By
noeleenm on August 10th, 2007
Last night we had a midnight feast…
We didn’t set out to have it, unlike Kasia’s birthday which we celebrated a week after Jan’s, and unlike the dinner we’ve planned for Sunday week for no other reason than it seems like a good idea - and Gail and Jan have been nagging about it.
Since Kasia’s birthday, she’s been to Belgium to visit her parents (her Dad works there and her Mum had gone for a holiday), Jan went home with Leti to receive his Degree, and Gint went home for nine days to Latvia. It was this latter event which serependitiously triggered our midnight feast last night.
Gint arrived home late last Monday night and had to go straight to work on Tuesday morning. By last night he was so tired that he went straight to bed and only woke up at midnight to get something to eat. I had gone to my bedroom around 10pm to work on e-mails for the flood campaign, and came out to check that everything was locked up for the night when I discovered Gint in the kitchen. I had hardly seen him since his holiday so sat down to hear about his travels and, of course, he insisted that we try a bottle of something that was balsamic and herbal and 45% alcohol. I had enough sense – or cowardice – to say ‘no’ to this but instead started grazing my way through the chocolate sweets filled with liqueurs that he had also brought back from his trip.
Then Jan arrived in and joined Gint at the drink – just to be sociable – with the occasional foray into the chocolates – just to be sociable. He was swiftly followed by Kasia, finishing her late shift at the hotel, who spat out the balsamic drink saying it reminded her of medicine her mother used give them when they were small, but was easily tempted by the chocolates.
By then it seemed like an awful pity that Alba had come in and gone to bed before Gint’s emergence from his slumbers so Jan and Gint went up and woke her to come down and join us. She was on antibiotics, she announced, and couldn’t drink, but the chocolates…
At two o’clock in the morning we finally all went back to bed, having decided it was just a little too early for breakfast. I’ve still only the vaguest notion of what Gint did on his holidays, but the bit I heard was interesting enough to make me want to hear more. He visited someplace that was sacred to the Druids, if I got it correctly, and I think it was in the middle of a forest where the birds didn’t sing, and there was something in there about hollows lined with stones, and as soon as I get to sit down with him over a mug of tea I might get it right yet…
It will have to be soon. Kasia’s going home to Poland on Sunday for a few days – where she’ll again see her parents – and Alba is finally getting to go home to Spain for her holiday at the end of September. And on Sunday I spent the evening in my niece’s home in Ashford at a family get-together. They had just returned from a holiday in the Appennines in Italy, and we saw slides of the most fabulous scenery imaginable.
All their stories of their travels are being woven in my head against the background to a wonderful book I read last week, which was set in Nova Scotia and is called ‘The Birth House’, and through the descriptions of Jenni Diski travels in Antartica (and in her head), which I’m totally absorbed in at the moment. These two books – and G. K. Chesterton’s ‘Fr. Brown’ stories, which I was re-reading in the middle – formed another kind of midnight feast for me, this time for my imagination.
Sometimes, though, I think it needs to go on a diet just as much as my body. Does anyone know how you can tell when your imagination has become obese?.
Posted in Books/films/theatre, Czech Republic, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Spain, Wine and Some Spirits | Comments Off
By
noeleenm on July 10th, 2007
On Saturday night we celebrated Jan’s 28th birthday with a strange mixture of familiarity and newness. The familiarity comes from the tradition, now quite well established, of celebrating birthdays together in the house – a properly laid table, varied food (from ‘Let’s Eat In’, which delivers excellent Indian, Chinese, Thai or Italian food in our area) and drink, all spiced with talk and laughter… But on Saturday it came also from a feeling of ‘deja vu’, as four of the seven people present had celebrated before together around the same table with the same feeling of contentment.
When Jan brought his Leti to meet us at the beginning of last year, Gint was also living in the house, as well as me. Elke and Michele are now back home in Italy, but Gail, from County Monaghan, almost made it, which would have made us five of that original party together again.
Instead we had Kasia from Poland, and Alba from Spain, with Alba’s Irish boyfriend, Derek, to add in a new flavour to the mix. Spanish vied with English at the table because of the two girls - and Jan who has learned to speak Spanish quite well. At one point, though, it almost caused war as Alba and Leti got deep into nostalgia about the things they miss about Spain.
Staying out late, fiestas, and hot sunshine were all being yearned for causing Alba to give a great sigh and say that she would have to go back soon. Derek innocently said that he would enjoy it, and almost fell off his chair when Alba rounded on him to say: ‘No-o-o! You’re not coming!’ Seeing all of our faces she went on to try to explain, backed up by Leti, that she didn’t mean she didn’t want him in Spain – just that she needed badly to go back and just talk Spanish all day long (Derek doesn’t speak Spanish) with family and friends. The spicy food was needed for quite a while to heat up the atmosphere again at that end of the table, but Derek – a good-tempered lad – got over it quickly, to his credit.
It underlined, though, the difficulties a couple from different cultures, and especially with different languages, can experience. Something – even a tone of voice – that is quite normal in one culture can be seen as very offensive in another. Add to that the likelihood of misunderstandings when one, at least, is speaking in a foreign language, and it’s a minefield. What surprises me most, I think, is that so many couples survive it so well!
The birthday boy and his girlfriend were doing very well, at least, despite both speaking English most of the time, although Jan is studying Spanish as well and Leti is intending to learn Czech. The expressions on their faces, though, when Leti presented Jan with his birthday gift – a red tie to go with the red dress Leti will wear at Jan’s graduation ceremony in the Czech Republic later this month – didn’t need translation.
