot of words written on the tragic happenings. I don’t recall a lot of them.
What stands out in my mind are the words of my colleague, Irish News columnist Anne Hailes. In the days after the horrific events of that day she told us in her column to gather those we love dear and hold them close, cherish them, appreciate them, tell them we love them. They were wise words then, and wise words now.

Poor Scary, I've been that soldier...

Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice, welcomed her third child into the world last week. No word on the name yet, but big sisters Phoenix Chi and Angel are, I’m sure, as eager as the rest of the world to hear what wild and wonderful title by which the child should henceforth be addressed.
The baby girl’s arrival was not the only significant part of the story. Poor Scary Spice was photographed in the throes of labour, stumbling through the hospital car park in her jammies (which were not even her good ones), with no make up, hanging on to her husband, walls, cars and passers by, trying desperately to make her way into the maternity unit through a sea of paparazzi photographers and the excruciating waves of labour. For a PR conscious celebrity, who has full make–up and hair done before she even pops out for a pint of milk, I'm sure she would agree it was not her finest hour.
I cringed when I saw those pictures in the papers. I think every woman who has ever had a baby did. For we all knew that labour is a most intensely private moment for us ladies. We are vulnerable, we are in pain, we are stressed and worried about the health of our babies. We are often in awful, terribly mismatched night attire and unflattering bedtime slippers. Labour is not glamorous, it is not fancy. It’s as rock bottom as a girl can get and it’s not a time for meeting people you know from work or getting your photograph splashed all over the front pages of national newspapers.
The last time I was in labour the midwives sent me out walking around the warren of corridors in the hospital to help things progress quicker. I wasn’t adequately prepared for the expedition – wearing a horrendous navy blue nightshirt from a budget retail outlet and bedroom slippers circa 1986 which, in any other scenario, would have assured my arrest for crimes against modern fashion.
So off we set, the husband and I, around the lovely new wings of the hospital and into the hospital proper.
We walked and we walked. And we stopped and held onto walls, said bad words and told husbands that there was never to be any more children, ever. And we walked some more. It was like we were in a cocoon, just the two of us. I didn’t for a moment stop to think that folk might judge me on my bad choice of nightwear or how the sight of my make-up free face, or my poor choice of hairstyle that day might burn the very irises out of ordinary hospital dwellers.
Thing is, when a girl’s in labour, the fashionable side of her brain that would ordinarily make her shun bad nightwear or hairstyle choices shuts down in order to give full power to the ‘Please God, I’ll do anything, make the pain stop’ department. Simple fact of the matter is, labour means for a few hours she doesn’t actually care how she looks.
That’s why it’s good to have a sensible man around.
On our travels around the hospital we turned one corner and walked into a crowd of people. While I held onto the wall and breathed the husband quickly established that the gathered crowd were not normal visitors and that there was a clear and present danger of me appearing on the six o’clock news. Someone – it may have been the Queen of England – was cutting a ribbon at the bottom of the corridor and those milling around with their cameras were a broad selection of my journalistic colleagues and friends from across the North with various digital recording equipment.
If you look closely at the footage from that day you will – in the far right hand corner – see a big, fat pregnant lady wearing a £1.50 nightgown with rabbits on it being manhandled around the corner with a coat over her head. This was not a kidnapping as you might assume, it was the husband saving me from the eternal shame of having pictures of me in labour beamed all over the world.
So Scary Spice, I do feel your pain. I did feel sorry for you. I was almost that soldier. However, I admire your restraint. Had the paparazzi decided to snap me while labour was in progress there would be threats of violence, there would be actual violence, there would be the forceful positioning of digital photography equipment in certain regions that biology determines the sun cannot possibly shine.

The Big Red Button Phase....

