Ten pence Daddy... A memory ♥️

Did you ever leave school in the early eighties as a underweight scratchy child with a school bag bigger than the bones carrying it and a hunger that meant you wished you hadn't given your only 5 pence to the poor black babies box coz you could have gone into Babs or Maureen or Phil in the Country Shop with your swollen belly and gotten free soda bread and butter or slipped into Flynns Bakery and played the victim so they'll give you a fresh bun or even gone on down to Michael Walsh and bought a packet of Bourbon biscuits, which are actually 10 pence but he's so kind he'll smile and pretend you handed him 10 pence. But you've left home this morning and you were warned to be good and honest so you cling to that 5 pence and you fall out the road to home and you pray you won't die from starvation, and you pretend you don't recognise the other children walking fast in front of you, bloody family. Is it you ignoring them or they denying you. A question I've never dared to ponder.

And suddenly you're at Kennys avantly (hey it's what I called it) and you know if you make it around the corner then you'll see the block factory and there lies the paradise you've longed for.

There lies your Daddy, leaning against the little office counter, a ring of cigarette smoke writing lines in the ceiling, his fingers browning below his nails. He smiles and nods at me, nodding at the bloody family as well but they don't matter. I've walked 500 miles and I'm safe and pretty soon he'll nod again soon at one of the lorry drivers and I'll be lifted up into a truck that's 1000 feet off the ground and I'll be bound for home.

It could be Oliver or Paudgin or Hugo or John or any of the kind block builders thats driving and you don't care coz they're so kind and it's a bloody lorry. You're swanning over Toome bridge and you might not make it, it's so high up and maybe you'll die then you don't and you're safe and your underweight ass sits on the stoop waiting for daddy to stub out his fag, lock his office and arrive home only for daddy to pull you off the stoop and demand to know why you haven't been helping Mammy

I swear to god when I grow up I'll not sit and the stoop any more. I'll not, and then he can't shout at me.....

But suddenly I'm grown up and the stoop is a memory and the block factory is gone and Daddy is gone and I can't help Mammy like he asked coz she's gone, and the Country Shop, flynns bakery and Michael Walshs is gone and if I had 10 pence now I'd hold it so tight and make a wish to have a stoop to sit on while watching the world I loved stroll by... maybe if I had two 10 pences if be able to watch the world stroll by from the front of a lorry......

Maybe that extra 10 pence will get me an extra wish to get a hug from Daddy and Mammy one more time.....

Valerie Masters

Can I be Santa....?

I'm not sure I'd be able for the suit but sometimes I wish I could try it on and shoulder the magic and hardship that goes with wearing the title of Santa... this year more than ever. This year I wanted Santa to just visit everyone I loved and place a pray on them, because I knew they were praying for me, this year I begged for it, most of the time, and at times I thought if I was Santa I'd make all the people I knew and the town I loved forget for a moment that they were suffering or grieving something or someone.....

I'm adult enough to know that I couldn't handle being Santa but every now and again I fool myself into thinking I'm more than capable....
I'm not talking about the Santa that comes every Christmas eve and leaves dreams and presents under the tree for the little children all over the world to wake up to..... we all know he exists. 