Earlier that day, Jan and myself had talked of birthdays. He was born at around 11am, he said, and looking at his serious, thoughtful face, I realised how important this day is to him. He feels about birthdays as I do: it’s your own very special day, a celebration of the person that is uniquely you. Oddly enough, I had been reading a novel that centred on an astrologist being murdered (and, no, she hadn’t given someone a bad reading…), and obviously the whole thing of star signs provided a background to the story.
Apparently, it’s not only important to astrologists which star sign you were born under, but also which star was in the ascendant (if I remember correctly). To work this out, they need to know the time of your birth, as well as the date.
Strangely enough, the information this provides seems to be used by the astrologer to predict what kind of person you will turn out to be, more so than what your future will be. Perhaps those two things are so intertwined that you can tell a lot about someone’s future once you know what kind of person they will be? You may not know what fate life will deal them, but you know how they will be likely to react to – or even change – that fate.
Now someone who knows about astrology (and I don’t, as must be blatantly obvious) might tear their hair out at my interpretation of what I picked up from this novel. Maybe I just picked up this bit about the date and time of your birth influencing the kind of person you are – and not the rest, if it was there – because it’s what makes us the kind of people we are that really fascinates me.
Are we really influenced by the date and time of our birth – and the stars above us then? And how much of who we are comes from our genes, from the people who went before us, and how much from the people and the ways among whom we grow up? How much influence do traumatic events have on our lives – even those we block out of our conscious minds?
I was fascinated by the Enneagram when I first came across it. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a system whereby people are divided into nine broad personality types, depicted in the form of a nine-pointed star, with each point representing a number. Each of these personality types is heavily influenced by one or other of the points next to it, known as their ‘wings’. I’ve never been quite sure whether I’m a number Four, with a strong Five influence, or a number Seven.
Four is the dreamer, and Five is the academic that likes to live in an ivory tower and observe life. Sometimes the numbers are depicted as countries and Seven, the other number in which I see much of myself, is sometimes depicted as Ireland – with our tendency to overindulge in drink, food, talk – and to avoid confrontation with unpleasantness.
I have found the Enneagram to be extraordinarily accurate in character description. It is believed it was first used by Sufi priests and later by the Jesuits, to identify personality types and thus encourage them to fight their dark side, and encourage them towards developing towards the light.
But it talks about the kind of people we are – not what made us that way, which is what fascinated me about theories of being influenced by the stars at the time of our birth.
Beliefs are such strange things. At Jan’s birthday dinner, Kasia (who is a devout Polish Catholic) announced that she and I were both going to the Irish Mass the following day, and invited anyone who liked to come along. Nobody accepted the invitation but it sparked a discussion about belief – or lack of it – in God, and belief – or lack of it – in organised religion.
The strange thing is that so many young people seem to find it incredible that anyone can believe in a God of Goodness (Derek seemed to have particular problems with this because of the state of the world) and, worse again, in a church – or churches – founded on the teachings of a Man who proclaimed himself to be the Son of that God. Yet they can believe in Matrix-like scenarios or horoscopes or a thousand other things that seem to me twice as unlikely as a Being who is the essence of Good.
I also believe in a Being who is the essence of Evil. I just don’t believe he capers around with horns and cloven foot… And I believe that one has to choose between those two extremes. I also believe that the saying: ‘The easiest way for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing’ is a challenge. We have to choose. And we have to do make that choice count for something.
I looked around the dinner table that night and thought about the different personalities in these increasingly dear people who come to our house. And what had made them that way…
…And I prayed that my God of Goodness will walk with them all through their lives, whatever name they may choose to give Him.
Posted in Czech Republic, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on June 15th, 2007
The Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults training course is over, the General Elections are over, the appointment of a new Government is over – even the good weather is over, at least temporarily.
It’s a soft grey day today, and it feels like the beginning of a weekend in November, rather than the middle of June.
Since my last April post right up to General Election day in Ireland (which also happened to be the final night of our CELTA course), I was so busy that stories of a changing Ireland just got squeezed out of my schedule. Then, in the immediate aftermath of the Elections/course, I went on an ‘after-school’ binge of being out of doors in the sunshine and air I’d missed so much in the previous weeks.
I’ve climbed Bray Head in the evening, absorbing air, beauty, and bird-song in a heart-gladdening mixture, and gardened at the weekends, with dollops of talk and laughter and catching-up with house-family and family of origin and friends in between. That the end of all this busy-ness coincided with the return to our house of a beloved ’son’ – Jan from the Czech Republic – added to the contentment.
Our ‘family’ seems to be going through one of those patches where it gathers other people up as well – Alba’s parents from Spain, briefly, and her Irish boyfriend, more long-term; Kasia’s friends from Poland, also briefly; now Jan’s girlfriend, Letti, who has come to stay in Ireland (not in our house, but hopefully nearby) for a few months; while Gint, our longest resident, has been increasingly busy in his new career laying timber floors.
For me these past few weeks have been a quiet ‘honeymoon’ period in a very busy life, but already things are moving again. I was lucky enough to do well in the CELTA course, and luckier again to be offered two nights a week teaching English in International House, where I did the course. It started last Monday, and it’s nervewracking, stimulating, and fun!
With the election of a new Government, and the appointment of new Ministers, it’s time again to pick up the battle to keep our floodplain free of high density building. With the Green Party going into coalition with Fianna Fail, and a Green Minister for the Environment, we need to make the most of these few weeks before the Government goes into its summer recess.
