Chapter 17
17
AND PEGGY…
‘Now, you be a really good boy while your mum is away,’ I say. ‘Don’t be making a mess or making a nuisance of yourself. I’ll be back on Sunday night and I’ll make it up to you then. I promise. I love you so much!’
‘Mum, he’s a dog. He’ll be fine. I’ll look after him.’ Adam is highly amused at my pep talk for Daniel before I leave for my weekend retreat with Laura and Niamh. He doesn’t seem to realise how much I’ve come to value Daniel’s company since my boys upped and left for university. Yes, Daniel has always been a much-loved family pet, but since he’s become the only person I’ve spoken to some days, and he’s the only creature who has cuddled up beside me at bedtime for a very, very long time, he has become my de facto third child.
Just as I’ve been lost without my boys, Daniel has been lost without them too. Gone are the boys who have loved him since he was a puppy and who were always on hand to play catch or tug of war with him. Instead he was left with a middle-aged woman with limited upper-body strength who can’t throw a ball for toffee. Still, he has come to rely on me and I like to think we’ve come to a special understanding as we take our daily walk together. To give him his dues, he’s a great listener – and he’s intuitive too. He always seems to know when I need an extra cuddle, or when I need to be nudged off the sofa and forced out into the cold.
I’m not ashamed to admit that, as I get ready to leave him for two whole nights, I am experiencing the kind of guilt I used to when the boys were small and work took me away for a night.
It’s a guilt I also have about leaving my mum. Who will she call if she has a fall? Or needs something from the shops? Or if Mrs Bishop, her elderly neighbour, runs out of gas again? I carry this worry with me, knowing that my only brother lives a good ninety minutes away and is about as useful in a Mum-related crisis as a chocolate teapot anyway.
I kiss Daniel on the end of his nose and enjoy the feel of his warm fur against my face. I do love this dog, even if he can drive me to distraction at times.
When I’m finally ready to release my furry child from my embrace, I stand to hug my human child. ‘You be careful too. Don’t make a mess or get into any trouble.’
He gives me a cheeky soft smile. ‘I think that ship has sailed, Mum.’
‘Fair point,’ I laugh. ‘Try not to get into any more trouble, then.’
He hugs me tighter – this six-foot man who I can hardly believe once wriggled and kicked in my stomach. If I thought I was prone to feeling overwhelmed with affection for the dog, it’s nothing compared to how I feel about this boy in front of me.
‘And don’t worry about Granny either,’ he says. ‘I’ll check in on her and run any messages she wants me to. I’ve promised to go with her to get some more wool for her crochet.’ To his credit, he doesn’t pull a face, but instead reassures me. ‘She’ll be fine and you’ll get a break from worrying about all of us. Enjoy it!’
‘I’m not sure you are understanding how this whole parenthood vibe works,’ I say with a smile. ‘We’re always worrying about our kids, and our parents too, if we’re lucky to have them.’
Adam steps back from me and takes hold of both my arms so that I can’t step back towards him. As he starts turning me towards the door he says, ‘I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try to relax! Now on you go. Jodie says Niamh was like a woman possessed this morning, getting all her bits together before she went to school. You won’t want to keep her waiting at the school gates.’
He’s not wrong. On Fridays, Niamh gets to leave school almost as soon as the afternoon bell has rung. Last night she told me she’ll be at the school gate waiting for me before the last ding has donged, and I better not be late because she needs to ‘get the hell out of dodge’.
We’ve then plans to go on and pick Laura up at her house before it’s all systems go down the road to our yurt for the evening.
There we will meet Peggy McCabe, who is running the retreat. I’m told that despite her name being more common about the older generation, she is only in her early fifties and, according to Grace, ‘just the loveliest person you could hope to meet’.
Grace sent me a media pack and itinerary to brief me on what to expect. Peggy is the ‘brain behind’ the ‘Free Your Inner Goddess’ retreat, which comes with the sub-heading of ‘how to grow and thrive through menopause and beyond’.
Peggy, it tells me, is a certified counsellor, herbalist and practitioner of a host of complementary therapies – only some of which I have heard of. When I opened the PDF Grace sent me, I saw this image of a woman with curly grey hair, dressed in loose cotton clothes, smiling serenely at the camera.
This is the first time she has brought the ‘transformative’ weekend retreat back to her home county of Donegal and says this makes it extra special. ‘This is my homecoming. It has long been my dream to bring my work back to the windblown hills of Donegal. Where better to connect with our true selves?’
The blurb promises that this weekend will offer an ‘exploration of our inner selves’ in a supportive and nurturing environment, harnessing the healing powers of nature.
It was relatively scant on the details though, apart from promising a warm welcome with their ‘Fire Starter’ session, which it promises will involve a bonfire on the beach, blankets and the chance to informally get to know the retreat staff and our ‘sisters in menopause’.
Yes, it does sound a bit cheesy, but as the brochure also recommends going with an open mind, I’m going to embrace the experience. How else can I write about it authentically?
‘I better get my arse in gear then,’ I tell Adam, giving him one last hug before starting off on a whole new adventure.
* * *
As expected, Niamh is standing at the school gates when I arrive and she waves excitedly before throwing her weekend case in the boot and climbing into the passenger seat.
‘Road trip!’ she squeals, as she fixes her seatbelt and reaches into the canvas tote bag she’d placed at her feet, pulling out a large bottle of Fanta.