Today marks the official end to the summer holidays. It’s been fun but I welcome the return of routines and the military boot camp-feel the school mornings have. I suppose if I’m honest I missed all the clapping in an authoritive manner, the barking of orders and the taking away of privileges from those who did not comply.
We didn’t go away this year again. The thought of taking four small children on an airplane fills me with dread. The thought of having to spend two weeks cooped up in a compact hotel room with them fills me with despair.
No matter where we would go they would be bored within two hours, guaranteed. If I booked us a week on the moon they would complain about the cold, that they were bored looking at outer space, that once you’ve seen one star you’ve seen them all and where was the intergalactic drive-through McDonalds?
I would also be at pains to take an airplane anywhere until our middle child Caolan grows out of the Father Dougal phase he’s been going through this past six years. This phase means he cannot physically help himself and has to touch dangerous stuff when told not to. We call it the ‘big red button’ fascination.
I would imagine that any land, sea or air vehicle that child is found on would surely come to grief because he has pressed the big red button onboard, the one with the sign which clearly states ‘Self Destruct Button – Do Not Touch’ on it.
We visited a country house and gardens last week as part of the O’Neill Staycation 2011. It was a glorious day, the gardens were beautiful and we were milling around enjoying ourselves. One walled garden was cordoned off and there was a large sign on a closed iron gate saying ‘Do Not Enter’ and smaller lettering warning folk that there was some manner of pesticide spraying going on to kill bugs and beasties and that the chemicals used could irritate skin and eyes.
I could see Caolan’s radar bing into action and I told the child in no uncertain terms that he was absolutely forbidden to enter that garden. He was told that ‘Do Not Enter’ means exactly that. No ifs or buts. That there was poisonous substances there that would positively burn his skin off and possibly his eyes out of his head. He might never see again and would have to live his live out the rest of his life void of flesh on his bones. This warning served to entice him further. He seemed drawn to that ‘Do Not Touch’ sign like a moth to a flame.
I’m not sure what way the child’s brain computed this information but it was probably something along the lines of…’See over there, there’s a world of dangerous and exciting things hiding behind that cordon just waiting to be discovered. Wouldn’t it be great to tell your mates you ate/stuck up your nose/stuffed into your ears one of those poison plants and it turned your tongue/nose/ears green? That chemical stuff could turn your hand into a skeleton hand. Imagine your friend's faces. They’d be all like, Wow!’
We were sitting on one of the picnic benches when he arrived over, the skin on his hands a flamey red colour. He rubbed his eye and the skin on his face got enflamed. He was trying to pretend it didn’t hurt but we had to spend half an hour with his hands and face under a gushing outdoor tap to get his skin back to normal. There was no scientific proof that this would cure his sore skin but I figured a good dunking would probably do him the world of good.
I cannot impress upon you, readers, how many times I have been to the doctor with this child in the aftermath of one of his ‘big red button’ events. His exploits are the stuff of legends in our medical surgery.
There was the time I gave him an art set and told him not to consume any of the small fluffy pieces. Two weeks later after a nosebleed, and the discovery of a lump I made a frantic dash to the doctors telling him I thought my child had a tumour in his nose. The doctor fished a small fluffy art ball from my son’s nose with a pair of tweezers. Caolan told me he sniffed it up to see what would happen.
The first time I took the child to the beach as a baby, just walking, he ran straight into the water, diving head first into the oncoming waves. He has had kitchen table jumping injuries and a scar above his eye from when he was swinging Tarzan-like on a kitchen cabinet door and it fell completely off onto his head.
The child literally jumps first and thinks later, usually while rolling around the floor in agony.
I doubt he’ll ever be any different. I have just resigned myself to the fact that I am the mother of a kamikaze kid.

Oh hail glorious Saint Back to Schoolness...

