My son is clearing out his childhood things – but these items he knew I'd want to keep
younger son
, who finished the
Leaving Cert
a few weeks ago, has been going through his room setting aside childish things. I see that his purge is overdue; there were games and toys that were almost already outgrown when we moved from England five years ago.
We should probably have been even more ruthless in packing, but as we understood the difference between the space we could afford in the
English midlands
and the space we could afford in
Dublin
, my husband and I discarded more than half our own possessions. (I acknowledge our good fortune in being able to afford any space at all in Dublin.) We couldn't bear to ask the same of the children.
My son is thoughtful and knows that I think more nostalgically of his childhood than he does, full now of the joys of new adulthood. He set aside things he thought I'd want to keep. He was, of course, mostly right; our children know us well.
There was some furniture from the dolls' house my grandfather had made for me 45 years ago. The house itself long gone to other lives, but a hand-carved wooden cradle to hold a baby the size of a grape endures, carried as a talisman of my grandfather's love across decades and seas and borders.
READ MORE
There was a family of plastic squirrels with fluffy tails that will probably be on the planet centuries after humans have blown each other to oblivion. I don't know what I was thinking when I bought them for his third birthday, except that my son would like them.
He did, carried them in dimpled fists and small pockets around the park and the shops, handed them to me for safekeeping while he climbed at the playground and fed the ducks. They are so small, surely no harm to keep them though they are neither useful nor beautiful, though space is tight and shipping costly.
Take a photo, I tell myself, let them go, but the idea of them lying in a bin – not even recyclable, not desirable second-hand – is too much.
And then – I know from the smell before I come to them – there is a box of 64 wax crayons, all more or less used, the pinks, purples and oranges more than the others, the greys and browns hardly at all. They've survived the years because they lived at my grandparents' house, and my grandparents clove to order and neatness, stored things tidily arranged in their original packaging.
[
There's a clear difference between those who grew up taking photos of themselves and those of us who didn't
Opens in new window
]
My brother and I had art supplies at home, in abundance, in constant use. There was a yellow plastic tub that had once held two litres of Neapolitan ice-cream, divided like a flag into thirds of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate, for years after holding handfuls of pencil crayons of different lengths and thicknesses and hardness, the leads broken and ends chewed.
'The crayon box is one of vanishingly few objects I can touch now that I touched in early childhood.' Photograph: Getty Images
It was practical enough. We drew daily, which was the point. In adult life I tend much more towards such contained chaos than towards my grandparents' neatness, and my own kids' crafting supplies lived in biscuit tins and shoeboxes. The tidiness was appealing because we loved our grandparents and that was how they were.
But because the crayons remained a set, remained in order, separate, they passed from me to my sons. Because I'd taken care of the box, they did, and so here it is, one of vanishingly few objects I can touch now that I touched in early childhood.
I look through them, read the names on the labels, the precursors of my adult fascination with the names of paint colours, with words for light. The colours are disordered, juxtaposed in ways I find ugly and I start to rearrange them, rediscover that the crayons I loved most of all are the least used because I saved them for best, for later, for special occasions that never came.
I still delight in rose pink and sunset orange and violet, glowing colours that I was taught 'didn't go' and couldn't be worn together. I wear them now, on confident days. I glance down at my lined adult hands, at the scars on the fingers from cooking and rock-climbing and I see the rings that replace the beloved engagement ring I lost last year.
The stones I wear constantly now are purple, yellow, crimson and orange, my childhood self still almost in touching distance as my children's childhoods fade.