…Especially as the otherwise excellent flood defence proposals being put forward seem to suggest that, with these in place, there is no need for the floodplain to be preserved… With the news of drought and flood from Australia over this past week, and the extreme flooding much nearer to home in Donegal in the past few days, it’s hard to believe that anyone can seriously moot this argument any longer – but they do.
So, on with the warpaint again and out with the English language text books, but in between there will be some time for working in the garden, walking in the hills, and coming home to Gint, Kasia, Alba, and Jan in this changing Ireland of ours…
Posted in Czech Republic, Flooding, Friends, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, McManus Family, Poland, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on March 30th, 2007
The days are falling in so fast around me this month, albeit longer, brighter days since the hour changed, that I hardly know where to begin…
Most of my waking hours are taken up with the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) course, with occasional prolonged bursts of anxiety and activity about the flood campaign, which is recorded on http://www.braywatch.com/. Even more occasional bursts of activity – I’ve no anxiety to spare regarding this – centre on the more mundane business of living, such as shopping, cooking (as in throwing together sandwiches, much of the time), getting Fred through his NCT, organising house and garden maintenance, paying bills, and working to pay those bills. And sometimes I even get to talk with my family and friends by phone or text, and sometimes, blessedly, I get to sit down with the people with whom I share my home…
It tends to happen quite late at night, when I don’t have to rush anywhere else, and I’m too tired to even go to bed, or on Sundays when I’ve the whole day off both work and course. So, sporadically, I’ve gotten to know the new members of our house family.
Kasia is very slim, with a narrow bone structure, and the complexion of an Irish cailin, which is particularly noticable as she colours her hair red. A guest who came to reception in the hotel where she works the other day announced happily: ‘Well, you’re Irish anyway!’, and was quite surprised when Kasia explained placidly that in fact she’s Polish. She comes from a traditional Catholic Polish background, and talks with quiet pride of the influence the late Pope John Paul II had on the emergence of freedom in their mutually beloved country.
Not so surprisingly then, she went to Mass the first Sunday she spent in our house, but got confused, as she recounted later, when the lay Ministers of the Eucharist were invited up to the altar just after the Consecration, the most sacred part of the Mass. It was the family Mass, where the small children listen to the Bible readings in the side chapel in simple story form, while the adults listen to the traditional words of Epistles and Gospel. The children are then invited out onto the altar, with their ‘minders’, for the Offertory and Consecration, and the Ministers for the Eucharist join them in time to recite the Our Father altogether.
From Kasia’s point of view, what she saw was children going out onto the altar, and, later, the adults joining them. She was up there, too, when she realised that a lot of adults still seemed to be sitting in the congregation… Murmuring apologies, she sidled down off the altar and back to her seat, with a face to match her Irish hair.
She told me all of this, as I cried with laughter, when she asked if I thought it would be okay if she went to one of the other Christian churches the following Sunday? I thought at first that she was too embarrassed to go back to the Catholic church, but she explained that it was simply that in her town they only have Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches and she was fascinated by the churches, mainly of the Protestant faith, that she has seen in Bray. I assured her they would make her very welcome, and tried to give her a potted version of the differences in ritual between the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Catholic churches (with Quakers, who don’t have a public place of worship in Bray) thrown in for good measure.
No mishaps occurred on her next visit to church, but she seemed to miss the familiarity of our form of worship, so I think it’s possible that she’ll return to Mass – with a strong grip on her seat.
Kasia has a quiet, dead-pan sense of humour that is very funny, but Alba - the other new member of our house family – comes into the house like a gale of fresh air, hugging and kissing and regaling us all with her tales of the day, good and bad.
From Valencia, Alba has the dark skin and hair, and the tempestuous temperament, we associate with southern Spain. Everyone who crosses her is the villian in the melodrama of her life (as is everyone who makes war or causes the innocent or powerless to suffer, which I like very much about her), and everyone who treats her with the enthusiasm she showers out on the world is just short of being her very best friend. She even out-dramatises Gint, who watches her with laughter, and happily alternates between playing her leading man and the moustachioed villian of the piece!
In the past week though, Alba has put a cunning plot in place in our house. She announced on several occasions that she has put on too much weight since she has come to Ireland because of the amount of bread we eat here, particularly. As Alba is tall, this weight is negligible, if it exists at all, but her beating of her bare, navel-pierced midriff as she announced it had Gint’s eyes out on stalks. So she has gone on a strict diet, and has joined a gym, where her personal trainer is dark, good-looking and worth perspiring over anyway, she informs us.
But – because Alba has a thing about wasting food in a world where many people starve – she insists on bringing home bread and cake that would otherwise go in the bin of the shop where she works. And, as she’s on a diet, we all eat it.
Now, I can hardly get off the chair after a meal, especially since I’m not getting time to walk these days. Gint at least is exercising, and nothing seems to make Kasia fat.
I was amused to notice, too, that Alba has stuck her diet sheet to the fridge using fridge magnets already there. One, broken, announces the House Rules and originally said:-
‘If it’s dirty, clean it,
If it’s dropped, pick it up,
If it’s broken, fix it,
If it’s hungry, feed it,
If it’s sad, love it.’
Having come into close contact with the kitchen floor tiles at some stage, this magnet broke across the middle, and Alba separated the two pieces to catch each corner of her diet sheet. It’s broken right across the middle of the second last line.
