“Let’s go fishing for a dream
Let’s find some place new
Somewhere we can be ourselves
Some of the time”
- Paridjanian / Knights
This is Elliott’s last week at home before he starts university on Monday in Maynooth. Coincidentally Jake is home for a few days from Galway with his friend Sarah, and Robyn is home from Dundalk. Our house is full for the first time in a while before it empties at the weekend. We may not be together again until Christmas. I’m enjoying this time thoroughly.
Sarah hasn’t been here before and , as we sat down for dinner, she commented on the art and music related memorabilia adorning the kitchen walls. “Is music your main interest ?”
“No, my Soulmate’s happiness is.”
My Soulmate was so overcome with emotion at this public display of love that she made a retching sound before confirming my love by saying “Yeah, right!”. How we all laughed!
I’ve been thinking about it a lot since. I do love music, I love history, I love reading, I love running, although I haven’t had a run this year, I love science, without really understanding it, I love art, I love nature, I love my community, and I love having written, but don’t properly enjoy the act itself.
I bumped into my friend Bronwyn in town yesterday and we chatted a little about the college course she’s started. As we parted I asked her to tell her partner Kae that I wished him ‘Good Luck’ for Saturday’s Monaghan Coder Dojo session. It’ll be the first time they’ve got together since Covid and the first time that I won’t be involved.
I helped start Monaghan Coder Dojo in 2012 with Joe, Gerry, Kae , and Gordon. I had enthusiasm, they actually knew about computers. It was great fun. I learnt a lot, just not about computers. I saw some fine young boys and girls grow up to be fine young men and women. I saw them demolish giant cartwheel sized pizzas that we got for them at the end of each term, and I marveled at their capacity to embrace new technology and I was regularly in awe of the programmes they wrote and the magic they created. There is hope for all of us with these guys making their way in the world.
I’ll miss it a bit ,especially when I see social media posts about what they’re up to, but I’m content too to let some new ideas, and new people get involved. I think it’s important in any club, committee, or organization that coaches or mentors should serve a term, say three or five years, and then make way for someone else. The problem is that it isn’t easy to get people to volunteer to replace you. But sometimes it’s only walking away that makes someone else take your place.
It’s not easy letting go. There was always a buzz of being involved in things, like the Monaghan Town Team, Phoenix Athletic, Drumkill Rovers, Border Bizcamp, or even the parish Child Protection Committee. It felt good to volunteer.
Sometimes I’ll be walking through Flemings, our local SuperValu supermarket, and a teenager will half smile at me nervously and it will take me a minute to realise that I know them, or I knew the 8 or 9 year old version of them that I coached or mentored, and I’ll smile back and say hello, and they smile a bigger smile. They all knew that I never really knew what I was doing, and whether it was kids running , who really wanted Brian or Damian to coach them because they were actual athletes and knew exactly what they were doing, or kids playing football who wanted Rodney, Enda, Noel, or Emmet to coach them because their teams did not lose by double digit margins, or kids who quickly left my beginners Scratch class in Coder as they realised that they knew more than I did, on some level they seem to have appreciated that I tried and that I turned up. At least that’s what I tell myself. Maybe when they see me they are simply thinking , “There’s that idiot who kept trying to get us to listen to Radiohead at training, and didn’t even have a whistle ! Oh Christ, he’s seen me, better smile.”
And as one door closes, another opens.
I am currently resetting.
I have switched myself off, and am now coming back on.
New dreams await
There are stories and brands to be created, Parkruns to help at, friends to meet, Giants to build, and cuddles on the sofa to be had.
“All changed, changed utterly,
A terrible beauty has been born.”
Toodles,
Paul
