KITTENS

I have been thinking of late of something I forgot.

I have forgotten what it feels like to be a child. To curl up on the cushion on top of the turf box, beside the range, oblivious to everything around me, with my head stuck in a book. To wake up on a  clear icy morning in a cold room and rush downstairs to get dressed in the warmth of the kitchen. To hear that Dana won the Eurovision, and Ireland for once had a starring role in the bigger world. To get up on wet summer mornings to head off across the fields with the neighbours’ kids, to a world of imagination, of forests and quarries and cowboys and Indians and the furze bushes, the tadpoles and hated frogs, the pond frozen over. And will we chance it?




And joy of all joys when the snow came, sliding down the hills on manure bags, stuffed with hay and secured with baling twine. When we got a new swing in the shed — a tyre on a rope, hours and hours of “swinging”. When the cat had kittens and the clothes in the wardrobe were destroyed. Why?

The picnics on the way to Boyle to visit the relatives, so as we wouldn’t arrive starving and make a show of my mother. And most idyllic of all Irish childhood memories, the flask of tea and egg and onion sandwiches finally arriving to the hay field. Isn’t it so hot?

And the warmest most comforting memory of all — my mother’s arms around me and knowing that everything was alright.

Something I forgot, faded and forgotten in the complications of adult life, the running thoughts in my head, the responsibilities, the plotting and planning of the adult mind, what has to be done today? Who has to be picked up or dropped? Motives and agendas to be examined.

Insight and clarity gradually dawning, the creative urge is still strong, back to joy and satisfaction in something created. In examining a primrose, in stopping to listen to a child, in the colours and texture of a fabric, in being right in this moment. Now.

Something I forgot for a while, but not for long.