The slowest trike crash in the park – and my son is jubilant
For all the stresses and travails of parenting – without which, this column would be sorely depleted – I’m frequently reminded of how easy I have it compared to others. Having come from a family of 11, I’m aware how much easier it is having just one child, even in those moments where my heart is in my mouth and beating itself to death. Last week I took my son to the park so he could have a little run around on his favourite mode of transportation, a weird little trike we got him a few months ago. I say ‘run-around’, but it’s more of a ‘crawl around’ as his trike is an odd, pedal-less contraption, powered by the tiny feet of its driver, which pad him inch by inch along the pavement, at the speed of those marathon runners who collapse just before the finish and have to be helped over the line by their rivals. What it lacks in speed, it more than makes up for in its ability to occupy him for ungodly amounts of time. During which I relax my usual panic about where he is and what he’s doing, since the answer is always, ‘The exact same thing he was doing five minutes ago, but 8cm further along.’
That was until Wednesday, when he discovered a steep slope and started barrelling down it with the confidence you might not expect of someone who has never exceeded the speed limit of an injured tortoise. In my complacency, I’d missed this descent and for a few terrifying seconds he was completely out of my view. Every horror scenario flashed into my mind. Had he been grabbed by squirrels? Plunged to the fatberg-ridden depths of an unseen drain? Thankfully, these ruminations were short-lived as I found him sprawled at the foot of a tree. There he lay, unharmed and jubilant, having just experienced the drama of the lowest speed crash ever recorded.
The prospect of losing sight of one child or another was a more regular problem for my father, the single, widowed parent of 11 kids. On one drive back from mass, my older brother Shane turned round from the passenger seat of the 12-seater minibus in which we drove around Derry, and noticed that my sister Dearbhaile was missing. She had been with us in the church but, with so many of us to account for, she’d somehow been left behind.
My dad turned tail and raced back to the church to pick her up. He was understandably furious. ‘How did none of you notice she was missing?’ he fumed, and everyone felt chastened at their lack of awareness. Not realising that their nine-year-old sister had been left behind filled my siblings with shame, especially since she was now probably crying on the steps of the church alone, or worse, in the company of scandalised and judgmental parishioners, who’d soon be telling tales about the poor, rudderless O’Reilly clan, demented by bereavement, incapable even of counting themselves. Luckily, when the bus finally reached Dearbhaile, she was smiling and happy, and neither in the company of some sour-faced scold among the congregation, nor alone.
I was standing, jubilant, unharmed and unmissed, beside her.
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