Somehow I have to find a way of resisting Alba’s combination of idealism and single-mindedness regarding diets. If I didn’t have a strong feeling that he’d remind me of one of my grand-nephews, I’d even think of having a look at her personal trainer…
Posted in Flooding, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Spain | 1 Comment »
By
noeleenm on March 14th, 2007
Last night we had our first teaching practice at our CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching), and all six of us in our group were pretty nervous beforehand – albeit the ‘teaching’ this first time was only to conduct some introductory activities. We were also working in pairs, and our ‘teaching’ was unassessed. From tomorrow on, we will be teaching individually, and Devon, our tutor, will be taking notes at the back of the class, as well as our fellow trainee teachers observing.
First times are always a bit nerve-wracking, though, even with Devon taking the same students for an hour beforehand, while we sat in a row at the back and observed a Mistress at work. She used the subject of ‘Favourite Teachers’ for a lesson on gist listening, as well as enabling the students to use new vocabulary to talk about the topic themselves.
She also used the names of the eight students a lot, who came from Spain, Italy, Hungary, Brazil, and China - so we got to match backs-of-heads to names, and prayed we’d be able to still name them when we were facing each other!
We were, as it turned out, as the activities were all based around getting to know each other. The students had obviously all been primed to be nice to us poor trainees, and co-operated with great good humour as we all tried very hard to look as if we knew exactly what we were doing!
In the long run, the biggest surprise of the night probably went to Devon herself. About half-way through her class, I idly turned over the Observation page we were each asked to fill in. It was also printed on the reverse. I nudged Clare, beside me, frantically and hissed: “Are we supposed to be filling in this side as well?!” She turned a pale shade of green, and the nudging and hissing moved all along our row as we realised that there were several other pages behind, and we weren’t sure how many we were supposed to fill in.
Devon turned to glance over her students a few moments later, and stopped, startled, as she realised that all the students were heads down, busily working, but the entire row of trainee teachers were sitting with their hands up begging permission to ask a question!
We didn’t need to fill in anything except the front of the top page, it turned out, but I did think Devon glanced beyond her students again when she was pre-teaching vocabulary for the listening lesson. One of the words on her list was ‘imbecile’…
Posted in Brazil, China, House Family, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on February 13th, 2007
Yesterday was Gint’s birthday. He celebrated it by buying tools for his new enterprise, arranging to have business cards printed, and, in the evening, attending the second in a series of classes run by Wicklow Enterprise Centre on ‘Starting your own Business’. The course was especially designed for non-nationals who want to work for themselves in Ireland.
When he came home from the course, we celebrated it in a more traditional way by sharing a bottle of wine, and he told me some of the stories of the people who are doing the course with him. One student from India is proposing to start his own software company. A Polish lady wants to start up a trucking company, with her husband doing the driving while she looks after the admin side of the business. An African gentleman (Somalia?) is a qualified mechanic and wants to work at his trade here, but may have problems getting a visa. Someone else wants to hand-make leather shoes.
And Gint has temporarily postponed his original business idea of importing very solid, and very handsome, timber garden furniture into Ireland from his native Latvia, because of the heavy freight costs involved and the shortness of Irish summers, in favour of setting up on his own laying timber floors. He loves timber, and is at his happiest working with it. At the beginning, he will probably get more jobs laying light laminate flooring, but hopes to progress to his idea of Nirvana – laying solid wooden floors, particularly parquet flooring.
It was great to hear stories of people with enterprise and enthusiasm, willing to work hard to make a life for themselves. Many Irish people went away in years past and built up lives on dreams and hard work: now it’s our turn to provide the fertile field for entrepreneurship, it seems.
I wonder sometimes is it easier somehow for people from any country to build up a business away from home and its distractions of what all the friends are doing (often down at the pub) and the limitations sometimes imposed by being boxed into what people expect of you. Abroad you are no longer defined by your background, except that part of it that is truly you, and loneliness provides at least plenty of time to work, which in turn can provide the opportunity to integrate.
It’s a time of new beginnings in our house. Gint is looking for another home because he now has a van (replacing ‘Baby’ in his working life, if not in his heart), and parking has become increasingly difficult in our area. Wojtek has moved to his new house, with room to spread his DJ equipment – and to build on an increasing commitment to his girlfriend. Maria, at this time, should be wandering around the West of Ireland: we’re waiting to hear from her.
Soon, when I know the results of my application to do a Celta course (a Cambridge certified course in teaching English as a foreign language) over the coming months in Dublin, I will be advertising rooms in my house again, but this time just till the autumn. Then I hope to go abroad – depending on my results from the course, if I’m accepted, and on the decision from An Bord Pleanala (the Irish Planning Board) on our community’s campaign to stop high density building on the floodplain downriver from our homes. I will not walk away from that until it’s resolved.
Hopefully, though, I’ll become a traveller again for the winter, living among strangers in a strange land as the young people who have lived in my house have done over the past few years.
Birthday dreams – they’re a funny business!
Posted in Flooding, Germany, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, Poland | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on January 4th, 2007
Christmas was fun – but busy!
The first chance I got to write anything was a ‘thank you’ letter to a friend, which I wrote at what seemed to me like dawn, but was in reality near nine o’clock, on the day before New Year’s Eve. I was up early to say goodbye to Renata and Pavel who were returning to the Czech Republic. It’s always hard to say goodbye, but I consoled myself with the fact that, for Pavel, this is his second time to stay in my house. The world is getting smaller…
It still seemed strange, though, when the house had been so packed for so long, to sit in quietness.
