Going home is hard because people don’t stay where you last left them. They have the annoying habit of getting on with their lives. Moving away, finding partners, having babies and getting jobs that no longer allow them to go on three-day benders in old hometown pubs. Sometimes they die and there are more empty seats at the Christmas dinner table than there were last year. Then you realise, as you stare at a massive, unfinished dessert bowl wrapped in gladwrap, that it was actually Grandad who shouldered the lion’s share of trifle consumption.
The first Christmas without him was tough, particularly for my nan, but his absence was really felt by the rest of us who gulped our way through bowel-cramping amounts of custard and jelly for days. We could have just made a smaller trifle, but that felt disloyal. That would be an admission he was actually gone and would not be coming back. Much better to make yourself borderline lactose intolerant than face up to that.
You can sometimes stay away too long, or maybe it’s because you always hated the place anyway. Then it becomes less ‘going home’ and more ‘somewhere I used to live’. Going back can be painful because either everything or nothing has changed. The people there know too much about you or only know the past version of yourself. They haven’t renewed their subscription to your life, haven’t kept current with the person you became, and that is uncomfortable. It makes you face up to the person you used to be and not the one you invented away from people who would have seen through it.
I once accidentally microwaved an overlooked piece of tinfoil. Granted, I was 11 but mum's not risking her good pots on me and my alleged improvement
My mum won’t let me cook when I come home. Attempts at trying to make dinner are waved away. I left home young and I never really cooked for my mum because I lived in dorms and big rambling student share houses where you were afraid to use the manky toilet, never mind eat off the cutlery. On one of the few occasions she has seen me in a kitchen I nearly set fire to it. I had accidentally microwaved an overlooked piece of tinfoil. Granted, I was 11 but she’s not risking her good pots on me and my alleged improvement.
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“Are you watching that?” she eyed me suspiciously as I made a pre-approved small side dish last week. It was a bowl of couscous. You pour water on it and it’s done. It’s the adult version of pot noodle. There’s no naked flame involved. Yet her concern for the good bowl (not my health and safety) remained.
I discovered that my family still enjoys ruining TV shows for each other. Why bother sitting down and following the plot lines when you can barge in at intervals and ask: “Oh, is she shagging him now, what happened to the husband? Whose baby is that?”, then walk out of the room. Only to return in five minutes to proclaim: “Wait, I thought that bloke died? Oh, you’re an episode behind us. Well he dies in the next one.” Thanks, that’s very helpful, dad. But it is nice to keep traditions alive.
Another one still going is being allocated a towel at the start of your stay by mum. It will be your towel and your towel only. To be guarded with your life. God help you if you lose it or get it mixed up with anyone else’s. She has her ears cocked for the exact frequency of the linen cupboard hinges opening if you have the balls to try to sneak an additional one. She has enough to be doing without washing the ‘fifty’ towels we all apparently use every day and discard. In fairness she does so much washing daily, she gets a tan from hanging it out on the line outside. You are however allowed two towels on hair wash day. My mother is, after all, a merciful woman.
I suspect after a lifetime of trying to get rid of boys, they've realised at this late stage they'd want to offload me to whoever will take me pretty soon if they want grandchildren
Sometimes the people you leave change and you stay the same. I texted mum a week before I arrived with my partner to ask about our sleeping arrangements. “We put a new double bed in your room.” “For who?” I asked wearily. “For you both,” came the response, impatiently as if I was a bit thick. This from someone who NEVER EVER allowed me to sleep in the same room as a boy at my parents’ house. YES, EVEN WHEN WE LIVED TOGETHER. I am finally allowed a double bed in my room (sex, famously, has never happened in a single bed).
I only had to wait until I was 31. I suspect after a lifetime of trying to get rid of boys, they’ve realised at this late stage they’d want to offload me to whoever will take me pretty soon if they want grandchildren. So, true to mum’s word, when we arrived there was indeed a double bed in my room. Not even two twin single beds separated by an anti-sex bedside table. However, I still won’t hold his hand in front of my family. We’re still Irish despite the Australian dilution. Not Americans.
Places and people don’t change at the same rate. The things we want to change don’t. The things that we want to stay the same end up changing. That’s why I needed to go back. Before there’s another empty seat at the dinner table.