He's legend he is.. I remember writing to him and I can still see my left handed scrawl begging him for a doll and promising I'd be better next year if he'd only see how much I needed that damn doll and how much I'd be accepted if I could take that doll to school and brag that Santa comes to all of us even if I'm harmless in the head..... yep Santa comes to even me....
No tonight I'm talking about the other Santa we choose to believe in, the one we need to believe in ... the adult Santa we constantly wish to and pray to... this Santa comes in all shapes and sizes.. sometimes he's a dawn that's maybe not so dark when you don't want to wake up, sometimes he's a light switch that turned on when the meter is running low and you know it's gonna run out soon and it'll be dark again... sometimes he's a wish that you didn't bury those you had to kiss goodbye... and sometimes, just sometimes he's the reason you don't have to pretend....
Have you ever played pretend.... I'm guessing you have because it's a game for all the world. You wake up.. let's pretend it's a good day...  You get dressed...lets pretend you're not covering up the bruises you wear from the pain of last night and the beating you pretend you didn't get... let's boil the kettle and listen to it whistle as though you didn't bury a child... or a parent.. or a sibling.... or fuck it let's pretend you haven't buried yourself on multiple occasions.....let's lock the door as though you're not afraid to be alone and you don't believe the night will last forever, the silence burying you as you pretend not to lock the door....
Santa comes to us every minute of every day... He's the floor we step on every morning in the hope we don't sink... He's the cold water that hits us in the face when we need to wake the fuck up... and the tea or coffee that hits our throat and reminds us that we need anything to get us through the day... he's the banister we cling to when the stairs are sometimes to high to climb with weary bones... the duvet we pull tight under our chins when exhausted we need sleep but afraid to sleep.. and afraid to stay awake because staying awake means our own thoughts will choke us... and he's the comfortable sweater we dragged on because sleeping in our own skin hurts a lot and maybe that sweater will protect our skin from bleeding...
And sometimes he's that cardboard that stops the world from freezing you to death because the blasted doorway won't protect and the noise is loud and the world doesn't care and sometimes he stops the world from knowing you're homeless and tonight you won't get kicked or robbed of all you have.... that sacred cardboard.... and maybe you won't die and not know you died homeless, and knowing you are one less problem for the world....

Christmas is the strangest time and on Christmas morning millions of people wake up and for a second they will hope Santa came to them.... for a second. And in that second nobody will cry... nobody will have lost someone they love... nobody will be in pain... nobody will be beaten...be unhappy in their own bed... be beneath that fucking cardboard thst allowed the cold to leave their skin screaming for something more....nobody will weep that overwhelming sob that threatens to drown them....
Millions of people will swallow loneliness and wait another year in the hope that Santa will come to them.... millions of people will pretend he arrived and left enough to eat under the tree, enough to pay the bills and enough hope to get you through another day......

Because Santa always comes.....
Doesn't he....?

Valerie Masters

Mother.... the most powerful word. The most beautiful word

I'm 6 and Jesus help me I'm desperate for a pee but I daren't say a word coz she'll behind me soon and if I'm missing at the end of the line then heaven help me, the hairbrush will be across the cheeks of my arse instead of pulling knots out for fun. I'm trying to be all cute and less ugly as I implore my 5 older sisters to at least run their fingers through the mop on my head.....
Funny the memories that hit when you're trying not to remember memories.

I'm 17 and pregnant and I'm sitting across from her and I'm crying inside because I don't know what else to do, how do you find words when words are rendered useless so I say nothing and wish I could just speak....

She held me when I cried because the knots in my hair proved too much to handle and she would never put the hairbrush over my arse. She held me when I was heading to the hospital to give birth and I was so scared, so terrified I longed to tell her to not let go because if she let go then I have to go and be a mother and what if I fail at that....
Funny the memories that hurt when you're trying not to hurt

I'm 8 and I'm going on my first sleepover and I'm stupidly excited and she stops me and tells me I can't go because creatures are in my hair and headlice have become an excuse for her spoiling my fun and my life. I'm 8 and my life is over.
Funny the memories that remind me my life was only starting and I was 8 and unaware of making memories to keep

I'm 43 and I'm lying beside her and taking stupid selfies and I send my kids a snapchat of us and she begins to laugh so hard as us laughing, and she asks to see the pic again and I explain that I can't show her because snapchat is just a moment and we can't get that moment back.
She wasn't impressed at my answer but she smiled and decided I could be forgiven anything because that's what made her amazing
Funny the memories that I pray I'll always be able to remember

I'm 11 and war has broken out coz I spied on my sisters and they caught me and god help me now I'm running coz these girls are crazy mad and its not my fault even though its my fault and looking over my shoulder I can see her wringing her hands in her apron and wondering if today is the day one of her children kills another of her children. 