We (Renata, Pavel, Maria, and myself) cooked for seven on the 23rd December, with Gint laying the table, opening bottles of wine, and muttering over the washing up afterwards. Wojtek was excused from duty as he had to go to work immediately after the meal and was allowed to sleep till then – until we discovered we were unaccountably short of dishes and he went scuttling up to his den (politely referred to as his bedroom), to emerge carrying a precarious load of dirty dishes! He has earned the nickname ‘Bear’ because of his ability to hibernate, a useful skill if you work nights and study during the day, but sometimes the area around his bed is only just short of gnawed bones and a pot of honey…
Renata and Pavel had hunted fish (thank God they don’t have Wojtek’s hoarding habits) in our local Saturday street market, but couldn’t locate carp, the traditional fish dish for much of Eastern Europe. Instead, they were advised to use salmon and brown trout. Apparently, it was delicious – once they had finally given up on the white wine sauce which was supposed to accompany it. The sauce had been chosen from one of my cookery books and the recipe in English, with its very different vocabulary, proved a little too much in the long run. But Gint ate it anyway…
The traditional accompaniment of potato salad, which Renata and Pavel had worked on all day, had ‘eating and drinking’ in it, as we say in Ireland, and more than made up for the disappointing sauce for our Czechs, Polish and Latvian fish eaters. Maria is allergic to potatoes, so she had plain basmati rice with her fish, while I turned my rice dish into a mushroom risotto. We all shared a big green salad, with a very nice vinaigrette sauce (prepared by Maria) - and we all shared white wine!
This decidedly unIrish main course was followed by a very Irish Christmas pudding, made in County Wexford, and custard. I find a lot of visitors to our country have never met custard before (it’s rather like caramel, but usually served hot), and it met with mixed reactions. Renata, for instance, is convinced that every sweet food is sweeter in Ireland, sometimes too much so, but everyone liked the pudding – except Maria, whom I had completely forgotten is allergic to nuts also. Luckily, she tasted them at her first tentative (she has learned to be tentative about food) mouthful, and stopped before any damage was done.
We exchanged our Chriskindel gifts, ranging from scratch cards (which, if you scratch off three matching numbers, wins you the amount named) through calendars and DVD racks to a beer glass that twinkles with different coloured lights everytime it is raised! Now, far be it from me to name a Chriskindel, but the person who was responsible for choosing these twinkling coloured lights on the beer glass is the same person who was shocked to discover we use coloured lights - as opposed to simply white – on our Christmas tree! And she was relieved to find that, at least, our Christmas tree lights don’t twinkle…
Poor Wojtek had to go to work then, but the rest of us finished the night lounging about the fireplace, talking, drinking wine, and building dreams in the embers. We were joined at some point by Gail, who had been Christmas shopping in Dublin till all hours!
Maria set off early the next morning for Germany and her family and friends there, but the simple meal planned for that night for the rest of us meant we could rest a little before I set off for an afternoon tea party in my nephew, Stephen’s house, with 22 of my sister’s children and their families! Mary’s husband, Noel, celebrated his 73rd birthday on Christmas Eve, while his grandson, also Noel, celebrated his 14th birthday. Stephen and Marie, his wife, have established a tradition each year of celebrating both events early enough to leave time for all the little ones to be back home safely in bed in time for Santa’s visit later that night. It’s always a warm, talkative occasion for all of us, apart from the delicious meal.
From Stephen’s, I went to the 8pm vigil Mass for Christmas Day, which was very beautiful. Tall Christmas trees (with white lights!) form a background to the altar, the choir sang sweetly, and our old traditional Crib, that I have known since I was a child, gathers crowds around after Mass. I missed Elke and Michele, though, who accompanied me last year.
At 10pm we finally sat down at home and eat a very untraditional meal – for either Ireland or Eastern Europe – of pasta in a blue cheese and brocolli and walnut sauce. But it was delicious, and we could all eat it. We followed it happily with mince pies and ice-cream, and Renata placed the Baby Jesus in the crib, before we all crept over to the fire to dream some more…
Wojtek had a wonderful Christmas Eve also, he reported later, with four Polish couples sharing a traditional meal – and gifts – far from home. He was better off far from home the next morning, as many (between 20 and 30) of my extended family call then for our traditional Christmas drinks and exchange of gifts, causing quite a din when we’re all together.
A quick escape down then to my sister’s house in Wicklow town for an Irish Christmas dinner, with vegetarian fillets substituting for meat on my plate, Brussels sprouts and carrots and potatoes and delicious sauces, followed by homemade Christmas pudding with cream and brandy sauce. We opened our gifts, poking happily into each others presents as well as our own, before setting off for my niece, Sally-Ann’s, house in Ashford, and yet another Christmas tea, with Christmas cake and every other sweet thing featuring on the table.
Around the table, and in the living room, young Martin and his little foster sister, Saoirse, featured. Martin is ten now, while Saoirse celebrated her first birthday earlier in December, and they are crazy about each other – with good reason. Saoirse played to the gallery all night, and we were happy to be her audience, while Martin offered learned discourses on the space ship he was building, in between giving and returning hugs and kisses to his little sister.
I stayed overnight in Mary and Noel’s house, returning to our own house to spend time with the resurrected Gint (Renata and Pavel had gone to Belfast and were staying over there) before going to Bernadette’s (another of my sister, Mary’s, daughters) for yet another ginormous family reunion. On Stephen’s night, all 22 of that family have a very festive Christmas tea in Bernadette’s and the Chriskindels brings big gifts for the little ones. Mary does Mother Clause and it’s a great night for the small children – and for the adults.
