I was having an existential crisis. It happens. Possibly a little bit more regularly now as I clock up the years.
And it’s often triggered by life’s milestones and challenges: children’s birthdays, school summer holidays and the end of another academic year; a child finishing school altogether; a Leaving Cert holiday and the tortured helplessness felt at home while himself is living his best life – and even remembering to wear factor 50 sunscreen, after all; watching the price of chocolate increase; the inability to find a pair of decent-fitting jeans in this post-skinny jeans era.
Who am I? What am I doing with my life? How the hell did I get here?
These are life’s big questions that I ask of myself more frequently than I care to admit.
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Anyway, the latest thing to trigger me was my 25th wedding anniversary. How can that possibly have come around already? I still feel 25, never mind 25 years married, though my right hip begs to differ. But silver wedding anniversaries? Well they’re for old people, surely. And I refuse to get old. And how can it really be 25 years anyway, when I can still clearly smell the orange and lemons of Sorrento.
We’ve never really been ones for marking wedding anniversaries. We were already parents by the time the first anniversary happened, so that trumped the – at the time, seemingly self-indulgent – idea of celebrations. After all, there was sleep deprivation to endure.
And so beyond, on our 20th anniversary, mentioning in The Irish Times that he forgot our first one – because, you know, a wife with an axe to grind and a newspaper column is not for faint-hearted husbands – we’ve never really made a thing of it.
[ Jen Hogan: It’s our 20th wedding anniversary. I wonder will he rememberOpens in new window ]
But this time, I decided I wanted to make a thing of it. After all, the Beckhams, who share a wedding anniversary with us, never miss an opportunity to get the wedding album out on social media. So, not wanting to be outdone by someone who used to play for Manchester United, I decided we should buy some purple suits and head back to Rome and show the children where we got married, for the occasion.
Alas, they appeared to be all out of matching purple suits that day I went to Dundrum Shopping Centre. And, it turned out we couldn’t afford to go to Rome either, on account of having a ridiculous number of children. So we settled on Galway, which is more or less the same thing anyway, if you squint a little.
I am not averse to using a bit of emotional blackmail when I need to.
Judge me all you like, I’ll probably just use it in a future column. And so, taking no chances in the quest to get all my children together to celebrate this momentous occasion, I lead with a “more than anything I can possibly think of, for our 25th wedding anniversary, your dad and I would love to get a night away with the nine of us. All of us together again. Are you free next weekend?” text to the one who had the cheek to grow up, move out and leave me with all these boys.
She said she was.
Discussions ensued, between the siblings, over which child would bunk in with which child, largely determined by who was deemed to fart the most (or the least, depending on your perspective).
The van was packed and the Hogans were off to Galway. All nine of us. Together again. Order was restored to my galaxy.
[ The summer juggle: How to work while the kids are offOpens in new window ]
We were staying at the Connacht, a family-friendly hotel whose claims of which are put to the test by my supersized brood (it passes, with flying colours). A swim was first on the agenda. “You’re coming too, aren’t you Mum?,” the youngest asked, giving me no out. Ten minutes after everyone else had got into the pool, I joined them. Because that’s how I roll. A woman smiled at me, and I smiled back, thinking to myself how friendly the natives were. Then she gave a gentle wave as I walked past. And I waved back, thinking again “super friendly people”.
“You didn’t know it was me, did you?,” the friendly woman said laughing, as the familiar dread of meeting someone out of context and not recognising them began to set in. I was going to have to come clean. Turns out it was just the curse of shortsightedness, and a world viewed stubbornly in soft focus. To the point I hadn’t recognised my own daughter.
The eyesight, at least, is consistent with 25 years ago. We swam, ate, played and laughed, and I even forgot this anniversary made me sound middle-aged.
Because we were all together again, and everything made sense.
