Walking, talking and serendipity

WordSmith

Gerard Smith

The house had a lovely face, when it looked up at me I saw kindness in its eyes. I’ve always viewed houses the way I do people: The facade is the face, the windows the eyes. From the bedroom window of our new home in Ireland, I looked down on the house each morning. One day I asked Mam, “Who lives in that house?” She snapped back, “I don’t know, would you quit with the questions.”

Mam left Cavan as a teenager, the town she’d returned to at 46 was very different from the one she’d left behind at 16. She was trying to re-establish a life, I understand now why my endless questions wore her down.

To me, Cavan Town felt like another planet, I walked through it like an alien. I’d been uprooted from the metropolis of Manchester and dropped into a strange hinterland I didn’t understand. This was no longer the summer-holiday Cavan I’d shared with my older siblings; I had to navigate a new life alone and this created a resentment that added to my sense of alienation.

I was a latchkey kid. After school I’d call for the key into the pub where Mam worked; if she was in good form I’d get a Cavan Cola and a bag of Tayto. I enjoyed those snatched moments with Mam. Her polite engagement with the customers showed me a different woman to the one she was at home; it made me appreciate her need for quiet time after work.

After school, I’d pause at our door and look down on the house, the sight of her became my welcome home.

During my first summer as a Cavan native, the house bloomed. Rose bushes burst around it in great bouquets, transforming it into something enchanted – all Beauty and no Beast. One warm evening, I sat by the window with my brand-new colouring pencils and began to draw it, hoping somehow to draw out its people, too. But no comings or goings disturbed my sketching.

Mam loved my drawing of the house, “Ahhh, that’s brilliant, son,” she said, holding it at a safe distance from her cigarette so as not to spoil it with fag-ash. For a moment, it felt as though the house itself had made Mam proud of me, and I loved it for that. Thereafter, I began to feel at home in Cavan.

The years raced on and I moved to London, where life became a blur of deadlines, meetings about meetings, and office politics. The stretch between visits home became longer. One summer I came home for a wedding. As always I paused at my front door to acknowledge the house, my constant in a world of change. But Mam had changed, I sensed a vulnerability in her.

As I readied to return to London I said, “Mam, I won’t leave it as long this time, I promise.” She started to cry, “Gerard, come home to stay, please!” I was shocked, Mam was never a crier; and shamefully I replied, “I can’t Mam, I’ve got work and all that…”

Sadly, I returned home sooner than I thought – for Mam’s funeral.

Sorting out Mam’s things with my sister, I looked out the window, “I drew that house once; I always wondered who lived in it?” Maria didn’t answer, the house wasn’t in her story.

Now walk with me to a recent Monday evening. A lovely lady called Anne-Marie asked me along to a weekly event ‘Walkie Talkie and Tea’, an initiative she created with an aim to combat loneliness and boost the mindfulness inherent in walking, followed by a cuppa. On arrival at the Orchard Bar I met a friend, “Are you ready for your talk?” she asked. I didn’t know I was talking, and felt slightly panicked as to what to talk about. Then my friend said, “Do you know Anne-Marie? Her home place is on the broad-road, the house opposite yours when you lived up in Jubilee Terrace.”

KERPOW – it felt like a gate to the here and there had opened – and with mic in hand I recounted this story.

Afterwards, Anne-Marie said, “I asked Mammy to give me a sign, this is it.” Walking home, I began to imagine two mammies celestial-chatting, “My son drew a picture of your house,” says one. While another answers, “He’s on the way to my daughter’s event, we must send them a message, give them the sign…”

I believe the serendipity here is a sign of that rose- enchanted celestial-chat.

Walkie Talkie and Tea takes place every Monday evening at 7:30pm from the Orchard Bar.