The rest of Christmas passed in a blur of eating and drinking and talking and lounging about – with friends, with family, and with my diminishing house family.
Gint set off for Italy, to visit Michele, on the 28th, Wojtek made occasional guest appearances in the house in between parties, and Renata and Pavel and myself kept up our tradition of eating anything but traditional Irish food by visiting an Italian restaurant – Il Palazzo – in Bray for their last night here, on the 29th.
On the 30th, I went to lunch in another of my nieces’ homes – this time the daughter of my other sister, Sally, who died fifteen years ago, and whom I still miss. Luckily, many of her qualities, and mannerisms, are still to be found in her two daughters – Edel, in whose home we were eating, and Trish, who came to lunch also with her two children, Shauna and Darragh. Edel’s little girl, Hannah, was six on New Year’s Day, so we were starting her celebrations as well as catching up on each other’s news.
I thought on New Year’s Eve I was going to spend the evening alone as one of the very bad storms we’d experienced over the Christmas built up throughout the day. Normally, my generation of our family come to our house on that night to share a meal and talk of family news and memories right through midnight. This year my brother, Pat, and his wife, Judy, weren’t coming because Pat still doesn’t feel up to going out late since he had a mild stroke last Christmas. My sister, Mary, and Noel, came from Wicklow though, picking up our sister-in-law, Angela, on the way. Our other sister-in-law, Marie, came on foot as she lives nearby, and Mary and Noel left her home afterwards. As both Mary and Marie had the remains of bad colds, the laughter that seemed to go on all night caused bouts of coughing that made the house sound like a hospital ward!Â
Pat phoned his good wishes through though during the evening, as did many of the family, with members of my ‘house family’ texting in their good wishes, like Grant from South Africa and Daniel from Spain, who is now living in London. Earlier in the Christmas I’d had e-mails and texts from other young people who have lived here. Nayra, who transformed a photo of me on the back of her Dad’s motorbike last year in their home in Fuerteventura by adding a Santa hat to each of us (I’ll post the photo next time I get to write a post, but more of that anon…), Lucia whose poetry has won prizes and who is now about to publish her first book of poetry, Roberto who became a Dad to Itxasa last September, and Jan, who has just discovered he is about to become a father also…
The coming of babies is appropriate, and joyful, news for Christmas – but the quietness of Bethleham was something I just didn’t get time to experience this year. That’s why tomorrow morning I’m setting off for France for an initially companionable and probably hilarious weekend with five friends as we celebrate my 60th birthday in Carcassonne, but followed by a further week in the little Mediterannean village of Collioure by myself, where I’ll explore, rest, listen to music, be quiet, and build up my energy again for another year.
When I get back I intend to post photos of our Christmas in Ireland, and of France. Meanwhile, I wish for all of us – all of the people who have lived in this house and all of their families, including new babies, as well as all of the people who read about this house – a blessed and peaceful New Year.
Posted in Canary Islands, Czech Republic, Germany, House Family, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, McManus Family, Poland, South Africa, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on August 9th, 2006
We’re again changing partners in a steadily changing Ireland…
At the end of this month, Dong Kwang will leave our house. He has already left it behind in many ways since he met up with his Chinese girlfriend, Duyi. They are at the stage of wanting to be constantly together, and, even when physically present in our house, wanting only to be alone together. It’s the most natural thing in the world, but it doesn’t work in a ‘family’ house: it’s time to move on.
This ‘time for birds to fly the nest’ is something I haven’t really experienced before, but it must happen to parents all over Ireland nowadays. When I was growing up it was unheard of for single people in Ireland to live anywhere, other than their family home, unless they moved to another town or country, usually searching for work. Now that has changed, and it’s probably all to the good. Nobody really learns to look after him or herself until they’ve lived in a place where nobody else will pick up after them, where they either cook or starve, and where they learn about the cost of living.
But some parents still see it as a rejection, or, if they believe that it is wrong for a couple to sleep together before marriage, they are upset if that is the reason for moving on. Only last year a woman I know very well was extremely upset because her son was moving out to live with his girlfriend, without getting married. (In fact, the relationship broke up, and he’s now back home again because he couldn’t afford to pay the rent on his own, but he’s learned to pick up his dirty socks…)
At the other end of the spectrum, there are parents in Ireland now who seem happy to have the boyfriend or girlfriend move in as well, feeling, as one friend put it: “They’ll sleep together anyway. I’d rather my daughter is safe under my roof.”
Who can say who is right or wrong, only choose what is honest and good for our own homes, and our own loved ones, in an Ireland where moral values are having to be re-evaluated by all of us every day.
For me, if a young man or woman is in their twenties, they should have reached the maturity of making responsible choices about sexuality: I am quite happy to discuss relationships with them, the sexual aspect included, but I am not the moral guardian of these young adults. I am responsible, though, for how relationships impinge on the sense of ‘home’ within our house, and the comfort of those who live in it.
Our house is not made up of separate apartments. It is made up of bedrooms, one large kitchen, and one large living room. There quite simply isn’t enough space or privacy for a couple to develop a relationship in the middle of them, without everybody else feeling ‘in the way’. It’s a house where young men and women go through all the grooming rituals (half an hour in the shower leaving the bathroom reeking of cologne) before heading off to meet friends, sometimes with a romantic interest, sometimes not. It’s a house where people wander about in their pyjamas, with tousled hair, and make sleepy conversation over breakfast or supper. It’s a house in which we eat and drink together to welcome someone, to wish goodbye, or to celebrate a birthday. It’s a house to which we bring individual friends – as guests – in mutual respect.
