A Beautiful Email

Well Mam replied, and it’s positive. She isn’t happy about me leaving but then I never really thought she would be. But she’s supporting my decision. It’s such a nice email, it’s beautiful. She’s a lovely writer and I never knew that about her. I’m just realising that I’d never know whether she’s a good writer or not becuase she’s never written to me. When does your mother ever write to you? When you’ve left home? Well I haven’t left home and she wrote back to me. I’m mulling over whether to copy and paste it on to this. No I’m not, I’ve decided. Here’s my Mam’s secret talent; she’s a very good writer.

So without further ado, JayeL’s Mam:

Having read your letter, and while I am disappointed that you don’t want to finish the course, in the overall “scheme of life” it is not the end of the world. If you have given it your best effort and are not happy, you are now mature enough to make that decision. It may not be the best course for your talents; as you point out you spend hours looking up news items and pieces of interest from the Internet which would indicate that you have a genuine interest in media topics. You have a great talent for writing with wit and a sense of humour which hopefully one day, will find a niche to match.

I said to her that it didn’t sound like her. I’m very like my mother; I talk in a big, rushed flurry of mindless natter. I manage to squeeze copious amounts of bullshit in there too. I said to her that it didn’t sound like her, which sounded terrible really in hindsight. I should’ve said it was so gathered, so calm and clear. Mam is very passionate and un-gathered, yet her writing sounds like someone else. She says I get my sense of humour from her mother.

This is natter. What happened today was extraordinary. Elaine says parents surprise you when you least expected, and she’s right. Dad rung me; Mam had forwarded my email to him. I didn’t send it to him in case someone could see his screen but I know no-one would see Mam reading. He told me to meet him on O’Connell Street. He wanted us to go somewhere and sit down. I couldn’t because I was working, but it was so great to think he was thinking that way, if you know what I mean. It meant a lot.

Dad just wants me to keep busy, and so do I. I’m going full-time in my job, going to try and get out of the UK division of the job finally after two years and get into the Irish division, dealing with Irish people. I apologise to any Brits that may be reading this but Jesus Christ Almighty kids, calm the fuck down. The entire country is a headfuck. If Britain is stressed, overworked, underpaid, undervalued and feeling like shit – well as my mother would say you’ve only yourself to blame. I want out of that shit soon.

And what now? I haven’t a clue. Education for me has abruptly ended. For now. I don’t know what I’ll be doing next month, never mind next year. Sometimes you might feel you have to be doing something so you can tell people “oh well I’m doing a Journalism course”. I dreaded saying to people “oh…well, I’m out of college now and doing……nothing to do with what I went to college for”. I know it’s daft for definite now because I did it for the first time this evening on the way home from work. I bumped into Niamh, who used to be in Embryo’s class, and gave the “what I’m up to now” speech. The new one. And it went fine. But then Niamh is very nice. I can’t imagine her thinking to herself as she walked away from me “waster….”

Galway beckons, and with that the guarantee that any subsequent entry dealing with my quick jaunt to Galway will be entitled “G-G-G-Galway”. Up at 6.30am (five hours time), working 8am to 4pm, bus to Galway at 5pm, fall asleep (hopefully) for 3 hours or so on the way down, missing all the scenery as streetlights switch on and bounce off the bus until it’s night time again and I’m awake. Get off the bus, head to random city centre pub and proceed to get roaring drunk whilst having a carefree laugh. Wake up the next morning, recover, say goodbye and bus back to Dublin to start the rest of my new life.

Wish me luck.

j