Seamus At His Rest

  Seamus at his rest 
  Photograph copyright Tricia Moriarty ZMB

I have been missing the Gap Year Student.  She phoned me yesterday and we discussed Dave Eggars, Big Brother, revision, love affairs (hers) and dishwashers (lack of, mine). 

Probably everyone, when they get to my age thinks this, but it seems to me there is less of a generation gap between people now than when I was young.  When I was 19 there were very few things I could have talked to my father about.  I was at university then and trying to re-invent myself into a nice, middle-class girl who read the right books and knew how to speak properly.  I never let it be known that I had grown up in an overcrowded house and was from a  messy and chaotic family.  I would have died of shame if some of the people I knew at university had met my father.  Girls who had gone to Cheltenham Ladies and boys who were in the OTC would have had little to say to a man who pronounced  shed "shade" and straw "stroe".

Yet when we were wee my father did very little without one or two small children around him.  He liked the company.

I have a scar on my left leg, a little round indentation which has been there since I was 11.  One Friday afternoon after school we were watching television when my father came in and asked if anyone was going to come and help him gather stones?  Gathering stones is what you need to do to clear poor land before it can be properly cultivated.  Some of my father's fields were adjacent to the moss where turf was cut so the fields were boggy and full of rushes and stones.  I volunteered and we went down to the field together on the tractor with the empty trailer bouncing behind.  I think my job was to sit on the tractor and then "drive" it a few feet along when he told me to move it.  (I can't remember what driving the tractor entailed but it must have been very, very simple and certainly a speed of 5 mph would never have been exceeded. This early driving experience was of no use to me when it came to learning to drive a car.)

When we got back to the yard my father asked me to get something for him out of his lorry.  I was climbing up into the cab when I slipped on the step and cut my leg.  My shoes were clarried in earth and some of this earth had come off and was stuck to the step.  The cut itself was very small but some of the earth and probably dung too, got into the cut so it became infected and I had to be taken to the doctor who, to be on the safe side, prescribed antibiotics and told my mother to put a bread poultice on it as well. I don't know if it was true or not but we were told that if a cut got infected and you got blood poisoning, the line that appears to run from the cut would eventually reach your heart, and then you would die. We used to examine all cuts and scratches with a kind of morbid fascination in case we somehow missed the telltale sign and we would advise younger siblings, before they went to bed at night, that it was quite likely that they would  wake up in the morning dead.

My leg was quite badly infected and for a day or two I walked with a limp.  The doctor said I needed to keep the cut clean and I should have it dressed by the nurse in the surgery every two or three days. 

A week or so later the 11+ results came out and a couple of days later my father came home with a blue bicycle in the back of car which was my reward for passing the exam.

The school holidays had started by then so I used to cycle 3 miles to the doctor's and the nurse would replace the grubby bandages and then I'd go and visit my granny and she would feed me chocolate biscuits and give me money to buy sweets on the way home. 

Between the ages of 14 and 23 I think I never had a proper conversation with my father.  He found it very hard to cope with the fact that his small and respectful children had turned into a houseful of loud, bickering smart alecs who challenged all of his fundamental beliefs.

"That's right!  Go to university and learn how not to believe in God!"

"Don't be giving me any of your ould snash!"

And yet, at the same time, he was really proud of us all.  He loved the idea of girls being able to do traditionally masculine jobs and used to talk alot about a woman he knew who had a HGV licence and drove an articulated lorry.   When, a few years ago, my sister laid a wooden floor in his living room he was, in equal parts, frustrated not to be able to help more and proud as punch that she could do a thing like that.

I found it hard to explain to him exactly what my job was but when I told him I had my own hard hat and went to meetings on building sites he beamed with pleasure.

I miss my father and have felt sad for the past few days. He died on this day two years ago.

Comments

[Loganoc]

He sounds like an ace dad.

[Stephen]

You should write a book.

[ganching]

Thanks, Stephen.

Loganoc he was an ace dad but unfortunately it took me a while to realise that.

In order to mark the anniversary I went to Mass with my sister at Westminster Cathedral. We both noticed a man in the line for communion who reminded us of our father. He was quite a big built man, tall but a bit stooped and in his 70s, wearing work trousers held up by braces and a pair of what looked like hobnailed boots. He had the look of a man who had just come in from gapping cattle in the fields and it is a mystery what he was doing at a sung mass in central London. I felt myself begin to well up just looking at him.

[incognito]

A beautiful elegy to Seamus. Thanks for sharing your memories with us.

[fifi]

That is beautiful.

What a gift you childhood was, and what a wonderful Dad.

[Nelly]

Yesterday I went to a cathedral in Norwich to remember Dad. It was the Protestant one but I know he wouldn't have minded that.

[Bliss]

Good post - hope you're feeling better.

[ganching]

Thanks everyone.

[Rolpol]

I'm very moved, and have struggled in vain for a day to try to convey it in words...

[azuradec]

Touching entry. Sigh, I know my father is proud of me yet cannot understand the things I get up to. We struggle to communicate - I feel guilty and awful but cant cross the gulf.

[ganching]

Thank you for all the comments and emails about this post. It made me feel better writing it and I am glad that it has had a certain resonance for some of you.

[longcat]

i only just read this and i'm thankful for your sharing it with us...

it's lovely x

[Ally]

I'm just catching up, too. It's a beautiful post - and has reminded me very much of my own father, who is 89 this year and also proud of and confused by me in equal measure.

[ganching]

Thanks Ally and longcat.

[molly]

This was well worth coming over from Fifi's for....the trailer bouncing along behind the lorry clinched it for me. You have a lovely way with words....and it sounds like you had a lovely dad.