Rory FitzgeraldMy first niece was born before Christmas, Grace arrived into the world in Holles Street hospital, to a celebratory city strewn with lights. Christmas is a beautiful time of year for a baby to be born.
My wife and children had already gone to London ahead of me for the Christmas break, and so I was the sole representative of our family left to welcome Grace. The children were excited to hear of their brand-new first cousin and they beamed excitedly at pictures from afar.
The Fitzgerald family hurriedly convened in Dublin on the day Grace was born, my mother rushing up from Cork on the train, busily texting all and sundry with the news, while my father flew home from business in England. There could be no more beautiful way to begin the Christmas holidays than this impromptu family get-together – all centred around the happy news of Grace’s safe arrival.
There were the obligatory pints with my brothers to mark the occasion. It seemed like yesterday that we were boys ourselves, yet now here we were surrounded by our own children, nieces and nephews.
Familiar
It was a profound moment to see Grace for the first time – instantly familiar – and to see my brother, now the head of a family of four, surrounded by his wife and two children.
Yet for me, with my family away that week, the house was eerily quiet and I was temporarily thrust back into the lifestyle of a bachelor – this must be why they’re called Batchelor’s beans, I thought to myself one evening, as I opened another tin.
Each day after work, I was shocked to come home to find that the place had not been ransacked – everything was just where I left it. There was no squawking or demands for juice and no invitations to play with Lego. There was no wife helpfully reminding me that the bins need to be taken out, the baby changed or the kids bathed. For the first day or so, I enjoyed the peace. Yet very soon I missed them all terribly.
I had thought that the kids would hardly notice my absence that week, with all the distractions of Christmas and the excitement of flying to London. Yet soon my five-year-old son was crying himself to sleep at night became I was not there. This broke my heart, and so I made myself seem closer by speaking to him by video-call at lunchtime and again each evening before bed.
We counted down the days: two more sleeps, then one, until at last I boarded the plane to London to join them. When I walked into the house, Seán ran over to me and grabbed me tightly in a hug which lasted for a very long time. For days afterwards, if he didn’t know where I was in the house, he’d call out for me nervously, just to make sure I was still around. We’d never been apart for a full week before, and I never imagined how long that would feel.
My daughters missed me too, I like to think. Rose was especially delighted to hear that she now had a new “girl first cousin”. Indeed, Grace’s arrival tipped the balance of the next generation of Fitzgeralds in favour of the fairer sex – a family of only boys had yielded a new generation of mostly girls.
Soon after Christmas, this new generation all met and, to me, the phenomenon of siblings and cousins seemed a sort of marriage arranged by nature.
These little people, staring curiously at one another for the very first time, will know each other all their lives.