Edel Coffey: Despite being Irish, I’m trying to convert myself to celebrating the good times

Author Edel Coffey pictured at home in Galway. Photo: Ray Ryan

We Irish aren’t very good at celebrating ourselves. There’s an inherent sense built into us from birth of waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

If good things are happening, bad things must surely be just around the corner? No good fortune goes unpunished, to mangle a phrase. Maybe it’s 800 years of oppression, or maybe it’s just me.

But there is a general sense of superstition about celebrating ourselves or our good fortune when good things happen to us. 

Maybe we don’t want to attract the attention of the gods, or even worse, the neighbours, who might think in celebrating ourselves we are getting notions — that most heinous of Irish crimes. 

But over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about how important it is to mark special occasions and celebrate good times.

A couple of weeks ago, my second novel, In Her Place, was published. When my debut novel came out in 2022, I was riddled with anxiety and fear. 

We were post-pandemic but not post-pandemic enough for us to be able to have a book launch or do the normal things we might do for a debut novel. And a lot had happened in those locked-down years, which meant the general mood was quite cautious. 

People had died, babies had been born and raised in captivity, everything was a bit muted, so while I was delighted that my debut novel did everything I could have dreamed it might have done, I didn’t really celebrate it. I was too busy waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

So this time, I decided I was going to change the habit of a lifetime and celebrate the moment while I could. I had two launches for the book, one in Dublin and one in Galway. 

I brought my children along to the Galway launch because I wanted them to be part of the celebration too, to see what it was I was actually doing while holed away in my study. 

They’ll be a year or two older by the time the next book comes out so chances are this was my one opportunity to impress them.

When a friend, also a writer, asked me was I enjoying the launch I reminded her that she should know better. The process of bringing out a book is a careful blend of fear, anxiety, and stress. 

If it was a wine, it would win a prize for its sophisticated balance of three similar but different ingredients. But she then reminded me that after those things dissipate there will be beautiful memories to think back on. 

What she said reminded me of an old colleague who I worked with more than 15 years ago. Her mother had died and she said to me, “if there’s something you want to do with your mother, do it now. Make some memories.”

At the time my own mother was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s although we didn’t know that yet. 

I did suspect something wasn’t right with her however, so, a few days later, with my colleague’s words ringing in my ears, I booked a mini-break to Paris for my mother and I. 

She had never been and I wanted her to see it once, but more than that I wanted us to go there together, to have that experience. 

And I’m very glad now, years after her death, that I did that because I’ll always have that memory to look back on.

This is part of the reason why, even if we are scared, sad or hesitant, it is important to mark the happy moments and special occasions however we can. 

When I look back on my first book, I’m actually very fond of it and all of the experiences that came with it. While at the time I might not have been relaxed enough to enjoy it, I do have wonderful memories now.

There are lots of good reasons for celebrating our achievements. When we work hard at something and achieve a goal, it’s good to take a moment to reward ourselves. 

I’d actually even push that one step further and encourage people to celebrate for the smallest of reasons. I think we can tend towards anhedonia in our lives, that puritanical streak that tells us no, we should keep a ‘good room’ for special days or special guests, or that we should save that bottle of champagne for an actual worthy occasion that might never come, or that we don’t deserve a square of chocolate on a Tuesday because it’s not a weekend day. Madness! 

Life is full of ups and downs and we don’t know when they might come. The older I get, in accordance with the laws of nature, the more I realise that life’s joys are balanced with a fair share of hardship, grief, and loss. Why would we not take a moment to savour the good moments?

And so despite my natural pessimism and superstition, I’m trying to convert myself to celebrating the good times whenever and however they arrive because, like everything, they come and go.