Speaking of killing......
Funny the moments I'd kill to have again for just one moment

I'm 13 and womanhood has arrived but there's no one here so I think I'm dying, bleeding to death at a tender age but when she discovers this in a random conversation 20 years later she laughs enough to let drive tears down her face.
She cried at everything.
Literally!!

She cried from pain, from joy, she cried at the happiest of moments and the saddest. She was the only one I ever knew who shed tears as though it was ok to wear emotion proudly.
She was right. It is ok...

It's what she taught her daughters. And today those daughters are my sisters

She introduced me to women without me realising that women would become my heros. She gave me sisters to love me, 

And when i got a little older she gave me the country shop women, the flynns bakery women, the mart women, the women who were our neighbours. She strategically placed me in the company of women knowing that I'd learn life skills from women who would forever mother me

I'm almost 52 now and in the dark depths of night I want her,  her scent, her laugh, her sigh when I mess up
I want it all so badly, so desperately but I'm lucky that the desperation only arrives for a short time. the pain is immense, but her love holds me tight and the memories make me smile and grateful for her, and women she surrounded me with....

Mammy loved me, at times probably wanted to strangle me, many times probably cried over me, and then she loved me all over again. 

She taught me life, truth, heartache, disappointment and love.
She taught me to fight for dreams, to cry when others hurt, to realise that I can be myself and that it's ok if being myself isn't enough for everyone, as long as I'm enough for me....

She is fricking amazing, always was and always will be....

Tonight I really really want her to hold me....

She is my Mother.

Happy International Womans day and Happy Mothers Day Mam

Valerie Masters

When you wish upon a star....

Dear Santa.....

It's been a while since I wrote to you and I hope you're well and unaffected by a world we both barely recognise anymore. A world that's changed forever. I cant even begin to imagine what life is like for you, trying to prepare for Christmas eve when you're not even sure who will be privileged to wake up Christmas morning under the twinkling lights of hope and promise. I'm sure every year you wear the pain of those gone but this year it must feel so needless. 

I'm smiling a little at past letters I wrote to you, innocent handwriting begging for impossible wishes like rag dolls and periods. That memory brings me a giggle. Imagining your face at a nine year old child begging you to bring her a period. I really did think I would be so grown up like my sisters if I had one. Thanks by the way for ignoring me... not sure 9 is a good age to get one of those things. I got the rag doll though, pretty sure it was a knockoff, it stank a little but much nicer than the duck with wheels you brought me the year before that. Really Santa what were you thinking when you put that under the tree.....

I should let you know I've forgiven you for not making me good looking, I'm still disappointed but I know now that you're not a miracle worker or a plastic surgeon, you are after all just Santa.......

This year though I'm really going to ask you for the impossible. This year I have a couple of wishes. One of them is to please make sure there will be no more empty chairs around the table of families gathering together. Enough loss has been endured this year already and nobody wants to lose another loved one. Nobody wants the pain of seeing an empty chair that should be filled with laughter. Please let everyone try to protect each other between now and christmas eve so we can all have full chairs and contented hearts...

Maybe give Ballymahon and its surrounding parishes a little extra love this year. We've lost so many of our loved ones here that the streets are almost constantly weeping and Christmas is looking extra lonely this time around.....

I know you always pay lorraine and lee their usual visit and leave an invisible message from us but thankfully this year you've seen to it that we can be with them to embrace them. Cant fricking wait.....

Santa there is so many empty chairs at tables this year that I'm worried about those left sitting at those tables.... Give them strength in this ravaged world of wars and floods and hurt 

Just one more wish Santa, give us strength to unite during this uncertain time, give us compassion for each other regardless of what we believe is happening and give us the chance to once again inhale our loved ones in a hug. Give us strength to remember those who raised us, the generation that taught us the values we now need to call upon to get through. I think human touch is becoming so alien to us that we are forgetting how to love each other and protect each other.

