I’m a fuckin nervous wreck, well not really, but I used to be!

I think it all started when I was a kid. Sunday evenings we could go to my Grand Parent’s’ for supper, usually cold plate. I’d only eat a bit of ham and lettuce and fill up on dinner rolls. There was a collapsible stool that my Nan had for many years, green. My brother and I would take turns sitting on it watching TV, my Mother would time us and we’d have to switch up. Anyways it was on these Sunday evenings sitting on that green stool eating the buttered dinner rolls that I would watch the commercials featuring kids and babies over in Africa, dying of starvation, flies crawling over them, stomachs all distended and swollen. I would sit and watch these poor helpless children and cry, cry my little heart out, every fuckin Sunday.

I remember opening cupboards in my Nan’s house and finding leftovers stored in bottom shelf, the distinct smell of jigs dinner permeating from the space below. I remember the metal plate with porcelain finish that the fresh beef was on wrapped in tin foil. You see my Grand Parents were farmers, they raised cattle as well, they once sold milk locally too. The excitement of a brand new baby calf was always something of a treat to go see. I remember the cold of the night and the breath of the cows in the barn and how the sawdust was stuck to the new born. I remember how small its nose was compared to the rest of the cows and in particular how blue it was. I loved that cow as soon as I had seen it. I wondered how it’s Mom was going to be able to take care of it.

I remember riding to my Nan’s one day to get a glass of tang before riding on home that from my Cousin Colleen’s. I poured the glass after Nan took it from the cupboard and she sat down on the chair and faced me. Her voice cracked as she spoke, she said “You mustn’t be a bad boy”, She started to cry right there in front of me, it was the first time I had ever seen my Nan cry, “You have to be good to your mother, your Father is away and she needs your help”. It hit me that my Mom has a Mom and that my Mom expresses her anxieties, doubts, disappointments and hurt to the woman I call Nan. I didn’t know where this was coming from but I was sure that from now on I wasn’t only disappointing my Mother, but I was also hurting my Grandmother. I realized that day, on my slow and confusing ride back to Delaney’s Road that my actions not only affect those directly involved, but as well those around me and my loved ones. I felt a great responsibility that day; Only I didn’t know what responsibility meant at that point. I was responsible for my actions and how they affect others and sometimes the consequences of those actions are far more reaching than I could have ever imagined.