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Irish Times
5 hours ago
- Irish Times
Ireland's nature lovers on their favourite trees: ‘I felt I could talk to it, like going to a good therapist'
Think of the trees in your life. A tree you used to climb as a child. A tree your own child climbs now. A tree you're drawn to on your Sunday walk. A tree you huddled under on a first date in the rain. A tree that reminds you of someone. We all have a favourite tree, even if we've never thought about it in those terms. And we all know how we feel better just being in the presence of trees. Despite a very well-curated image, Ireland has one of the lowest percentages of tree coverage in Europe. Across the continent, most countries average 35 per cent forest cover, but here the figure sits at just 11 per cent. Of those meagre forested areas, just over 1 per cent is native woodland , down from over 80 per cent after the last ice age. These are frightening figures, but perhaps it is a mistake to think of trees merely as statistics. In the words of Nobel Prize-winning author and poet Hermann Hesse , 'Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.' Here, five nature lovers talk about their favourite trees, and describe the influence they have had on their lives. READ MORE 'I always felt it was there for me. It was like going to see a good therapist' Zoe Devlin is a wildflower expert, photographer, and author of Wildflowers of Ireland: A Field Guide Zoe Devlin with her favourite tree, a beech, near the Vartry reservoir, Co Wicklow One of my favourite trees is only a couple of years old. I was looking for something to plant because we lost our son during Covid. I love native Irish trees, and I love the hawthorn particularly, because it is such a giving tree. When it flowers in May the bees all come and it feeds them, it gives shade during the summer, and then berries for the birds. So we thought we would like to put a hawthorn tree, not one from a nursery, but a plain ordinary species, Crataegus monogyna. My daughter has a hedge in Kildare and she plucked one out and gave it to us. At first we thought it wouldn't make it because our soil is so different and so deplete, but it did. It's in its second year now and the leaves are coming on beautifully. I'm very happy to watch that tree as it grows. It's a young tree, so I don't have a long history with it; the one tree I do have history with is a beech tree by the side of the Vartry reservoir. My husband and I have been walking that reservoir for 40 years. We used to bring the kids with us; we used to leave them to play Pooh-sticks in the little ditch beside the reservoir. You wouldn't do that now. We would walk as far as that tree and just stroke her and put our arms around her. We reckoned it had to be female. That was its persona, a kind of Mother Nature tree; there were so many other things living in it, it was so biodiverse. [ Irish wildflowers: Growing your own mini-meadow isn't always easy but the results are magical Opens in new window ] It used to help us too. I always felt it was there for me somehow. I always felt a connection with it. It was like going to see a good therapist. Whatever problems I had, I felt I could talk to it. I went there a few times on my own and I spoke to the tree. I felt better when I came away. I visited recently to take this photograph, hoping the tree hadn't been brought down by storm Eowyn as others had, but it was there, with loads of leaves sprouting from it, leaning towards the water as it has always done. 'The limbs of the tree reach out into space – there's a real power to the tree' Eoghan Daltun is a sculptor, farmer, and author of An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey Into the Magic of Rewilding Eoghan Daltun with his favourite tree, a sessile oak, on his 73-acre farm on the Beara Peninsula in West Cork It's not easy for me to choose a favourite tree, since there are so many thousands in the rainforest growing on my 73-acre farm here on the Beara Peninsula in west Cork. But if I absolutely had to, it would be a certain sessile oak, a native species that grows wild in the west and other rougher, more stony parts of Ireland – hence its scientific name, Quercus 'petraea'. When I say 'wild', that word is utterly key to what makes this tree so special: it grew from a self-seeded acorn. The tree wasn't planted. And if you saw the tree, you'd understand how it would actually be impossible to plant a tree like this. It's growing at the edge of a rocky escarpment, and its roots penetrate down to a cave below, in which you can see them bursting through the rock from above. The stream running alongside turns into a temporary mini lake in high rainfall, making the spot a sheer wonderland. When we've got so few native trees left in Ireland, to even consider wiping out a large proportion of those ... it just boggles the mind The tree itself leaves zero doubt that it's a rainforest tree, being covered in epiphytes. Epiphytes are plants that grow on trees, and an abundance of them, anywhere in the world, says just one thing: 'rainforest'. On this particular tree there are the usual epiphytic mosses and polypody ferns you'd expect in an Irish rainforest, but also a whole bunch of other species. You've got flowering plants like celandine, goldenrod, dog violet, wood sorrel, as well as woodrush, all growing on the tree. Another thing I love about this particular tree is that at the base is an ants' nest, and they've made a kind of a highway running diagonally up its trunk. The passage of millions of tiny legs up and down the tree has worn a deep furrow through the moss to the bare bark. The limbs of the tree reach out into space, because it's on the side of this cliff. The whole shape is incredibly unique and charismatic: there's a real power to the tree. And again, it all comes back to the fact that it's wild, therefore unlike any other tree in the whole forest, all of which are distinct individuals. They're almost certainly directly descended from the first trees to colonise the area after the last ice age. In an age of globalisation – including the plant trade – an oak bought in a garden centre or nursery in Dublin, Amsterdam or Brussels will probably all be genetically identical, domesticated versions of the species. This oak is at the very opposite end of the spectrum, part of a unique, wild population limited to just this part of Beara. [ Ireland needs more wild native forests – not lifeless Sitka plantations Opens in new window ] One of the other things that makes this tree so special is that it's growing very close to a main road: only about 10 metres away. When TD Michael Fitzmaurice said early this year that all trees growing within 30 metres of any road, power or communication line should be cut, I remember thinking of this particular tree and feeling deep, deep anger. I don't know how old it is, but I'd guess it has stood there for somewhere between 150 and 200 years, never bothering anybody. Quite the contrary: it's a pillar of the local ecosystem, providing habitat for thousands of different organisms. When we've got so few native trees left in Ireland, to even consider wiping out a large proportion of those ... it just boggles the mind. 