After five years away, I am back in Ireland.
My mother gives me instructions for the bus from the airport, twice. She is unsure I will remember where my grandparents' house is. To be honest, I am too, but as the bus approaches their housing estate I recognise, with a child's heart, the walls and the curve of the roads. My mother tries to meet me at the bus stop with my grandmother, but is delayed because my grandmother spends too much time putting on lipstick. I find my way to the house through a hole in the wall, which I find by muscle memory.
We're preparing party food for a family reunion. My family has taken two shopping trips, multiple phone calls and two days of discussion to organise making a single bowl of guacamole. My fingers are raw under the nailbeds from de-heading four punnets of strawberries.
I ask my grandmother if she has any tights I could borrow. She hands me a pair, which I put on and thank her for. She then hands me an entire ball of tights, perhaps six or seven pairs, and asks if I would like these as well.
I am full, to the point of delirium, with milky tea.
My aunt wants to put chives in the guacamole. My stepdad suggests chili and garlic. My aunt is confused.
The World Cup is on television. I am deeply troubled by how attractive Gary Lineker is these days, as is my mother. My great-uncle is getting on in years; he speculates on the sexuality of the French football team whenever they hug each other. When the party is over, all of us stuffed with food, my grandmother inexplicably brings in piled-up slices of sultana loaf.
My family recounts the entire history of the estate over breakfast (oily sausages, bacon, eggs, buttered toast leaving crumbs in the wrinkles of the tablecloth). My grandmother is keen to point out that almost everyone who used to live there is dead now. My grandparents seem to have a general tendency to point out when people are dead, in the same way that cats have a general tendency to push objects off the edges of tables; not in a joyful way but more with a sense of obligation.
I try and find the spot in the garden where I spilled a paint-can as a child, but it's gone now, for whatever reason.
