Story 10: Back When the World Made Sense

Fiona Cassidy

Looking back on my formative years now, I know I led a charmed existence. I grew up with my parents as an only child in the rolling hills of Galbally in rural County Tyrone, a place I still call home. My parents were both teachers and for their sins both taught me in school, an experience which I look back on with fond memories and some amusement.

My father used to set “composition” assignments for his class where everyone was given a topic to write about and the author of the best-constructed piece of work was rewarded with the princely sum of twenty pence to spend in the local shop. I remember penning a particular masterpiece featuring a duck as the main character which earned me my twenty-pence reward but I took exception to the fact that the prize was presented to me at home where my father retained the title of “Daddy” and not “Sir” as I had to call him in school. The result of that particular disagreement was that he had to give me my money in front of the whole class the next day as my argument was that if I had earned it then everyone else should know how talented I was and never mind the fact that I was his daughter . . . leaving him worried about others thinking he was showing favouritism!

Mammy and Daddy adopted me when I was a week short of four months old and I’m like the queen as I have my official birthday on the 7th March but also have a mini-celebration on the 30th June as that is when I “came home” to them. I always knew that I was adopted as my parents were open and honest about the fact and that made life a lot easier for me as I had no shocks to deal with as a teenager. I used to conjure up romantic notions in my head as to why I had been given away and my birth mother used to be cast in the role of a variety of characters, each of whom would have had their own dramas to contend with! She would morph from a tragic heroine who had to float me up a river in a basket reminiscent of Moses, to a young mother who grew up on the shores of Summer Bay in Australia, to a lowly film-set employee who had a love child with Tom Cruise. Top Gun was one of my favourite films growing up and Tom Cruise was my favourite actor and I can remember squinting at the TV screen looking for similarities in our appearance and miraculously always managed to find some. The fact that he had dark eyes, dark hair and a huge nose and was an American citizen with no ties to Ireland didn’t seem to dissuade me in my beliefs that my birth mother, whom I obviously favoured in looks, had had a passionate affair with him. It was such a shame that she ended up having to give her baby away but, as Hollywood contracts frowned on set staff fraternising in their dressing rooms with the main stars, she had no choice. Even at that early age I had an imagination that was inclined to run away with me so I suppose, to my parents at least, it was probably no surprise that their daughter would end up as a women’s fiction author one day in the future.

When I was a child, life was simple and happy and good. Unfortunately at the time I probably interpreted that as being boring but now I value the carefree, safe and content bubble that was my world when growing up. My parents were always there for me. There was never any trouble in the house and neither one took it upon themselves to put anything or anyone in front of the precious child that had been bestowed upon them. I guess I was one of the lucky ones and if I had one wish I’d like to bring my own children to that place where everything was simple and as it should be in an ideal world.

In recent times, in particular, when life has been hard to bear, and thoughts of childhood and that safe place where no one could hurt me have been comforting, I’ve often thought of how lovely it would be to revert back to being a child again. How nice it would be to be the recipient of love and affection where someone else could take charge and control and be the oracle of all wisdom and knowledge that the role of being a parent brings with it. No one actually tells you when you give birth that as well as being a mammy you also take on the responsibility of being a multi-tasking octopus who holds the answers to all questions no matter how ridiculous or difficult they might be. I learnt in my fledging days as a mother that the answer “Because that’s the way God made it” was a good response to most riddles and then my children could take up their confusing analogies with the Almighty as obviously it was His fault for making the sky blue and more bizarrely for making toes and hands go wrinkly in the bath, which was the source of a great amount of analysing and debate in our house.

A favourite childhood memory of mine involved helping to bring in the hay with my cousins who lived on a farm next door. My mother kept me looking like a porcelain doll with ringlets that Nellie Olesen from Little House on the Prairie would have been proud to sport the rest of the year, so part of the attraction of hay time to me was probably the fact that I could embrace my inner desire to be a tomboy and get mucky and dirty for a change. I used to love the sweet smell of the hay and climbing all over the bales and rolling down the hills after the grass had been cut. Mammy and Daddy would also have been there helping out and one of the biggest and most startling factors about them being involved was that it was the one and only time I can ever remember my mother wearing trousers. It stands to reason obviously that nylon tights would not survive a minute when faced with lugging about prickly bales of straw but in my wee head it was a novelty and therefore something to celebrate.

