There was one weekend when I attempted to get all my children around the same dinner table. They were all in the country, though that window of opportunity didn’t last long. Son Number One had just returned from Colombia, only to get on to another plane to attend a wedding in Portugal.
Then Daughter Number Two couldn’t come because it was weekend of the Pride Festival and “we have the Estonian lesbians staying over”. I had no idea what that meant, but subsequently learned that she and her partner had found themselves in a typically Irish situation. On holidays some months before, they had befriended some Estonian women and had extended an invitation to them to visit Ireland.
But this was an Irish holiday promise, the kind we’ve all made and don’t believe will ever be accepted. You mean it at the time, of course, but it’s likely that the following day, you’ve forgotten all about it. If they had invited some Irish lesbians – or Irish people of any sexuality – they would have instinctively known that several more steps would be required to establish the veracity of the offer. Regular contact over subsequent weeks and, crucially, a reissuing of the invitation at least twice.
I’m not saying that Daughter Number Two and her partner didn’t enjoy having their new Estonian friends come to stay; just that they were a little shocked at the northern European predilection for assuming that if you say something, that’s what you actually mean.
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That’s the thing foreigners don’t get about the Irish. We’re great with words. But that doesn’t mean we’re great at communicating.
Saying to an Irish person that you don’t feel like talking can all too often be construed as a bit insulting
My get-the-kids-together plan now completely scuppered, Daughter Number Three then pulled out, but in a refreshingly un-Irish way. She said she was tired and “socially drained”. She had returned from London a couple of days before, met various friends and had to answer questions from them that she would be asked again by me if she had come over for dinner. And she didn’t have the energy to do it.
It’s a rare day when someone refuses your invitation and you admire them for it, but I did. My day job is to talk for a living on the radio, and when I’m finished my professional nattering, I often feel I have nothing left to say. Except, unlike Daughter Number Three, I wouldn’t have the courage to admit it. No matter how carefully you phrase it, saying to an Irish person that you don’t feel like talking can all too often be construed as a bit insulting – that you don’t feel like talking to them.
Because we’re Irish, and when we communicate, it’s not entirely clear what we actually mean.
The guest list was now reduced to Daughter Number One, her partner and Granddaughter Number One: a situation we both handled in the typically Irish way of trying to second-guess each other. She messaged me to ask if they should still come over, or did I want to leave it to another day when all the others could come?
She was providing me with an escape route. But I didn’t want one, and I certainly didn’t want her to think that I didn’t want her to come, just because the others couldn’t. So I replied: come over.
But almost immediately, I became plagued with doubt. Perhaps she didn’t want to give me an escape route, but for me to provide her with one. Perhaps they were tired, or stressed and were quietly relieved that my dinner plan had disintegrated. But, being Irish, they were never going to say that out loud.
I became so transfixed with this idea that when they arrived, I immediately apologised for dragging them across Dublin. But they said they were happy to come. We had dinner, and when they were leaving, they said they’d had a nice time. And they meant it.
At least, I think they did.
