Thursday night I found myself having a takeaway with my lovely sisters in the city. Just like that, we ordered from an Asian cookhouse before leaving the homeplace and collected it on the way to my middliest sister’s house. From the extensive menu, we ordered Asian food and it came to us so easily in the cutest little cartons. And while I tried to focus on my sisters, I couldn’t take my attention away from the food, so fresh and hot and aromatic. I thought, there has to be more, these are very small cartons but on opening them up there appeared just the right amount of food for all. Delicious. Easy. An accessible meal.

Everything consumable in the city is easy.

I was telling my sisters about our attempt to have a Chinese takeaway some weeks back as our eldest indignant that his classmates had all eaten takeaways, would like to try some. Fair enough. Now, I must add, that others may have tried and may have been more successful but it is not an easy task and after one or two attempts, women stronger than I have said to have given up. So I know of a lovely Chinese restaurant in our nearest big town, Listowel. It’s good enough food and reasonable. What more does a seven year old want for his first takeaway experience? It’s about 15 km away. Problem number one, how to keep the hot food hot and tasty. It’s manageable enough. But alas, there is always the problem of directions.

The entrance to our house has red gates, symphony red according to the colour chart and they are a beauty. Aside from being aesthetically lovely, they are a beacon to lost delivery men when looking for our homestead. If you see the red gates, that’s us. Alas, at nighttime, the red gates, in the absence of street lamps or streets in fact are not visible. Problem number two. So having called up and ordered we waited an unusually long time before I got a call from the village from a forlorn delivery man to say that he was lost. Not the best at given directions (reference red gate), I handed the phone to my farmer who explained the way to our house.  Some ten minutes later, I received another call to say that he has been driving up and down the street and village, he just can’t find the turn off to our house. ‘Stay right where you are’ I said and hopped in the car to go and find the lonesome delivery man.

‘I didn’t think that road led anywhere’, the man said shocked that anyone would even think of living up ‘such a lonely road’. ‘Everyroad leads to somewhere’ I said now channelling my inner hungry Buddha. ‘Amazing’ he said and started to chat about living in the country and how he could never do it. Ordinarily, I would have been delighted to engage but I was aware of the luke warm package in my hands that needed feeding to the wide-eyed expectant family. ‘Rightso,’ he waved me off, standing in the village street-light watching me off not quite believing that there was a road beyond the sportsfield; one he had dared not to travel. ‘Townie’ my Buddha whispered while sending him much good tidings for his return journey.

As for his first takeaway experience, my young son ate it up. Not bad he said.

The moral, everything consumable in the countryside is not so easy. But you can curse the darkness or learn to make a very good Chinese meal. Now to find some of those cutesy cartons.

Being an idealist gets you into all sorts of trouble. You might with little time to spare decide to make pizzas from scratch or indeed, even marry an Irish dairy farmer. If you are a romantic with that idealistic streak, well, you know yourself, those rose-coloured lenses often need replacing. Throw into the mix the socialist hangover from your youth and you end up with a big grin with people saying ‘isn’t she lovely’ while really meaning ‘more that a bit naive and she’ll definitely buy it.’

What is more, being an idealist leaves you often susceptible to all sorts of anxieties as the world and humanity throws you curve balls from its tennis ball machine as it assaults your conscious and better nature from all sides. But what protects you, if you insist on continuing to be an idealist and are steadfast in seeing the good in humanity and the world, no matter what, is your absolute conviction that people are good. And well, that people are the same. Really. Just the same.

You and I are really just the same. We may have different access to broadband (you may not have to stand on the roof to get coverage for example), we may view the world differently, pray to a different but the same God, drink coffee in a different manner but we are both the same. Our bank balances may be different, our children though beautifully individual are just the same. We pretty much can only eat three meals a day (with some snacks). We farm differently but have the same end goal of producing food in mind. Naive bless her.

So as an idealist, I’m not buying this new threat to humanity, one of hate and racism thinly masked under a thin veil of populist manifestos across the world. I’m just not buying that. Because we’ve had that. It continues to bob it’s menacing head throughout the history of humanity and is unkind and toxic to the human condition. Remember World War two anyone? Bosnia? I will not believe what you have to tell me, I will continue to be good, a do-gooder (you said it) and try and steer my children in that direction too. Try stopping me.

