It's A Dad's Life:Adam Brophy on family ties
You wouldn't want to be a private person on our family holidays. Whether you're in the shower or on the throne, you're still considered an open target for conversation, or at least expected to offer an opinion. This is in no small way down to large numbers in a limited space.
At the last count there were present in the holiday compound: great-granny, great-granny's long-time companion, granny and grandad, two aunties, myself, the missus and the two monsters. In close proximity are three more sets of aunts and uncles, and four cousins all under eight, who move in and out of the compound at regular intervals. I am related to this motley bunch by marriage; if this many Brophys were together for more than a nanosecond I believe the property would spontaneously combust. Watching the interactions on any given day is like witnessing a living organism pulse.
The Good Witch, aka my mother-in-law, known as such for her potions and incantations, is at the hub. She spends most of her summer down here and for a couple of crazy weeks in August has to put up with this large-scale invasion. She is a model of calm but at times you can see the cracks appear - nobody needs this sort of strain on holiday.
Her husband, a PR spinmeister in the city turned hunter and gatherer in the country, leads the entertainment charge providing ocean-going fishing trips and reckless nature walks for kids and adults alike. Occasionally he too succumbs to the pressure and his head has been known to rotate 360 degrees before blood vessels pop in his eyes.
You can feel the air temperature begin to rise shortly before these episodes, and if you have any sense you take cover in a neighbouring county. But, incredibly, these are rare events. This is a family that really gets on with each other. It's a pleasure to bring the monsters on a trip like this because it reminds you of the constant delight young kids find in company.
Extended family for me is, for the most part, a foreign country. It wasn't always that way. As youngsters my sisters and I spent summers saving hay in Co Mayo and fulfilling war fantasies in the artillery room in Renmore barracks, Galway, courtesy of our respective grandparents. And all this was heightened because we got to do these things with our faraway cousins. It was one of the saddest results of my parents' separation that these ties weakened to almost dissolve in my teens and 20s.
When a break-up like that occurs during adolescence there are various ways to respond; mine was to turn inwards, focus on independence for survival and my friends for support. As a family we got through it, and it was only much later that I recognised the loss of a network beyond the immediate family I had almost forgotten.
As a kid, when your family breaks down, one of the first casualties is trust. A distrust spreads to everything you held as normal before things fell apart.
It is only since the rugrats have been born that I have attempted once again to strengthen those old ties in the hope that the monsters will see where their lunacy hails from.
So, to see my kids revelling in the broadening generation that's coming behind has thrilled me. My own acceptance and inclusion into the missus' extended family has always been warm, despite my reluctance to engage, finding it strange that all these adults would voluntarily seek out each other's company while still sharing the same genes. In a way, you are welcomed in whether you like it or not, and when you relax and enjoy the ride, what's not to like? Then the kids come along and your place is cemented.