“The only reason to talk about your children in public is if they’ve been kidnapped,” a friend texts me back when I complain about a lengthy conversation with someone about what kind of vegetables her child eats.
I realise when talking to the woman for the 10th time that I know nothing about her, but everything about her child’s palate. On the first day back to school last year, she tilted her head in sympathy, asking how I had got on that morning. I smile, raise my leg to hip height, bend my knee up, and kick outwards as I describe sending my three children out the door after two solid months together. She tilts her head the other way, this time in confusion. I spell out my metaphorical booting to her aghast face, her eyes still wet from the school-gate separation.
I’m finding now, three children deep, that when I meet people I haven’t seen for a while, they skip quickly over how I am and into how my children are, and then I’ll ask the same, and then things can become forgettable. I’m not saying don’t talk about them at all. Has the child recovered after their hospital stint? Three minutes. Suspended from school? Four minutes. Training for the Olympics? Five minutes max. On the obligatory talk of Leaving Cert, one person can talk for 45 minutes about their child’s struggles and prospects. The other captures the same information in the perfect five-second answer: “I just want the results to reflect how much I spent on grinds.”
I was the mother in junior infants whose children whooshed me away on the first day, reaching into a cup of crayons, saying, “Later, Mam,” while all the other parents and tots clung to each other. I questioned whether this reflected badly on me as a mother. When my third child started primary school, other parents babbled excitedly about gymnastics and teachers. “What colour table is your daughter at?” a father asked me in the drizzle at 8.10am. I was inching backwards out of the school grounds, trying not to make eye contact with anyone for fear of being roped into another cycle bus. “No idea, mate.” The enthusiasm draining from his face and his silence since has made me question my approach to child-rearing, because the minutiae of my children’s lives is not the first thing on the tip of my tongue.
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It is easy to be subsumed by your role as a parent. If you have both parents and children, you’ll know what it’s like to disappear. Your parents will give you a bog-standard hello, and then squeal with glee when they catch sight of your children, making you irrelevant. Which is entirely acceptable, because it’s a beautiful thing to witness, and grandparents are handy.
[ ‘I had always wanted to be a stay-at-home mum ... but I’m exhausted’Opens in new window ]
In wider society, if our conversational repertoire is dominated by our offspring’s run-of-the-mill existence, it erodes our own identity. If I met your child, I’d be thrilled to talk to them about their love of cricket. But via you, no. My child-free friend says that listening to people talk about their children is the best form of contraception available. I believe her.
I met up with three friends and some of their spouses recently. Some I hadn’t seen in two years. We spent four hours together. The last thing I said when we parted was, “Next time we’re out, can we not talk about our kids?” I don’t think it landed well.
The night was stilted. We’d had to move venues because I had accidentally reserved a table in a foodless bar, not being cool enough to know that booking a table in a bar is a thing and sister restaurants is a thing. We wandered down the quays to a lifeless restaurant. People were hangry, and there was a good bit of child chat. After a mediocre dinner, we walked back up the river. I broke into a pair with my friend, and I told him about a man in the pool I swim in who wears a thong and does a very slow, wide-gated breaststroke. We deliberated the psychology behind letting it all hang out in a banana hammock at 6.30am in a pool in Ireland and whether I could legitimately complain to the lifeguard about the level of exposure I endure.
If I met your child, I’d be thrilled to talk to them about their love of cricket. But via you, no
This brought us on to the loud rows that my friend’s neighbours are having. Now we’re talking. I am hungry for my friend’s thoughts on these things and will learn more about him through them. I had also happily learned that his child loves wearing cowboy boots during three wonderful minutes on his two-year-old’s random love of Wild West wear earlier on. But this was when the night was going to get good.
We turned a corner, arrived at a bar, and the conversation broke off as I went in to get drinks. I came back on to the street, on a rare balmy summer night, with my head full of thoughts and my hands full of glasses, but the chance to talk about his neighbour’s loneliness was gone, and it was getting late. The drinks were swallowed quickly, and we said goodnight, because we’d all be up early with the kids.