'It makes me smile every day when I pass it. It's a part of my life' Seán Ronayne is an ornithologist, wildlife sound-recordist, environmental activist and author of Nature Boy: A Journey of Birdsong and Belonging Seán Ronayne's favourite tree, an oak tree, in Ballyannon Wood in Midleton, Co Cork. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision There are lots of great trees that have really impressed me around the country, but it's the local trees that are most important to me, because I grew up with them. There is one in particular. A great big gnarly sessile oak tree in my local wood, Ballyannan Wood in Midleton in Cork. The wood itself is largely modified and planted, but it's an ancient woodland. There's a big carpet of bluebells, there's greater woodrush, there's lots of wood anemone. This tree stands out among it all because it just looks like a wizened old character of the wood. It doesn't conform to the straight lines of the conifers that have been planted around it. It's a natural monument, really. 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Just like in music and taste and smells, we have memories in our trees, too, and our natural spaces. This tree is a significant marker in my life in terms of memories. All happy memories. 'I'd be devastated if those two trees were gone' Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin is an associate professor in DCU, biodiversity advocate and chair of the Independent Advisory Committee on Nature Restoration Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin at Fernhill Park and Gardens in Stepaside, Co Dublin. Photograph: Alan Betson There are two enormously tall scots pine trees on the Rua Oileans. The Rua Oileans are two little islands on Lough Corrib. They mean a lot to me because as children we would go fishing on the Corrib on my grandad's boat, which is now my dad's. The first thing you see when you go out in the boat and get past the shore reeds are the Rua Oileans, covered in trees. It's a place where we would stop to have a picnic if we'd been out fishing for a couple of hours. Annoyingly you can't really walk around because there's just so much growth. So it's a real adventure to try and walk around the island. I used to think that trees couldn't grow like this on the hills in Connemara, but now realise the islands epitomise what our landscape could look like. [ Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin: 'We need to look after our bogs, like we look after the Book of Kells' Opens in new window ] Those two trees are my favourites because they mark to me what the Corrib is. They are Connemara. I was out on the boat at the weekend with my kids. We saw the islands ahead of us and I just said, 'Oh, my soul feels better.' My brother was in the boat as well and he said, 'Me too.' Corrib Island in Connemara. Photograph: Art O Súilleabháin That's what those trees epitomise for me; just stopping and connecting. I connect with nature when I'm on the lake, because there's nothing else you can do except watch the water, look at the flies on the water, listen to the wind, look at the trees. And look at the sky. All you're doing is being in nature. That's my connection. Those two trees, those enormous Scots Pines that look like they shouldn't be there. I'd be devastated if those two trees were gone. 'This horse chestnut tree has been a mother tree to me for a long time' Catherine Cleary is co-founder of Pocket Forests , a social enterprise planting native trees and shrubs in urban areas. She is growing a native forest on a former farm in Co Roscommon Catherine Cleary with her favourite tree, a 'big old horse chestnut tree' in a glade at the back of the Iveagh Gardens. Photograph: Alan Betson When we think about favourite trees they tend to be the trees that have been around a lot longer than us, and in that category there's one tree on the farm in Roscommon which is an incredible tree, unfortunately dying from ash dieback. It has been given a life by Kerri ní Dochartaigh, who wrote an incredible poem called The Mother Tree for the documentary that was made about our farm project called The Forest Midwife . It is speaking in the voice of the tree on the farm, this 80- to 100-year-old ash tree, which is struggling to continue with ash dieback. So that's one that's very, very close to my heart. But the one that more people might be able to visit, and one I visit much more regularly, is a big old horse chestnut tree in the Iveagh Gardens in Dublin's city centre. [It is] at the back of the Iveagh Gardens in a kind of wooded area, which is still under threat from development. I will be putting up a tent in there to stop it from being cut down. [ Catherine Cleary: 'I stood in this dripping wet mossy forest and something just shifted in me' Opens in new window ] In that glade at the back of the Iveagh Gardens, you feel like you're just in a tiny fragment of forest. This horse chestnut tree has kind of been a mother tree to me for a long time, in that I have visited it at various tough times. I think it was Thomas Pakenham who once said trees are great listeners. And this horse chestnut is a great listener. About 18 months ago a huge limb fell off it, because it is beginning to come to the end of its days, and it was given a very severe piece of tree surgery – it basically had all of its huge, enormous canopy cut down, for safety reasons presumably. But this summer it is leafing up again; a tiny, much-dwarfed version of itself, but it's still there. It's still keeping on.