Coming to a decision about the parting of the ways has been difficult. I am especially aware that I have the greater power here, and therefore the greater responsibility to make a decision that is fair to both of us. I hope that I have done that this time. Dong Kwang’s heart is already in another place, and it’s time for him to follow it. But I will miss my gentle Korean, and his stories of a land that is still magical and different, even in a changing Ireland.
Posted in House Family, Ireland, Korea | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on July 28th, 2006
I’ve been thinking a lot about community, and connections, particularly in Ireland and even more particularly in Little Bray, over the past week.
We have a door-to-door collection going on all week to fundraise for our flood plain campaign, so an ever-widening circle went out from our core group through some thirty collectors to every house in the ‘flood basin’ or lowlands of Little Bray. That’s some 450 homes. Many of the people living in those homes have been through two floods – 1965 and 1986 – while the older people in the area remember the flood of 1932 as children.
People who have moved into the area in the last twenty years, though, find it harder to imagine the devastation caused by flooding happening in their neighbourhood, and that a proposal to put high density building on the flood plain downriver from our community would be even considered if it’s as dangerous as we (and every hydrologist all over the world) say…
So the door-to-door collection is also an information session, knocking on doors and telling new people stories of floods and flood plains. It has meant the usual chats with neighbours, but it has also turned up some surprises…
My collection area was our road of twenty houses, and I called at the house of Tom, who moved in about five years ago (a newcomer in our area!), expecting to have to explain all the background and stories of the floods. Tom has the kind of accent that tells you straight away that he has lived most of his life in England, like many Irish emigrants before him, but he surprised me by explaining that he is originally from Bray, knows all about the flooding in Little Bray (digging into his wallet as he talked), and – when I established his surname for a receipt – it turned out that he is a brother of my sister-in-law’s stepfather. Marie’s father died when she was a little girl, and John Whiston, Lord rest him, was a loving replacement all through his life. Tom is his brother.
It shouldn’t have surprised me because I had told Magda when she moved in to our house over a week ago that: “You can’t throw a stone in Bray without hitting a relative.â€
Magda had explained, when she came to see the room, that she had been living just up the hill from us, and wanted to stay in our neighbourhood. It turned out that she had been living on the same road as that same sister-in-law – Marie – and her now grown up children, whom Deirdre, the housemother, knows well.
Bray’ population in the 2002 census was over 28,000, and it’s growing at an enormous rate. Thousands of new people have come from other parts of Ireland – generally to work in nearby Dublin city – and have become committed members of our community. But there is still a strong core of families who have lived in Bray for generations.
I hoped that the realisation of this close-knit community might help Magda to settle into our house after what was obviously a traumatic move.
It had seemed to do so, because last Saturday, which was the first time we really got to talk, she was bubbly and laughing, teasing her compatriot, Wojtek, who was trying, not very subtly, to establish how old she is, whether she has a boyfriend here, how long she intends to stay, and what exactly is this ‘set-dancing’ she’s doing, with the unspoken addendum ‘Can anybody join in?’!
You can’t fault him for trying…
I was further amused to discover that when Elke was leaving Bray, Magda was one of the people who applied for her job on reception in one of our local hotels. With excellent English, but without hotel experience, she didn’t get the job, but it was another one of those ‘web threads’ that seem strange looking back.
Still I was conscious all week that our house seems terribly quiet just now, surprisingly so considering there are five of us living there. The dead heat we are experiencing now in Ireland (only 22 degrees Celsius, but clammy, thundery weather that feels much hotter) is causing some slow down: everybody just wants to lie down, preferably in a hammock. Different work and social schedules – and consequently evening meal schedules, which was traditionally the time everyone met up in the kitchen – mean that there are rarely more than three of us in the house at a time, and often only two.
On Wednesday evening I wanted to do some work in the attic that involved quite a bit of hammering and sawing and drilling, using electric tools. Magda was just about to go out, and nobody else seemed to be at home – I knocked doors to check, before settling down to work without any regard to the noise I was making. Yesterday I found that Wojtek had been asleep in his room throughout it all, and heard neither the knock on the door nor the noise of the electric drill and saw! (“I told you I don’t hear anything when I sleep…!â€)
I asked Magda if she finds our house very quiet, having lived with a family with small children till now. She considered it.
“I miss all the coming and going. There were always children in and out. But I’ll get used to it.!
I never have…
When my parents were alive, our house was always full of children – us, then their grandchildren, and, even after they died, my nieces and nephews and then my grand-nieces and grand-nephews came here often. But, when I lost my dog, Pal, last year, the final ‘anchor’ to a regular ‘house timetable’ disappeared for me. Too often, I am out of the house until late, and, while adults make arrangements to see each other, most of the children’s visits our house experienced was when some of the family were going by with children: “And we just took a chance and dropped in…â€
They still come by invitation, of course, as I go to their houses by invitation – but I rarely seem to manage to “just drop up†to their houses, either, because my timetable is that of an adult without children. You can’t visit a five year old at 11pm at night.
But I miss them – and I miss having a dog, particularly and specifically a ‘Pal’ dog. She anchored me.
There are so many things I want to do right now – continue to fight the flood plain campaign, travel when I can, pore over blogs (my own and others), relax over a meal and a glass of wine without having to go home first – that would not be nearly as easy to do if I had a dog again, and I was tied down to the sort of routine that committing to any other living thing entails. But it’s as if not having a dog, and the routine it entails, has cut me off from the company of children, too.
