In a Word ... birthday

My father would have been 103 today, had be not died in 1999 at the age of 80. We never knew him as Father, Dad or even Da. Our two sisters always referred to him as Daddy. He was Mac in good times. How we addressed him in more fraught days will not be repeated here.

He and I had the traditional Irish father/eldest son relationship. It was somewhat less than mutual admiration. That improved later, particularly in his final years when we had both matured.

Aged eight, I had already concluded that our house would be far better off if it was left to myself, Mam and Granda to run the show. If my father stayed away that would be great, but were he to take my brother Seán with him then our house would be very heaven. Seán was the bane of my young life and never accepted my natural authority as the eldest.

Even then it was already clear there was nothing we could do about my father. Like his cattle, he respected no boundaries and so, when the herd wandered on to the local golf course and a rather large local woman complained, he told her that had he a heifer the size of her he’d be the happy man.

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Arguing for a swimming pool in Ballaghaderreen, he told Roscommon County Council it was needed because there were people in the town who hadn’t had a bath since the midwife rubbed them down with a sponge. As we ducked, an angry respondent claimed he must have been rubbed down with sandpaper.

He argued against closure of the county’s only maternity ward because it would mean no more Roscommon people. It happened anyhow, and all his grandchildren were born in foreign counties.

When his cattle ended up in the local graveyard he was confronted by a very angry woman, but told her that the only one complaining was her. At a funeral in another graveyard he met an old political sparring partner and asked him his age. The man replied that he was 84. My father told him it wasn’t worth his while go home.

At the end he died on Mam’s birthday and we have never been sure whether it was deliberate.

Happy birthday, Mac.

Birthday, from Old English byrddæg, for "anniversary or celebration of one's birth".

inaword@irishtimes.com