I'm afraid Santa, afraid for tomorrow and what it might bring, afraid that everyone will forget how to love each other... forget how to mind each other and I'm terrified that if we do forget we might never remember. And that Santa would be an absolute crime...

Thank you for reading my letter and I know you'll do your very best to grant me my little wishes

Give Mrs Claus and the elves my best regards and dont forget to take care of yourself while travelling through war torn countries and a tired Mother Nature....

Take care of yourself and I'll see you on Christmas eve in Germany please god

Because you coming on christmas eve gives us hope...

And we all need hope....

Valerie Masters

Rte... what have you done

It's 1978 and I've just discovered Dallas. My father is sitting on his armchair, a ring of cigarette smoke rising between his fingers,  his pioneer pin twinkling against the crisp light of the big box showing Sue Ellen throw ice into a large glass of water and smile as it drips down her lip. Jr is playing a game with a woman that apparently Sue Ellen doesn't like so I've decided not to tell her coz I'm thinking Jr shouldnt be playing silly games and Sue Ellen breaks a lot of glasses and spills the water she's drinking....

The house is silent, apart from my mother muttering about children and dishes banging in the kitchen and every now and again one of my sisters swing a kick at another sister and I'm grateful I'm under the chair hiding.. if Daddy catches me though I'm getting more than a kick. I'm getting sent into the middle of next week which doesn't sound like a good place.....

Oh the memories, and some of the best ones were watching the big box in the corner of the room. The new big box that promised us hope and comfort, gathered us to look at the same space in the house at the same time. The big box that cost money most of us didn't have, but all of us didn't care because we wanted that big box

It was Ireland, a country of feck all but we had feck all together. Having almost nothing meant we shared more, laughed more and when we cried, we cried in a houseful of neighbours and friends catching the tears....

It was Ireland... was...

What happened to us?

When did the big box become something that no longer connected us. When did those who could, decide that they would deceive us. When did they become so damn smug that we were forced to pay a licence for the privilege. What happened to our Ireland

Our little land of A hundred thousand welcomes has become a stranger to us. No longer we gather united, no longer we meet to connect over something we believe in....

The national broadcaster has chosen deceit and wealth, the rich have chosen to trod on the poor and the government has chosen to forget we ever had a happy ending in our poor fairytale of family life....

Meanwhile, in my memories, my father is sitting in his favourite chair twirling his half smoked cigarette while his children argue and laugh and half kill each other and my mother is wringing her hands in her apron wondering how the kitchen could ever look clean again, but it's 1978 and if you ask anyone they'll tell you that life can't get much better than this.....

RTE... you have well and truly shattered the memories of thousands of families in Ireland and I hope you spend your ill gotten gains well because you'll never again be part of our hearts or our past

You'll be poorer for having lost us....

Valerie Masters 

What is a firefighter

Have you ever woken up and tried to shake off the cloak of fear that's surrounding you? Ever been home alone and listening to a chimney fire scream down the walls? Ever answered a phonecall to cries of someone you love trapped in a car that's crashed? Ever just waited for help to arrive with loud prayers in case help doesn't show up?

The answer to all of those scenarios and so many more shows itself in the form of a firefighter. You know them, some of them, even one of them. You don't always notice them until you need them, but suddenly they're there and they're your uniformed saviour, there to support and save and comfort.

Firefighters don't just fight visible flames that destroy people and places.....

They fight our fear, our hurt. They guide us when they road is blocked, when a tree falls, when an animal traps itself and we dont know what to do. They speak softly and strongly to us while laying the groundwork to make sure we feel safe. We face grief with them beside us for comfort. When we arrive to pay our condolences to a friend or neighbour, they are there, standing in unison, with a nod, a friendly smile and a hope that we will get through whatever pain is pulling us down.

