Every Sunday just as the final
Angelus bell faded away, my mother would bring a large pile of shirts, sheets
and trousers into the sitting room and begin ironing.
I watched this ritual armed with a
bowl of dessert, pretending my spoon was a tall ship sailing the choppy waters
of the Angel Delight Sea
Each week I waited patiently for a
flicker of emotion from my mother as she powered her way through the laundry
basket load.
And then, one day, it came.
A single tear zig-zagged its way
down my mother’s face as she ironed a small, but particularly smart jumper I’d
never seen before.
My dad came in and sat me on his
knee.
“School for you tomorrow,” he said.
“Your mother and I are very proud of you.”
The following morning I skipped
down the avenue with my parents without a care in the world until the school loomed
into view.
It seemed to me to be the image of
Mounjoy Prison, a photo of which my Dad had shown me once in the paper.
My mood quickly changed and with
every step, a sense of trepidation began to build as my legs got heavier and heavier.
The school was swarming with chattering
parents and confident children who either ignored me or stared at me like I was
an alien.
I heard someone shout ‘specky-four
eyes’ and I nervously adjusted my thick, black-framed glasses.
‘Woody Allen wears them,’ my mother
had soothed when she had bought them, but whoever Woody Allen was, he didn’t
seem to be in my class.
“Dad, I’m afraid,” I whispered.
“You’ll be fine,” he said, his grip
tightening. “Everything will be OK once
you’re inside.”
“Inside,” I wailed. “That’s what they say about prisoners in Mountjoy.”
“What are you talking about?” my
dad said sharply, pulling me towards the school door.
“I want a hug,” I shouted in
desperation to my mother, who stepped forward and lifted me into her arms.
It was then I seized my chance.
As she cradled me, I managed to swing
round and jam one of my feet deep into the old wooden school door frame. Stunned, my mother let go and I span out of
her grasp, suspended upside down by my foot, like a spider monkey clinging onto
a branch with its tail.
Children ducked underneath me on
their way into school, laughing and pointing as they did so. My dad rushed forward to help. I heard him apologise. “It’s his first day away from us,” he said
softly.
These experiences came into sharp
focus when it was time for my 5-year-old son to go to school.
The night before, just after the
RTE news, I started ironing Samuel’s uniform.
He was busily playing on his Nintendo.
Siobhan, my wife, came in and sat
him on her knee.
“First day of school tomorrow,” she
said. “Anything special you’d like in
your lunchbox?”
Samuel perked up.
“A SuperMario game?” he replied
cheekily.
The following morning we all walked
to school together. But as we approached
the school building, all those old feelings and memories began to return. My mouth felt dry and I started to feel
butterflies in my stomach.
“Hi Samuel,” shouted a boy with spiky
hair.
“Hey Luke,” Samuel replied casually.
“What, who’s he?” I asked
excitedly.
“He was in my Montessori.”
“Don’t you want to play with him?”
“Yes, maybe later,” Samuel said.
As we approached the school gates,
my wife went over to talk to the teacher.
Suddenly all the emotions I had failed to deal with as a child came
rushing to the fore and I began to cry.
My son held my hand.
“It’s his first day away from me,”
he told all those who expressed concern.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll see
you at lunchtime.”
And with that he was gone.
Inside.
We have crèches and play schools, Montessoris
and play groups and from an early age kids become accustomed to each other and
learn how to interact. In my day, you just pitched up at school and hoped for
the best.
When I asked my son how his first
day had gone, he said:
“It was fine. Thanks for coming.”
Which was great!
Because that was exactly what I had
said to my parents 40 years earlier when they’d collected me from my first day
at school.
