The funny thing is that over the last few years, 3/5's of us kids are blogging. I've been doing it since 2000/2001...I'm not quite sure when the other two siblings
My bro Fearg blogs weekly at Freedive Ireland (http://freediveireland.com/blog/) sometimes about freediving, sometimes about life. Tis always worth a read. Sometimes it's short and sweet, other times long and eloquent. But it nearly always leaves me with more thoughts than when I first started reading it, which I guess is a rather good thing!
My bro Sean blogs at seancallagy.com (http://www.seancallagy.com) His most recent blogs have been about his cancer, his chemo, his treatments. I still find it mad to think he has cancer. When it first hit, I found it almost too mental to comprehend that the healthiest one of us five kids, the one who consciously ate the freshest, healthiest and natural foods, the one who went out of his way to lead as healthy and chemical-free life as possible is the one who gets the shit deal. Life, as some of my friends and I like to say, can be a bollocks.
And I've started back blogging here. It's a bit mad sometimes, having been writing for so long over so many years, there's times I feel like I'm repeating myself. But life is nothing if not cyclical, and so, many of the things I've gone through before, I'll go through again. Which is where I find a blog to be of great use. Sometimes it reminds me of where I've been, other times it reminds me of people, of places, of stories, of songs, of situations that I've come through.
I had an interesting conversation via email with someone recently where I explained a few things that had happened throughout my life that had led me to behaving and thinking the way I do about things....his response was "I had no idea what you had been through". Not that I tell him everything in the world, but I had covered most things with him over the last few years, aside from that.
And it got me thinking more about what we do and don't say to one another in our day to day lives. We are who we are because of our experiences throughout our everyday lives. We all have what I would liken to a 9/11 moment, something that has stopped us in our tracks, turned our world upside down and made everything seem incomprehensible. To someone outside our lives, it may not seem like a big deal, but to us, it can be the be all and end all. For me, one of the biggest moments of my life happened because I turned left one afternoon instead of right-it was as simple as that.
One thing that has always struck me in life is how seriously some people take things, and life in general. I count myself lucky to have always been a fairly laid-back kinda gal. It's rare I take offence, and I rarely disagree with folk....if anything, people whose opinions and beliefs differ greatly to mine intrigue me-I love to try and get inside their minds and fathom where they're coming from-they may see it as an argument, but a difference of opinion does not an argument make! It's funny, I've always had quite a slow temper, and it takes a lot to get me riled enough to fight. I'd much rather let someone rant away at me and then let them and their negativity wash away over me than react to it-and that's something I see in my siblings too.
To me, that's one of the wonderful things about my family. Us five kids are all so different, yet all so alike in some respects. We all have different beliefs, different priorities, yet we grew up under the same roof to the same wonderful caring parents. Despite growing up in the same house, we all have different issues in our daily lives.
When I write the word "issues", that makes it sound very serious. Everyone you meet in your life has issues, be they large ones relating to money and day to day living, or small ones relating to indecision over what to do next-make tea or coffee? The trick is to be able to deal with those issues on a day to day basis and still live a relatively normal life. One of my simpler issues is my new kneecap. It makes me grin when people sympathise with me about the fact it's not fully healed and settled in yet. Because all they're seeing is me with a limp and a swollen knee that they think should be fixed after a few months.
But what I'm feeling is almost 18 years of on and off swelling and pain coming to an end. It's not a big deal to me for my knee to cause me pain, for it to be too swollen for me to wear certain jeans, for it to not allow me to drive long distance, or run across a road. These might seem like frustrating things to others but to me, I've put up with them for so long, they're normal. That's an issue in my life, but it's not the worst thing I've had to deal with by a longshot.
And that's kinda what threw my friend a bit. Something traumatic had happened to me years ago-and while I had a lot of time to deal with it, it was something that completely took him by surprise., and explained a lot to him at the same time. Life will do that a lot-things we thought were black and white suddenly become full of light-grey/off-white/jet black/dark grey shades throughout, and that flummoxes folk very quickly.
But that's one of the great things about life-it's not simple, things don't always work out the way we think they should. As the wonderful line says
"Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense."
If someone had written a script for my family, I doubt they'd have cast the characters we have. A stern father who mellowed into the kindest caring father and grandfather, a mother who emanates love from every inch of her being, one sibling who's been close to death so many times since she was born, a caring madcap mimic brother , another one who, despite the lack of sport, was the most accident prone teenager, and finally, one who inspired me spriitually, musically and emotionally over the years. And then there's me, who (hopefully) managed to take a little something from all my siblings throughout my life!
The more years that pass, the happier I am to have been born into such a mad loving diverse and funny family. My bro Fearg was here last night and we just sat at the kitchen table talking over a cuppa or two and generally having the craic. After I was heading to bed, my mind was full of funny family memories of the last three decades, and it hit me just how lucky I was to have been born into the family I was. We don't have to declare how much we love each other-we simply show it each time we meet, be it in the gentle slagging from one to another, or the simple act of just sitting in the same room together.
Last Sunday evening, I sat in the kitchen half-reading, half listening to the sounds of home... as my biggest brother dozed in the corner, I could hear my Dad practising his singing for the choir in the living, I could hear Babs dancing and singing along to some random Elvis song and I could hear Mum moving from room to room sorting things upstairs. It was such a simple, but such a lovely moment, it's one that will stay with me. And that's what my family life has meant to me over the years, lots of lovely little moments that combine to make for one rather happy life......
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