Yet someone has decided they won't pay them for their job and yet somehow we can never repay them for their kindness. Someone sits in a comfortable office on a fat salary and assume that these men and women don't deserve a fair wage for their hard work, their tears, their feelings, their time and most of all their sacrifice to allow us to live freely and safely knowing they will be there to answer our call. The call that comes everyday somewhere in this little country, when someone desperately needs them to save them.

Everyone, at some point in their life will connect with a firefighter, whether its because you need one or you're watching someone you love needing one and that interaction is priceless

Priceless, but you've decided you know what it costs.

The choice to pay these men and women a fair wage is a simple choice, a mark of a pen on a piece of paper. A mark of respect to firefighters we need and admire.

And don't for a second assume you speak for us, the people of Ireland who need our firefighters to be able to show up for us while feeling worthy.

Pay them what they are worth.....

Valerie Masters 

Women ❤

The meaning of life....

Where does it end... 

We no longer know where it started. The world is unrecognisable. 

Growing up most of us cried coz we thought we were too skinny, or too ugly or too shy to get the one we crushed on. Fighting to fit into a bra, or football boots, everything was too pale, too expensive, too far to walk too.....

That playground group of pretty girls we longed to join, the boys we fancied who tripped us up and laughed, the nuns who silently murdered us with a look when 2 went into 8 seven times....

Nowadays we've forgotten the pain of not having, yet having enough. Starved we thought we were, useless we believed ourselves to be, and important we thought it all was. At 13 us girls prayed for boobs, while boys prayed the day would come they'd see them and not faint at the reality. At 15 we got the bra, the boys got the boots and at 17 none of us how any of it worked.... We wanted to fit in, fit into a world we didn't realise was simple, easy, unique...

Mothers cleaned and cooked, Fathers came home and put us kids in our place after a day of running mothers ragged. We raged against the system, safe in our beds, in our heads and slept content knowing it was all in our heads... and we didn't need guns or fury to belittle the parents that dared to care for us and smack our arse to pull us into line when we fashioned to cross it...

Today, we long for yesterday, for simplicity

Today we no longer know what will happen at every tick of the clock that winds our lives down

And the result.....

A child covers herself in the blood of the dead so she can live... and she has to live with that

A man declares war on another country and those displaced have to live with that in another country 

Old men in suits decide the unborn have a bigger right to life than those hiding under tables crying to live

Flying to space is a privilege granted to those who can afford to watch those denied an honest living 

Our beautiful elderly were watched as they died behind glass we should have smashed to hold them in their last moments

And everyday we forget each other, forget how to touch, how to love, how to forgive 

And everyday we forget that we remember how things used to be, when life was simple, easy, unique 

Will we ever remember to live like that again, before it's too late.....

Valerie Masters 

 

Mothers day....

Where would you be if where you were was lonely. Where would you be if you didn't have anything around you only the colour of lonely blinding you...

We've all had those moments of lonely, those moments of wondering why you're alone, those moments in your head or in your thoughts, moments of wishing you were anywhere else but alone...

Pandemics and war and suffering continue, full circle. It didn't start today or two years ago, its a journey that we all have to walk. A repeated journey. 

Life hurts and sometimes we forget to heal the hurt of each other, as each other suffers....

Tonight I'm eleven years old and wishing I was fifteen, you know that feeling... the lack of boobs and the skinny ass wondering where the rest of you is...

And your mother shaking her head and shaking her apron and wiping her brow in exhaustion at you,..

And all she wants to do is to finish cooking dinner for about twenty five children.. there's actually eight of us.. but let's give her the pain because we were loud in multiples.. and all I want is her full attention and I couldn't give a hungry childs cry for anything other than having her listen to me...

I'm eleven... then I'm twelve and sixteen and suddenly I'm forty something, about to hit fifty and she's no longer here, and the world stops suddenly...

The woman that dressed me in ridiculous clothes, and told me I was being ridiculous when I thought I was being sane about ridiculous things is no longer shaking her head and shaking her apron, and I'm no longer covered in the flour that dared to grace the apron she's shaking....

