“You’re in the world of morning joy”
These eyes hold my sleepy gaze with unblinking confidence. My body scrambles into sitting position, my brain lagging some distance behind.
A child climbs onto my bed, sits facing me. I recover my bearings: I’m in a small, converted out-building on my sister’s small-holding, in the boondocks of Sligo. It’s the last morning of my visit and these round, beseeching orbs belong to Lola, my two year-old niece.
She has no truck with slow starts. “Like my neckaluss?” she inquires, nodding expectantly. Cocking her head to one side, she loops a finger underneath the string of small pink shells around her neck, and holds it out to be admired.
“Like my neckaluss?” she repeats loudly, drawing her brows down. Now she looks like a contrary owl.
“It’s a beautiful necklace,” I affirm immediately, for those brows look portentous, “the most beautiful necklace I’ve ever seen.”
“Yes, nice neckaluss,” Lola agrees with holy righteousness.
“Smell,” she instructs, while pushing a sprig of oregano up my nose, “cos issa nice smell.”
“Lovely smell,” I nod back, removing the oregano from my nostril.
With a gleeful shiver of her shoulders, she shouts, “lovey smell.”
My sister appears at the door with Lola’s three older siblings, each of whom is tooth-brushed, school-uniformed, and teetering on the edge of something — a jig perhaps, I think, or rousing rendition of Cat Steven’s, Morning has broken.
“Christ,” I say to my sister, “they’re all so happy… so early.”
She reminds me that morning joy is the default position of young children. “You’ve been around teenagers too long,” she says, matter-of-factly, “you’ve forgotten.”
She sits on the bed and looms oddly at me with a theatrical, piercing look. She clicks her fingers once, sharply, in my face and assumes the manner of the creepy hypnotist from Little Britain. “One, two, three, and you’re back in the room,” she intones.
“Up,” she says, in her normal voice, brandishing gum-boots, “you’re in the world of morning joy. They want to show you Sam the ram. You haven’t seen him yet.”
While my sister prepares breakfast, I view beasts. Hanging over a gate, we locate Sam the ram, amongst a huddle of eleven mountain sheep. Sam is a vision. He’d be a quite a sight even if it wasn’t 8.15 in the morning, for he has truly stupendous, balloon-sized bollocks, the like of which I’ve never seen before.
After elaborate reintroductions to a donkey with imploring eyes, seven hens, many rabbits, sheep, two cats, the dog and a sow, I head inside, where hands are washed and we assemble round the kitchen table.
When poached eggs are produced, excitement amplifies: all children bounce in their chairs. One of them shouts “hurray for the day!” The others follows suit. I am overawed by such vim and vigour; it is 8.40am.
Lola cannot contain herself; she opens her mouth wide enough to swallow her own head-like a snake dislocating its jaw — and inserts a whole poached egg into it. She gets down from the table, takes her pants off, pounds a ball of Play-Doh into the floor and sits on it. She stands up and looks down at her buttock-print handiwork.
The following morning, I’m wrenched from the deepest hinterland of sleep by a shout from downstairs. Dimly aware that someone is sitting on my bed, I open my eyes. It is my daughter. She’s applying my Benefit mascara, peering into a small hand-mirror, wearing her school uniform and an expression which bears no trace of morning joy.
My husband shouts something up the stairs. My daughter gets up with a brisk, irritated movement — there’s a sudden flash of red school jumper, and the plundered contents of my makeup bag scatter over the quilt.
I hear her as she thumps down the stairs, “Jesus Christ,” she mutters under her breath, “what is it with dad and bloody eggs?” Thump, thump, “bloody eggs,” thump, “he knows I bloody hate them.”
And one, two, three, I’m back in the room.
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