Even as a child I was an incorrigible bookworm who had an insatiable appetite for the latest Famous Five saga in Enid Blyton’s repertoire. A real treat for me was to get picking the latest book in the collection from Jeffers book shop in Portadown where Mammy and Daddy would take me. We used to go out for “wee runs” in the car and Daddy would be pointing things out to me with regard to scenery or places of interest but then gave it up as a bad job when he realised that he was always addressing the top of my head which was permanently buried in a book.

I often find even now as an adult, if I’m ever getting it tough, that opening one of my childhood treasures brings great waves of comfort and consolation. I can still remember Mammy and Daddy reading excerpts from Enid Blyton’s Br’er Rabbit books and chapters from The Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Those were a gift from my Aunt Ann who lived in St Louis Missouri. I was nine years old and still have them in the same presentation box to this day. I wish that my children had grown up in an era where there was less emphasis on gadgets and games and more reliance on books for fun.

As I was on my own I was in the privileged position of getting to choose a friend to go on holidays with Mammy and Daddy and me. There were trips to Bundoran and Rossnowlagh in Donegal and Salthill in Galway and then there was the amazing trip to America to visit my aunties and cousins when I was nine. My daddy often recalls our day out to the St Louis Arch on the 4th of July, American Independence Day, when it absolutely deluged and I announced in a very loud lispy Irish accent that the rain was wetter over here than at home and then couldn’t understand why everyone had chuckled around me.

When I hit secondary school I went to St Joseph’s Convent Grammar in Donaghmore. People will say that your schooldays are supposed to be the best days of your life whilst shuddering and making faces but in my case I found it to be true. Although I probably disliked homework and was the world’s worst mathematician, I look back on my days at school with great fondness and only wish I had taken the time to appreciate them a bit more when I was actually there.

One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t keep a diary as a child. I often wish that I had kept a journal mapping out all the things I did, places visited and experiences had, and if I could go back in time that is one thing that I would be instructing my younger self to do. Along with that advice I’d be informing the young Fionnuala to be more careful in her life choices and not to allow a man to approach unless he was riding a white horse and answering to the name Charming! I’d also tell her to appreciate her parents a bit more as they were and are a couple in a million.

I’d love it if my children could experience the happy times that I had and also if they could see what life was like when people had less to live on but probably coped better than they do today, although prising my daughter away from her mobile phone and getting my son to step away from the XBox remote might just be pushing it. I think my younger children, however, would appreciate the outdoorsy approach to life when playing “let’s pretend” was very real and sky was the blue canvas above us as opposed to a digital satellite dish.

I always remember the sense of wonder and delight that new places and experiences create when you’re young and, given half a chance, I’d bottle that feeling and keep it forever as I think it’s important no matter what age you are to retain a certain amount of awe about what’s happening around you.

So basically I suppose what I’m saying is that if I had the chance to be a child again I’d like to be armed with the adult knowledge that you only ever get one shot at it and every moment is precious! I’d also like to congratulate my parents on a job well done and perhaps I’d elaborate on the “Tom Cruise is really my birth father” idea a bit more but, then again, maybe not as I don’t think Scientology would be my cup of tea!

Children of the world – life is for living. Savour every moment and don’t wish your childhood away, because once it’s gone you’ll never get those days back and some of us adults would literally give our eye teeth to have the chance to go back to a time when the world wasn’t a scary place full of conundrums, difficult decisions and the sad but very real fact that sometimes the people you thought you could rely on the most are the ones who let you down the hardest! No, we’d like to go back to a time where the world actually made sense.

Fiona Cassidy is the bestselling author of Anyone For Seconds?, Anyone For Me? and Anyone For Secrets?. She also writes educational plays and has written a children’s story. She facilitates creative writing workshops for adults, young people and children, and also delivers classes from a therapeutic perspective for trauma sufferers. She lives in Galbally, County Tyrone with her four children Colm, Úna, Áine and Orán.