Children and dogs go together, and they make a house a real home.
Last night Magda and myself sat and talked… She’s going home to Poland on holidays in August for about ten days. She’s here in Ireland, like Gint, because of work, not just to travel and see other countries. She misses home.
“I know already that when I come back, I will be sadâ€, she admitted.
That’s very understandable when you’re Polish and you’re living in Ireland.
…But why am I homesick, I wonder…?
Posted in House Family, Ireland, McManus Family, Poland | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on July 24th, 2006
Last Tuesday Magda, from Poland, came to live in our home. She has been in Ireland for the past two years, in a house in which two small children have grown into two much bigger children, and now need their own bedrooms, instead of sharing.
Magda’s house parents brought her, with her luggage, and engaged in the kind of ‘Have you got everything now?’ and ‘Try to get a good night’s sleep’ and hugging farewells that I’ve come to know only too well.
The big difference here was that the mother, Deirdre, was arranging with Magda to go set-dancing together on Thursday – a whole two days away – as they hugged goodbye.
‘Set dancing’ has been a part of Irish life since the 19th century, when it was brought to Ireland by the British. Like most things brought here, it was assimilated, changed, and turned into something quite peculiarly Irish, with the development of regional sets, like the Clare Set which is still one of the most famous, long performed all over Ireland.
From Clare, too, came the tradition of ‘battering’, which means that the men ‘batter’ the steps out on the timber or stone floors, giving sets their particular atmosphere of excitement.
When my parents, born in 1906, were young, a couple of ’sets’ would have been a normal part of any house party or wedding, but, by the time I became interested in Irish group dancing (as opposed to step dancing, which is the kind of exhibition dancing performed in shows like Riverdance, and only danced by experts), ceilis were much more popular.
Ceili dancing is still joyous and exciting, but the dancing itself is softer, lighter, and the steps resemble the basic steps of the exhibition ’step dancing’, for the jigs and reels to which they are performed.
‘Sets’ consists of four couples, each couple forming one side of a square, and there’s a break between each ‘figure’ of the dance. Most sets consist of around three figures.
A set in ceili dancing, on the other hand, may consist of two couples, four couples, five couples for the Haymakers Jig, or even eight couples in the case of the Sixteen Hand Reel. In the simplest of all ceili dances – the Walls of Limerick and the Siege of Ennis -Â couples dance a pattern facing each other and then each pass on to the next couple in line to repeat it, forming a long chain of dancers down the floor.
The ‘body’ of the dance, performed by the group, is interspersed by diverse ‘figures’, in which each couple in turn steps out to demonstrate their skill, but there’s no break in either the music or the dancing: each section moves seamlessly into the next.
Ceilis and scoraiochteanna (a mixture of ceili, singing, solo playing on fiddle, flute or accordeon, and even story telling and poetry) were very popular in the sixties, even in our town on the edge of the ‘Pale’. Partly the revival of interest in Irish music and culture then was due to the establishment in 1951 of Comhaltas Ceolteori Eireann, and its revival of what became immensely popular national Irish music and dance festivals – Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann.
In our town, though, for a large group of young people, its popularity was due almost entirely to the passion of one local man for the Irish language and culture – Sean O’Briain.
Sean started ceilis, encouraged us to use Irish as much as possible – even ‘cupla focail’, a few words – and, because we associated it with enjoying ourselves through music, song and dance, we learned to love it and take pride in it, in a way we never had while learning it as a subject in school.
We started to travel to ceilis in neighbouring towns, and then to fleadhs all over Ireland, and because Sean and his bean-cheile (wife), Eithne, were with us, parents had no problem with us arriving home at 5am in the morning, or staying away all weekend. They knew we were safe, and they knew we were happy – a felicitous combination for the parent of any young person.
We danced every weekend, and sometimes during the week as well. Friendships (at home and away with groups like the Belfast ceili group), romances – and marriages – were born, and flourished. We were steeped in song and music and dance, and we loved every minute of it.
For me, it ended when I left for Ecuador in ‘72. By the time I returned, two years later, the group of friends had separated, physically, to other countries, to other parts of our own country, or simply settling down to start a family in our own place. We never, though, separated at heart, and the return of one of our gang – Maureen – from Australia, with her entire family a few years back became the occasion of a great ceili reunion.
I was caught up in other things on my return to Ireland, and when set dancing became popular in the ’80s I just didn’t take to it, although I appreciated the enthusiasm and commitment of the late Connie Ryan, who, almost single-handed, brought set dancing back to popularity in Ireland.
The bitterness caused by the revival of set-dancing, and its take-over of many ceili functions, was amazing, though. Ceili purists maintained that set-dancing was ‘barrack dancing’ (referring to the British soldiers who would have brought it here), while set-dancing enthusiasts derisorily referred to ceili dancing as ‘ballet dancing’. Ceili organisers maintained that ’sets’, with their length and the breaks in between each figure, broke the flow of a ceili, while set dancers couldn’t wait for the battering to begin.
But I was glad when I heard that Magda is going to set-dancing in Ireland (although I’m determined to expose her to ceili dancing too before she leaves us!). It’s great to see young people enjoying the music and dance of our country, whichever version they choose.
And my mother would be very glad to know that someone in our house still knows how to do ‘an oul set’.
Posted in House Family, Ireland, Poland | 1 Comment »