That woman, my mother, is no longer here and I watch children shaking their heads at their mother.... and mothers proudly cry at their childrens achievement while those children wonder why their mother is shaking something invisible...

That something invisible is an apron string we're tied to... it's called a heart... a mothers heart and we don't ever try to cut the strings, we don't ever want to lose that tread...

We can never lose that tread of belonging...

For losing it means we no longer get to scream for attention or cry for a hug....

Losing it means we forever fall wanting a hug we wish we could fall into...

I'm forever eleven, twelve, sixteen and forty something wondering where the rest of me is, then remembering the best of me is in my mothers arms forever...

Within a mother...

Where we all belong......

Valerie Masters 

Isolation... The reality

Apparently it's a thing now.. like a trendy quote 

"Isolate yourselves"

Say it slowly and it will sound like a hip young thing we all need to try but say it very slowly and it becomes a painful blade that's destined to bleed you out and with more than a whimper..

Funny though I used to think of isolation as being sent to my room when I was very young because I misbehaved or my little big mouth had let me down once again and I swore and managed to jump fast enough away from the back of Mammys hand reaching my arse... speaking of funny I always thought I was quick as lightening but it turns out soft Mammy was never going to land her hand across my arse... soft Mammy just let me believe the threat enough to put manners on me

She was right

A little older, isolation became serious when your very best friend smiled at someone else... jesus life was over and tomorrow was a distant future you'd never see. Best friends were everything and you never changed them except twice a week when you arrived late or pissed them off. Yeah they always stayed the same just like socks, until you couldn't find one of them..

You get me, don't you... childhood and survival was vicious, lack of haircuts or bad haircuts and never knowing you could actually shave the forest that grew on you suddenly and why is there hair everywhere, you couldn't even lift your arms without hair spouting....

Isolation is when you don't know you can shave that hair and be like everyone else. Isolation is wanting head lice because everyone else has it and wishing you had died because you farted out loud in front of the boy you were destined to marry if only he knew you existed in the first place 

Yes we all knew isolation.....

Except we never actually knew isolation. Looking back on yesterday we realise that what we thought was isolation was just life, and childhood, and poverty mixed with love pure without money. And wanting the boy who didn't see you and wondering why the feck watching Dallas was such a huge crime. In fairness Sue Ellen never worried about isolation when she was drunk and wasn't sober long enough to be able to spell it. 

Our isolation was childish and innocent and yet it was the very thing we assumed would end our life and leave us virgins buying cats for company. We like cats and we weren't overly concerned about being left a virgin, sure our lady got by... they made a statue for her.... 

But today, since 2020, isolation has paided us a visit, tapped us on the shoulder, introduced itself with an evil smile and sat down uninvited. It waits there while we try to catch our breath, compose ourselves and it waits there cynically looking at us. Isolation has a mirror and if you choose to look in it, you will see time. You will see your past, your future and every person you ever loved or lost. Isolation is the young, the old and the sometimes always forgotten. 

It's the child you were, the parent you strived to be and the cradle you long to climb back into so someone else takes charge 

Isolation is the youth being blamed for everything....

It's the old that longs to just reach out and feel skin and feel home

It's the vulnerable wondering why they were marked to be vulnerable 

It's the you that suddenly looks different in the mirror, wondering when did your reflection become different to you.. so aged to you

When did people forget the moments they became isolated in a million different ways throughout every step they took from the moment they could walk

When did the world become so frightening that even familiar people have become strangers

Why aren't we all realising that isolation isn't here just because we are in a pandemic. Isolation has sat on our shoulder most of our lives but now as we turn against each other it's become the monster resurrected to haunt us

Is there any way we can return to reaching out to each other, return to remembering each other, return to realising that all we have is each other.

If we do then we can kill isolation.... because isolation has only one way to kill you... 

By lonlieness.... it kills everything pure 

And isolation has only one cure....

Love... it kills everything evil

Valerie Masters