Irish Times
5 hours ago
- Irish Times
My son is clearing out his childhood things – but these items he knew I'd want to keep
My younger son , who finished the Leaving Cert a few weeks ago, has been going through his room setting aside childish things. I see that his purge is overdue; there were games and toys that were almost already outgrown when we moved from England five years ago. We should probably have been even more ruthless in packing, but as we understood the difference between the space we could afford in the English midlands and the space we could afford in Dublin , my husband and I discarded more than half our own possessions. (I acknowledge our good fortune in being able to afford any space at all in Dublin.) We couldn't bear to ask the same of the children. My son is thoughtful and knows that I think more nostalgically of his childhood than he does, full now of the joys of new adulthood. He set aside things he thought I'd want to keep. He was, of course, mostly right; our children know us well. There was some furniture from the dolls' house my grandfather had made for me 45 years ago. The house itself long gone to other lives, but a hand-carved wooden cradle to hold a baby the size of a grape endures, carried as a talisman of my grandfather's love across decades and seas and borders. READ MORE There was a family of plastic squirrels with fluffy tails that will probably be on the planet centuries after humans have blown each other to oblivion. I don't know what I was thinking when I bought them for his third birthday, except that my son would like them. He did, carried them in dimpled fists and small pockets around the park and the shops, handed them to me for safekeeping while he climbed at the playground and fed the ducks. They are so small, surely no harm to keep them though they are neither useful nor beautiful, though space is tight and shipping costly. Take a photo, I tell myself, let them go, but the idea of them lying in a bin – not even recyclable, not desirable second-hand – is too much. And then – I know from the smell before I come to them – there is a box of 64 wax crayons, all more or less used, the pinks, purples and oranges more than the others, the greys and browns hardly at all. They've survived the years because they lived at my grandparents' house, and my grandparents clove to order and neatness, stored things tidily arranged in their original packaging. [ There's a clear difference between those who grew up taking photos of themselves and those of us who didn't Opens in new window ] My brother and I had art supplies at home, in abundance, in constant use. There was a yellow plastic tub that had once held two litres of Neapolitan ice-cream, divided like a flag into thirds of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate, for years after holding handfuls of pencil crayons of different lengths and thicknesses and hardness, the leads broken and ends chewed. 'The crayon box is one of vanishingly few objects I can touch now that I touched in early childhood.' Photograph: Getty Images It was practical enough. We drew daily, which was the point. In adult life I tend much more towards such contained chaos than towards my grandparents' neatness, and my own kids' crafting supplies lived in biscuit tins and shoeboxes. The tidiness was appealing because we loved our grandparents and that was how they were. But because the crayons remained a set, remained in order, separate, they passed from me to my sons. Because I'd taken care of the box, they did, and so here it is, one of vanishingly few objects I can touch now that I touched in early childhood. I look through them, read the names on the labels, the precursors of my adult fascination with the names of paint colours, with words for light. The colours are disordered, juxtaposed in ways I find ugly and I start to rearrange them, rediscover that the crayons I loved most of all are the least used because I saved them for best, for later, for special occasions that never came. I still delight in rose pink and sunset orange and violet, glowing colours that I was taught 'didn't go' and couldn't be worn together. I wear them now, on confident days. I glance down at my lined adult hands, at the scars on the fingers from cooking and rock-climbing and I see the rings that replace the beloved engagement ring I lost last year. The stones I wear constantly now are purple, yellow, crimson and orange, my childhood self still almost in touching distance as my children's childhoods fade.