I get a sinking feeling that Niamh circa 1994 is back in business. ‘Tell me that’s just Fanta,’ I say, as I pull off into traffic.
‘Okay then. It’s just Fanta.’
I don’t have to look at her face to know she is smirking. ‘Right, so now you can tell me what’s really in it.’
‘Well, there’s Fanta,’ she says. ‘But there might also be a wee smidge of vodka.’ I can hear the giddiness in her voice.
‘Admittedly, if I was being really true to our younger years, it would be Malibu or Peach Schnapps but lookit, I’m forty-seven now. I have a limited tolerance for alcohol these days as it is, so it’s important to me that every drop that passes these lips is a drop that I enjoy. So not only is it vodka, but it’s Grey Goose vodka – the remainder of which is in my case for later. Don’t tell me you don’t have a sneaky bottle in your case?’
This, I realise, is going to be a little awkward.
‘I don’t,’ I say, eyes straight ahead. ‘I don’t think this is really a drinking kind of a weekend,’ I tell her honestly. ‘This is work for me and I want to keep my wits about me. Imagine the first job they send me on is one I get steaming at and make a show of myself.’
I’m trying to keep it light, but somewhere deep inside a little alarm bell has started to ring. Niamh seems to be chugging back the Fanta a little too quickly. She’s a grown woman, of course. I can’t tell her what to do. But if I’m there representing Northern People , does this mean my guests are too? What would Grace think?
Niamh laughs. ‘You wouldn’t make a show of yourself. But how about I make you a promise. If you even start to do anything remotely likely to make a show of yourself, I’ll up my game and distract them all with my silliness.’
I smile. Awkwardly. I love Niamh. She is the sister I never had. But she is making me really nervous. Niamh has always been one who is up for the craic, but this is whole new levels of craic seeking. She’s like a woman possessed.
‘How are we supposed to find our inner goddesses without the help of some adult beverages? They won’t mind. They’re having an event called a Fire Starter, for God’s sake. Doesn’t that sound like it should absolutely involve something a bit more hardcore than a bottle of Football Special?’
A core memory is unlocked when she utters those two magical words – which mark the name of a legendary soft drink made and sold only into the north-west of Ireland. Memories of warm sunny days on the beach and washing down salty chips from the Four Lanterns takeaway in Buncrana with ice-cold Football Special flood my brain. We are absolutely and definitely stopping on the way down to pick some of that up.
She brings the bottle to her lips again, takes a long swig and grimaces. ‘I think I might’ve been a bit heavy handed with the vodka,’ she says. ‘But it’s been a bit of a week.’
‘You okay?’ I ask.
‘As much as any of us,’ she replies, taking another swig followed by another grimace. I’m about to ask her what’s going on, but she has lifted my phone and is scrolling my Spotify playlist with the intensity of a detective studying fingerprints.
‘Ah, this will do,’ she says as the opening bars of Salt-N-Pepa’s ‘Shoop’ start to blast through the car. Niamh is immediately lost in rapping and singing along.
‘Come on, Becs!’ she says, urging me to join in.
I push my concerns about her to one side, telling myself I’ll circle back to them later, and join in – the words flowing effortlessly. It’s like I’m back in the nineties and everything is simple and easy again.
‘How do I remember all the words to this, but this morning I couldn’t remember the word “handcuffs”?’ I ask, and Niamh raises an eyebrow and gives me a cheeky smile.
‘What on earth were you at this morning that you needed to be remembering the word for handcuffs? Is there saucy gossip you should be sharing with me?’
‘I wish! Sadly no. I was watching the news and they were showing a perp walk. The arrestee was cuffed and had his arms twisted so far up his back that it looked like he was about to dislocate his shoulder. I commented on it to Adam – but I had a complete brain fart when it came to the word for cuffs. The best I could do was “wristy-things”.’
Niamh honks with laughter.
‘I had myself convinced I was succumbing to early-onset dementia,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t funny.’
‘Bloody menopause!’ Niamh says. ‘Scrambling our brains. Messing up our lives.’
‘But not enough that we don’t remember that Salt’s – or is it Pepa’s? – weakness is “men”. I suppose that’s something. You never know when you’re going to be asked some nineties RnB trivia to get you out of a tricky situation.’
I’m grinning and enjoying rapping very badly along with the music, stepping it up a gear when the song ends and is replaced with ‘Whatta Man’.
‘ Absolute tune !’ Niamh declares and we stutter and rhyme our way through it. There’s not much as sad as two forty-something women with strong Derry accents rapping their way through some of their favourite songs of their youth. Given our performance, I’m pretty sure Lin-Manuel Miranda will not be calling us up any time soon to ask us to step in as understudies in Hamilton . It’s worth noting, however, that Hercules Mulligan was originally from Northern Ireland, so if Mr Miranda wanted an authentic accent for him, I could absolutely do that. The rapping would be rubbish, mind, but the accent would be on point.
It feels so nice to just embrace this little bit of silliness. So nice, in fact, that I can easily keep my creeping concerns about Niamh towards the back of my mind. She seems happy now, after all. As long as I can stop her getting absolutely shit-faced before we reach the campsite, it should be okay.
So I choose to metaphorically bury my head in the sand a little longer and just keep singing as we head towards Laura’s house to pick her up.