"Did Obama really do it in his first year of office?"

IT’S 11AM, Chicago Union station, and my sister and I are sitting on a stationary train, about to depart for Notre Dame University, where we’re to attend my son’s graduation ceremony.

My sister’s in fact-finding form. Who’s going to give the commencement speech? Did Obama really do it in his first year of office? Imagine if it’s Oprah? And the room we’re sleeping in — is it actually in the basement?

But it’s my son to whom she’s addressing these questions and unfortunately, he has the air of someone who’s had his brain dismantled and put back together very slightly wrong; as if key parts are missing, such as the ability to keep his eyes open and converse.

It’s an air that has much to do with graduation celebrations — and a lager called “Natural Ice”. I’m surprised my sister doesn’t recognise it. I’ve often seen her with the same air, though in her case it’s more of a merlot thing.

My son gets as far as, “it definitely won’t be Oprah” but then stops suddenly when he sees a lad in his early twenties, accompanied by his parents, board the train and sit down opposite. Oddly enough, the lad seems to have something of the same air about him as my son.

Turns out, in the flurry of introductions that follow, that he’s my son’s housemate, who’s graduating with him. It also emerges that his parents — a charming man called Austin and his equally charming wife Joan — are going to be our housemates too.

We’re all heading for the same accommodation: our sons’ student house, in which both lads will kindly take the floor so as to allow their guests to take their beds.

It’s remarkable how chipper his parents look about this prospect, and puts me to wondering whether their experience of student housing has been quite as extensive as mine. I suspect strongly it has not.

“We’re in the basement,” my sister clarifies with a nervous look that betrays her childhood fear of cellars, dungeons and the like.

“On 100% polyester sheets,” she continues with another look which betrays her obsession with thread-count.

“Rainbow stripes with leopard spots,” she says, showing Austin and his wife the picture of bed-linen my son sent to her iPhone.

“I bought the same ones for you,” their son tells them, a remark which is rewarded by a sudden look of hilarity, laced with alarm, that fleets across his parents’ faces.

The couple, my sister and I all compete with each other to look as thrilled about the sleeping arrangements as we possibly can, for if taking the floor is nothing to the lads, then it’s only fair that 100% polyester should be nothing to their parents. It’s a competition that Austin and Joan definitely win.

Arriving at their student house, we’re introduced to their other housemates. Two are Irish and one is an American called Nate, who stands in front of an Irish tricolour flag that’s been tacked onto the wall behind a bar that’s creaking under the weight of Natural Ice.

Nate tells me that the experience of doing his masters at “No-der Dayme” has been the best of his life. I fear this has very little to do with the calibre of the lectures.

He says living with “four Irish” has been awesome and then introduces my sister and I to his mother.

We ask her all sorts of polite questions, but what we really want to know is where she got her arms from. We think she must have bought them from an arm shop. A toned-arm shop. And my sister and I are glad of the cold for it means we won’t have to get ours out.

The room fills up with loud music and boys, each of whom refers to the house in which we are to stay for the next three nights as “the number-one party-house outside campus. Where all the craic happens”.

It seems that here in Notre Dame — the home of the Fighting Irish Intercollegiate Football team — we are to sleep for the next three nights in the eye of the storm.

Austin and Joan head upstairs to check out their leopard spots and my son leads us down to the basement to check out ours.

And it strikes me, as my son opens the door to his room, that memories happen quite without warning; I’ll never forget the shiny, happy smile on my son’s face.

And I’ll never forget what my sister whispers: “Don’t fall asleep before me. Not in a dungeon. Promise?”