Colm O'Regan: Children have done more than their fair share
It was the school video that reminded me. The eldest’s school, in lieu of a winter concert, made a video where all the classes did a variety of different things, songs, slideshows, pomes, dances. Some absolute hero or heroes of teachers and others then put all the hundreds of bits of stuff together into a nice video, didn’t leave anyone out, and put that up on the school website for families to see. We watched it at home with popcorn and the Terminator-like visual scanning that every parent does where you sift through incoming footage for appearances and mentions of your own child.
But actually we ended up watching all of it, including the 99% of it that didn’t involve our girl. Because at this stage, we are ready to hoover up all good, wholesome stuff. While waiting for sunshine and vaccines, watching small children playing the ‘Walking in the Air’ song from is about the best thing we can do for our immune systems.
At the end of the video, some of the children from each class were asked what their hopes were for 2021. Some wanted an end to global warming, one small child wanted the dinosaurs to come back — who doesn’t want that? — but nearly all of them wanted to see their grannies and granddads and cousins and family in other countries. Unstaged, unprompted, this is what was foremost on their minds.
And it reminded me that the children have done more than their fair share of dealing with all of this shit.
They, including our own two, are probably still the most enthusiastic hand-washers. The most trenchant GIVE THEM SPACE stewards on the footpath. And I may have not realised fully how much this might weigh gradually on them.
Small children are easily distracted. But it doesn’t mean they forget stuff. You can say DJE WANNA WATCH A CARTOON? when you see the top lip quivering and that should get you over the hump but their feelings are still there. And all around the country now are hundreds of thousands of children who weren’t superspreading at a funeral or running an illegal shebeen or weren’t shnaking off out foreign on holiday, or at golf dos or anti-mask rallies or just generally Acting the Maggot and yet still they are the ones who’ve had to chat to granny and granddad on Christmas day on Houseparty. Instead of hugs. And they don’t get to experience the temporary thrill their parents get from sounding off on social media or over a neighbourhood fence. They are expected to just take the various sets of bad news and go back to their dinkies and dollies.
They’ve enough sweets for one day and they’ll spoil their appetite, so we’ll take the hamper and put it somewhere safe, up high. But I think they are due a bit of a Covid payment when it comes to being patient with them.
They’ve been very good. They took the news about Christmas Day very calmly. To be fair, we sort of outsourced the decision to Tony Holohan. “The Big Boss Doctor had said we need to keep people safe and needed to change our plans.” They find it easier to deal with external forces, rather than zero-craic Mammy and Daddy at it again.
So here’s to the smallies. Yes, one of them is crawling over me as I finish this and, yes, I could probably finish it faster without that but feck it, given the year she’s had, she and the rest are entitled to one celebration.
Now where did I hide them?
