The Stars and the Cookie Jar

Those of us with more obscure maladies should be exempt from the plebeian ones, such as whacking headaches behind the nose when storm fronts roll in. (Unless your obscure malady involves the sinuses. Er. Sorry, Sonya. You should still be exempt.) 

So why am I up at all, you ask?

Aiain called. It's a respectable hour in Ireland and he's on his summer vacation, I think (you know, when everyone Irish goes to Majorca or the Cevennes so the tourists can pour in?) I'm just glad I answered the phone.

"Mom I want you to come here to live now or I want to come there, right now."

He was angry. This is only the second time in his life that I've known him to sound so angry, and the first time, I was about to get on the bus to the Shannon airport and leave him in Ireland with relatives he'd only recently met. (Since then he has acquired a culchie accent. Ye Gahhhds.)

Me: "What's up, papillon?"

Aiain: "Auntie Grainne said the reason I can't come and see you for holidays is because you're a de, a deviant and she says you'll go to hell and don't I learn about hell in school and she said my mother was there too."

Inner Me: you foul, disgusting woman, I'll trek out to your nasty little sheep stand in the back of beyond and I'll skin you for fucking booties.

Me: "Aiain, no, honey, no... what did you tell her?"

Aiain: "I told her fuck off about my mother!"

Inner Me: Yes! Yes! Yesyesyesyes!

Me: "You need to watch your mouth, and you need to apol--" [check] "...you need to talk to Auntie Grainne and tell her why you felt that way."

Inner Me: Kill. Maim. Shred.

There was more to the conversation, at the end of which I conceded silently that ten-year-old boys in parochial schools west of Cork know more cuss words than I ever did. Also that I quite possibly need to go to Ireland and beat the tar out of some people who have had, because of Irish legal vagaries, the rearing of my son.

I tried to finish in a dignified, adult way, with 'Your mother loved you' and 'There is no hell.'

Except for people who are narrow-minded and petty and deride the dead for a choice they, themselves could never hope to understand. Yeah. There's a hell for those people. Hang a right at Pedophiles and Child-Beaters, go down the brimstone corridor past the restrooms and Murderers, Serial Murderers, and Sadistic Torturers, and someday Grainne Byrne will be there, in a little lava pool, eternally bubbling away.

I really hope Aiain doesn't develop a Harry Potter complex. I'm glad Finn is a more understanding human creature (maybe only because Aiain is his blood kin, but still) and I'm glad they don't make him sleep in a cupboard.