Is that a choir of angels I hear? Does the world somehow seem a brighter place? How is it that I can see colours more vibrantly, that music sounds somehow sweeter? Because there’s only one more week left until the glorious school term starts, that’s why.
There were days we thought we would never make it this far. There were many dark, dark times. Many days we teetered on the brink of insanity as dozens of children, only a fraction of whom I could claim as my offspring, rampaged through my house and garden, ate everything in our cupboards like a pack of ravenous piranha and sent the neighbours running, screaming for the ASBO hotline number due to excessive noise levels.
We have spent entire days praying. Praying that the Lord would end our suffering. But we obviously weren’t praying hard enough for he kept sending the apocalyptic rain and the hoards of neighbours noisy kids to our door. We must have done something terribly wrong in a previous life to deserve this type of torture, otherwise why would he have sent a child with the ear-drum piercing Barbara Windsor-style laugh to our door this summer or the one who could eat seven packets of crisps in a row and then ask if we had any available biscuits?
As usual I have left the purchasing of school uniforms to the last minute. I’ve discovered over the years the purchasing of school uniforms is a bit like a safari. Lionesses prowl around the shops for weeks beforehand on the hunt, sniffing out the best bargains, waiting for the special offers to raise their heads. Once they have their prey in their sights they slink around and pounce on the best deals for their cubs, biting and scratching other mother’s eyes out if they put their paws on the last pair of good school shoes.
Last year I figured that their old uniforms would suffice, that lack of sunshine and our wet Irish summers would have stunted their growth sufficiently that I wouldn’t need to purchase new ones. Three days before school started I found myself trawling through the rejects that the good Mums, the ones who buy their school uniforms in May, had discarded. And much like the African safari the uniform section of many stores was like the carcass of some savaged wildebeest – just the bare bones and the bits that were chewed and spit out left, like the odd shoes and trousers that won’t stay up for love or money.
And the hunt for those PE slippers, the pumps that the school insist in making the kids wear so as not to ruin their wooden floors, gets me every year. When do the good mothers purchase these elusive items, in January? That’s just plain sneaky. There are never any left when I seek them in the summer. I’ve more chance of discovering the lost treasures of the Knights Templar. Quite frankly I’d rather pay to have the PE hall floor completely replaced every year than to have to search for those blasted black pumps.
But at least now we know that there is light at the end of what has been a very, very long and torturous tunnel. We’re now talking days until normal service resumes and we can offload our offspring onto the professionals and have our days and our routines returned to us.
If you’re looking for us next week you will find us camped outside their school, as has become tradition. Those teachers have had a long, stress less holiday season. I wouldn’t want to deprive them of a single second of my kid’s colourful company.

Wanted – neurotic Mary Poppins for childminding duties...

My baby girl is a year old now and I need to make some efforts to return to full time employment. This will involve me getting some poor unfortunate to care for four rowdy kids and one deranged dog. With all family members flat out with work I may be forced to pay an individual to replace me during the working day, ie look on as my children break stuff, attempt to kill one another and destroy my house and sanity.
I put an advert in our local paper. I am expecting a positive deluge of eager applicants and have put Royal Mail on full alert in case they need to buy their postmen fabric extensions for their postbags.
Wanted: Neurotic Mary Poppins-style Health and Safety obsessed individual for childminding and/or industrial cleaning responsibilities. Must have degree-level qualification in worrying with particular interest in the subjects of terror and asthma attacks, economic uncertainty and terribly frightening and unpronounceable health complaints. Ninja skills, cage fighting referee experience and extreme survival skills preferable but not essential. Full training and hands-on experience will be given on site.
Main duties: Worrying about children from 9am to 9pm, Monday to Friday, some weekend and evening worrying assistance may also be needed. Applicant must be flexible.
Applicant must be youthful, full of energy and willing to sacrifice sitting down or having a nice cup of tea for a nine, possibly 12 hours at a time.
We are essentially looking for a kind, warm individual with a good sense of humour (you will need it, trust me) who is willing to muck in, muck out, tidy up and not freak out. Mountaineering and/or sheer face cliff climbing experience may also be beneficial when tackling the weekly ironing pile.
Advanced and defensive driving skills course will be offered to the successful applicant to ensure the picking up of three children from three different locations at exactly the same time is handled correctly.
The successful applicant must enjoy cooking and have a healthy interest in trying new recipes that do not have baked beans as their core ingredient. Family would love to try exotic new dishes, for example macaroni cheese or chicken nuggets.
The successful applicant may be expected to travel on holiday during the summer with the family – to the bright lights of Donegal – and not have an aversion to spending a wet week in a cramped caravan with four crazed caravan-hating children, two rather grumpy, deranged parents and a dog who despises the sound of the countryside.
Our home in Derry is of adequate size. If the successful applicant wishes to live with us there is accommodation available in our family's beautiful home. There is a nice space out in the garage, in between the dog and right next to the washing machine for convenience – you can continue the endless washing cycle throughout the night for handiness, might take the pressure off your extensive daytime chores. The job is to start in September.
Pay rates are atrocious and there is zero likelihood of any type of benefits, apart from having a really good laugh.
Please send CV, references and most up-to-date criminal record to the usual address.
Thanks!
The O’Neills

The garage that time forgot....

