Dear Jack & Clare,
I treated myself on Sunday Morning last and stayed in bed late, reading the Weekend Edition of the Irish Times, magnamoniously allowing your Mother to get up in response to someone's wailings to be released from their cot. Once I heard the usual scampering noises accompanied by high pitched yips and yelps, my super detective powers told me that this was not, in fact, a burly puppy rampaging through the house but presaged a blond haired explosion into the bedroom (neither of you ever walked into rooms) so I start leafing through the paper more rapidly.
When you do that, skipping quickly from page to page, scanning the text, it's funny how you quite often end up with a more enjoyable and sometimes more informative read or at least I have. One tends to ignore the major 'serious' articles in favour of other tidbits - anything that catches the eye really.
Not that this process takes long, interrupted as it is by a body plunging through the paper curtain with happy abandon and a gurgled "DA DA DA!" And then the soft aroma of your warm hair as you snuggle in. There was contentment, joy, fulfillment and simple happiness. I can still remember that soft fragrance that symbolises your childhood for me and I have a catch in my throat.
I'll always be grateful for that. For feeling you falling asleep on my chest. Or when you woke at night crying and I would go downstairs with you and turn on some music and dance slowly around with you in my arms until you fell asleep with your head on my shoulder. Or the pure joy in your face when I came through the door at night after work, followed by you rushing down the hall for a hug.
You both made my world complete when you came into it.
Thank you,
Love,
Dad.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
LETTERS TO MY CHILDREN - 29th September 1992
Dear Jack & Clare,
I had to go to the National Library in Kildare Street the other day to do a little research. On the surface the system of security and admission looked impressive. There was a security desk at the stairs up to the library proper and you had to fill out a form stating your purpose for using the library and get your photograph taken for an identity card.
Having said that, for all of the notice that the library attendant took, I could have filled out "research into the domestic manufacture of Semtex and to get a look at any nudie pics in the books" and I would still have gotten a reader's card.
When I went in, I stood for a moment by the Card Index area, just looking around. I was impressed by the great domed ceiling and the long wooden desks with their lovely green reader's lamps. It all looked so right. So perfectly in the vein of what a library reading room should look like. Like all of the films I've ever seen. There were the habitues in one area, whispering earnestly to each other. There, one or two terribly focussed legal types. There, two slick boyos in blazers, cravats and well coiffed hair, probably doing the research prior to some elegant stroke they were about to pull. And there was the obligatory nubile young female student trotting up and down to the Librarian's desk in her symbiotically attached leggings, on an interestingly circuitous route that took her past a rather large, handsome, young guy in a rugby shirt who was totally immersed in what looked like a diatribe on the feeding habits of the immature fluke worm. Funny how there's always a gorgeous girl in every Library I've been in, usually minding her own business, getting on with it and oblivious to the havoc she's wreaking on the concentration of most of the males in sight.
Dublin became a happy hunting ground for motorcycle policemen last week. They had great fun. Stopping the traffic whenever they felt like it. Breaking the speed limit. Stopping for a chat in the middle of the busiest intersection they could find. If these talks ever result in a referendum I hope that they put in an option for us to vote upon a preferred location for the next round. I know which way most of the harrassed motorists of Dublin will lean. I have visions of angry members of the Capital's Traffic Army grunting "let's see 'em race around shaggin' Sceilig Mhicil," as they fill in their voting forms.
As the umpteenth wailing convoy raced past I overheard one old lady say to another "it really is like a Banana Republic, Maire. That Bob Golden had it right y'know".
"Who dear?" says Maire.
"Bob Golden, Maire. From the Booterstown Rats, " pleased to be one up and in the know. Then, "I think he's a cousin of Paul Golden."
Now that I come to think of it, Jack, by the time that you and Clare are old enough to have any interest in reading these letters, you'll probably regard the Boomtown Rats (a.k.a. Booterstown Rats) in much the same way as I regard Rudy Valee.
Rudy Who?
I had to go to the National Library in Kildare Street the other day to do a little research. On the surface the system of security and admission looked impressive. There was a security desk at the stairs up to the library proper and you had to fill out a form stating your purpose for using the library and get your photograph taken for an identity card.
Having said that, for all of the notice that the library attendant took, I could have filled out "research into the domestic manufacture of Semtex and to get a look at any nudie pics in the books" and I would still have gotten a reader's card.
When I went in, I stood for a moment by the Card Index area, just looking around. I was impressed by the great domed ceiling and the long wooden desks with their lovely green reader's lamps. It all looked so right. So perfectly in the vein of what a library reading room should look like. Like all of the films I've ever seen. There were the habitues in one area, whispering earnestly to each other. There, one or two terribly focussed legal types. There, two slick boyos in blazers, cravats and well coiffed hair, probably doing the research prior to some elegant stroke they were about to pull. And there was the obligatory nubile young female student trotting up and down to the Librarian's desk in her symbiotically attached leggings, on an interestingly circuitous route that took her past a rather large, handsome, young guy in a rugby shirt who was totally immersed in what looked like a diatribe on the feeding habits of the immature fluke worm. Funny how there's always a gorgeous girl in every Library I've been in, usually minding her own business, getting on with it and oblivious to the havoc she's wreaking on the concentration of most of the males in sight.
Dublin became a happy hunting ground for motorcycle policemen last week. They had great fun. Stopping the traffic whenever they felt like it. Breaking the speed limit. Stopping for a chat in the middle of the busiest intersection they could find. If these talks ever result in a referendum I hope that they put in an option for us to vote upon a preferred location for the next round. I know which way most of the harrassed motorists of Dublin will lean. I have visions of angry members of the Capital's Traffic Army grunting "let's see 'em race around shaggin' Sceilig Mhicil," as they fill in their voting forms.
As the umpteenth wailing convoy raced past I overheard one old lady say to another "it really is like a Banana Republic, Maire. That Bob Golden had it right y'know".
"Who dear?" says Maire.
"Bob Golden, Maire. From the Booterstown Rats, " pleased to be one up and in the know. Then, "I think he's a cousin of Paul Golden."
Now that I come to think of it, Jack, by the time that you and Clare are old enough to have any interest in reading these letters, you'll probably regard the Boomtown Rats (a.k.a. Booterstown Rats) in much the same way as I regard Rudy Valee.
Rudy Who?
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