What’s small is big
They say it will be a year of bad firsts. Anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas, all spent thinking about someone who isn’t there. Very happily I had a granddad for my birthday. Christmas I will spend in Dublin and summarily avoid home. My first bad first would have been my graduation last night – so I didn’t go. Graduations, in my house, are newsworthy stuff. Congratulation comes from all sides, pictures must be taken and pictures must go in the paper. Granddads are impressed and tell you that you didn’t lick your brains up off the ground. Everyone has a birthday, so birthdays don’t matter so much. Doing something that only you can do, does. Not feeling praised for your little burst of ‘look, I have a family trait! It’s brains!’ is killer, even if you’re too old for it to be.
You can avoid occasion but you can’t avoid things that were only ever big inside your head.
So my first bad first comes tomorrow and the day after that. Elections without Granddad. Who knew there was such a thing? Who will lead the convoy of cars from the house to the polling station? Who’ll throw their eyes up to heaven about my naïve 24-year-old candidate preferences? Who’ll have the inside track from tallymen and pollsters?
This is still stupid hard and why wouldn’t it be? It’s only been three months.
I got published in The Dubliner a few weeks back. It was great. And then there was that niggling ‘that’s the thing that would’ve really raised a smile. Imagine, his paper that he always bought, and a magazine slipping out of it with my picture and my name and my words. Not degrees or websites that you could be impressed by but never connect with. Something you actually read, something you like, and them liking me’.
But I suppose you might as well roll with the tough stuff while it’s tough. So I’ll vote and then I’ll do my first trip to the grave since the funeral, say hello and start getting used to where you are and where you’re not. Where I am and where I’m not.