Our garage was a big mess. At the back of it we had big boxes secured tightly with brown tape and marked with things like ‘kitchen’ or ‘living room’. They had arrived on the lorry from Belfast seven years ago and got lost among the vast amount of other useless clutter that we have managed to accumulate in our time together.
When I walked into our garage I was always reminded of that scene from the X-files when Mulder and Scully found a huge warehouse that had boxes full of secrets as far as the eye could see. The boxes in our garage do not contain ancient lost artifacts or solid gold tablets that Jesus Christ wrote his shopping list on. It’s more a case of old framed pictures, ancient bills and toys with bits broke off them that I couldn’t bear to throw out.
We decided to tackle the monster last weekend and finally clear the thing out. The husband has big ideas for the place that doesn’t necessarily include my big ideas of filling it with more rubbish moved in from the house.
We opened boxes that hadn’t seen the light of day for seven years. Every item had a memory attached, every scrap of paper told a story. It was like opening a time capsule to a previous existence.
In one box I found a case with all our very important documentation (so very, very important it has been hidden at the back of the garage for seven years).
I found a contract of employment from one of my first employers and it took me back to the excitement I felt at becoming a real live journalist, getting handed money to do the two things that I loved most – talking and writing. I remember looking at my yearly income – the heady sum of £11,000 – and thinking I had won the actual lottery.
I found the mortgage details from our very first house in North Belfast. We bought a three storey house on the peaceline for £13,000. I remember the husband, who was then the boyfriend, and I almost passing out at what we thought was an absolute fortune.
In the same box I found a small yellow plastic duck on a string. The boy, who now almost reaches my shoulders, used to pull this duck everywhere behind him as he toddled around our Belfast home. It would quack as it moved. It used to drive us insane. But I pulled it along the garage floor and it brought back those early, nervous days when we first started out on this journey. All wet behind the ears as to how kids worked, stumbling in the dark, tripping over the obstacles of brand new parenthood.
I looked at that little duck and out the garage window at the tall handsome boy wrestling with his brother in the garden and thought how far we’d come, how many blessings we’ve been given in those days and since.
In the same box I found a letter from my father in his beautiful, swirly handwriting. It was in the days before email – yes I’m that old – texts, pages, electronic everything. Yes, there were phones but my Dad adored writing letters and how I love finding these little reminders of him around our house. Reading his turn of phrase is almost like talking with him again. All of them signed off with ‘Love Dad x’. They are all little treasures.
There are framed pictures – a youthful us in France before weddings and christenings were even thought of; the husband as a schoolchild, a mirror image of our boys; a picture of the husband’s mother – who died before she met our youngest children – and the pictures from the day our son made us a family. All special, all lost and now found.
There were boxes marked ‘toys to fix’ which were packed with cars with only three wheels, action figures with limbs missing and teddies who had seen better days. We found the computerised bunny that talked, which malfunctioned one night and led us into thinking someone had broken into our house and was asking people in a southern American accent to ‘follow me’.
There was too much, too little-used exercise equipment to mention. There was a skiing machine, a rowing contraption and a thing, which enabled the user to swing arms and legs wildly at the same time. Walking from the sofa to the kettle burnt more calories than the grand total of calories clocked up on all of the above. In the skip they went alongside old chairs that we never got around to upholstering and huge cabinets that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a 70’s parlour – you know the ones, everyone’s elderly aunt has one.
In the skip went rusty tent poles, clutter inherited from relatives and useless DIY paraphernalia that we bought on sale thinking we might one day need them.
But there was a small box set aside for special stuff. Things to add to my memory chest – Daddy’s letters, a portrait my eldest son did of me when he was three years old (big round face, gigantic orange eyes, spiky black hair) and the pictures which tell the story of our lives. Little treasures, all of them.