Irish Times
6 hours ago
- Irish Times
Back to school, back to penury? Here are things you can do to ease the financial burden a bit
And so it's August. The month when Halloween decorations start shamelessly appearing in the shops. When the season changes and autumn begins (never mind your meteorological calendar nonsense ; I know what I learned in senior infants) confirmed by the language of our great nation. August is followed by September, or Meán Fómhair – the middle of autumn – as we season experts prefer. It's that time when the back-to-school panic sets in as you realise, once again, how hard it is to source properly fitting school trousers for very tall, slim boys. A time of strange but inevitable shift in your school holidays vernacular when you move from '#Day1729 of the summer break in the Big Mother house, and I'm questioning if the children's allowance is actually worth all this' to 'Oh sweet Jesus, in just four weeks' time, we'll be back to homework hell'. Before all that, there's some serious flinching for your wallet to do. And the planning for that often starts well before they're due back. Every year the same conversations happen about crippling back-to-school costs. And every year it appears to be a storm and an eight-year-old Department of Education circular that just needs to be weathered – until the next year. READ MORE But in the midst of frustration about the perennial conversation, there are a few small things that you can do, to try to ease the financial burden just a little bit. [ Third of parents expected to go into debt to fund back-to-school costs Opens in new window ] Put the WhatsApp groups to good use 'Impossible,' I hear you cry. But no, it's true. They have other upsides beyond reminding you of form deadlines, cake sales, uniform and tracksuit days, and the many other things you forgot to remember. They are a perfect place for back-to-school uniform swap shops. How often have we found ourselves with items of uniform (particularly those crested ones – but more on that later) that are in perfectly good nick, with no younger siblings to pass them on to? Enter the WhatsApp group and a general message offering these to any takers, and the doors have been opened to reciprocal offers. Or even a straight-out suggestion of a WhatsApp school uniform swap shop. Good for the pocket, good for the environment and good for cluttered houses. It's the circular economy in motion. WhatsApp groups are a perfect place for back-to-school uniform swap shops. Photograph: David Jones/PA Wire Look at what you already have Shiny new schoolbags, lunchboxes, beakers and boxes of crayons all look great on display in the shops. But are they really necessary? If by some miracle you got to the end of the year with a lunchbox that still has a lid, then a new one may not be needed. And if your child's schoolbag isn't too junior themed and is in perfect working order, then perhaps a new one can be crossed off the list. It's easy to get caught up in the pressure to have all new things as children embark on a new year in school, without properly surveying what you already have and what condition they're in. So maybe have a proper check down the back of the couch before buying that new box of Twistables. Choose your activities wisely After-school activities can be one of the costlier aspects of back to school. But while parents might like to offer their children the opportunity to try lots of things, free time for children is also essential. Something to remember if you're feeling guilty about what you can afford. If you've more than one child, these costs can quickly mount up, so keep an eye out for sibling discounts – and if you don't see any offered, ask. Nothing ventured and all that. As for any costly equipment/football boots and so on that might be needed, or outgrown spares that you may have, there are those WhatsApp groups. Ask questions Possibly too late for this year, but like I said, perennial conversations. The cost of those pesky crested uniforms really shouldn't be the source of financial stress for parents that they continue to be. In 2017 the Department of Education issued a circular requesting school authorities to adopt a number of measures, including: '(a) All elements of a school uniform should be purchasable from various stores; (b) Only 'iron-on' or 'sew-on' crests should be used; (c) Wherever possible, generic rather than branded items should be specified (eg uniform, clothing, IT tablets, sports equipment etc).' And, yet here we are, eight years later, and not all schools have adopted these measures. If your child attends a school that hasn't, you might wonder why. That's a question for your school's board of management. Resist temptation Don't get sucked into buying any of those Halloween decorations.