So, if you don’t mind my silly grin, I’ll continue to be my sunny idealist self, loving my dairy farmer despite his long work hours and low milk prices. And you must excuse me, for I haven’t yet torn the fresh basil for the top of that home made pizza. Champagne socialist moi? Somebody’s got to be. Think goodwill, kindness and compassion if you will. Why not?

There are three little heads all in a row. They ran to bed in troika; from the bathroom, to the toybox, all the time fighting it but to sleep. They spend their summer days indoors in this weather, looking out at the Irish rain. It howls over their little heads as they drift off to sleep. An adventure awaits them and they dream oh such innocent dreams. For those they remember they will retell over weetabix, as they fight for their mother’s attention. One drops off, then the other all the while negociating a trip downstairs, then the third, the littlest who uses his limited vocabulary to talk himself to sleep. At peace. The world to them is at peace. Hush now world, hush and like the young children, be at peace.

On our usual Friday morning outing, we visited our local library, a cafe and the park. It was hard to avoid the news. Hard to the move the librarian onto changing the subject. Difficult to switch the children’s attention from the blaring news on the radio in the cafe. The news was bad. And try as I might to put a brave face on when a terrorist attack happens, today I couldn’t. It has happened too many times in France over the last year. They are resilient these French people but to attack on Bastille day is is, well, there are no words.

I turn the children’s attention to the smartie cookies in the cafe, I spill my own coffee, ‘silly mommy.’ They smile their usual beautiful smiles and I know how good they are. Naturally, they are absolute rascals, just ask the librarian about the terrible two tantrum she witnessed as books flew from shelves this morning. But nonetheless, they are good.

Everything in life, teaching, farming, parenting is a walk on the line between good and evil as you guide your children on the good side, as best you can, so they don’t stray onto the bad. Unfortunately, you can’t fix the world for them. So we continue to walk them along that path until the day we have to let go of their hand as they walk into the world for themselves. There are always goodies and baddies I tell them, or they tell me. In their stories the goodies always win. I wish that it were so.

Courage, mes amis. On t’aime.

I can’t quite remember at this moment what the city sounds like in the evening. I know it had the ring of neighbours sweeping their front paths, men passing the evening discussing the price of petrol and children being called into bed. The years fly past since I’ve lived in the city and know that they are a delicious and somewhat romantic memory. The countryside isn’t much different you know, we have our own ritual of putting the world to rest for the evening. Of late, our farmer is milking late dreaming of a time when he’ll have a new milking parlour. That will happen too.

You hear the swagger of a cow’s tail, a hello from a neighbour out walking ;‘fine evening.’ There is, of course, in May, the hum of distant mowers cutting the first silage of the year. The swallows chat in a quietening chorus that is settling down for the night. They call to mind chiacchiando Italian housewives comparing ragu reciepes out their apartment windows. The flowers are curling up for the night. The last of the cars roll back the road from the sportsfield to the clack of the ash hurls as they hit the wall in the mother’s hallway. The sound of that squeaky parlour gate closing.

Yes, just like you, we’re all ready to settle down to rest.

Sweet dreams

Here I am with my white flag waving over my head. I surrender. Well, at least I do so on a daily basis. It’s mid May and we’ve almost hit a wall. The weather at last is good and we’re grateful for that at least. But we are most tired. And the children sensing their parent’s sleeply state like the snipers outside the castle watching the overtired guard nodding off, are ready to….

Attack!

They’re giddier than normal. They’re outdoors morning, noon and night and are drunk on life. Daily they discover new avenues through the haybales as Daddy removes a bale for feeding and they rename a new part of the shed. They speak a new language of sunshiny outdoor play and have become fluent in our ‘absence’ to work and weariness. The dinner table is rife with this chat and while we try to contain this exuberance (at times when all we want is a quiet meal), we surrender daily to their lust for life. Three boys. Last summer, it was, I realize now, two boys and a baby boy but the latter has taken his place in the wilds of their domaine.

And sometimes, or indeed mostly, all you can do is laugh. Laugh when they have a name calling competition that ends in giggles, surrender to the dirty faces and the muck on their legs (you could, I tell them, grow potatoes on them), laugh when they make the most ridiculously unfunny jokes. They are, it appears, relentless, but their tired parents understand that these giggling wrestlers rolling around a field outside are laying the foundations for their long lives together as brothers. And who are we to interfere. Alas.