GIVE ME A BREAK:IT WAS A beautiful day on Sunday, so we strolled up to the market in the People's Park, Dún Laoghaire, a place our Labrador particularly likes because he's expert at snuffling dropped jelly beans when no one is looking, writes KATE HOLMQUIST
The fragrance of fried onions, sausages, roast pork and chicken on spits had the Labrador and us salivating. We eventually broke down at the Chinese dumpling stand. The dog got one too.
Now that they’re teenagers, my kids enjoy browsing the stands of second-hand books and interesting teas and the jewellery made and sold by immigrants trying to make a buck. As “new Irish” and Irish farmers and organic campaigners alike stuffed cash into overflowing strong boxes I thought “fair play”. This is capitalism at its best – the medieval market in the 21st century.
Was I was just being sentimental? My kids grew up in the People’s Park. It’s where they learned to walk, to chase pigeons, to kick a ball, where they learned the word “flower”, to fearlessly plummet down the slide, to take turns on the swings and to hand over pocket money for a treat and count the change afterwards. It’s where I learned to be afraid when their tiny bodies disappeared around the corner, while at the same time I wanted to teach them confidence and to know I would be there when they got back.
There is a rock formation by the southwest entrance that for People’s Park kids will forever be known as Pride Rock, as in The Lion King, and there is a thicket where the kids once dug for “dinosaur bones”. The thicket has since been cleaned up so that the thrilling danger is gone.
Or maybe my kids have just grown bigger and wiser, so that’s why the thicket is a carefully pruned glade rather than a jungle. Or maybe I’m just less afraid. In the milling crowd, I saw teenage girls I remembered from the primary-school run, though they were barely recognisable in their glad rags and overdone make-up. I had to smile as they forgot their teenage sophistication and took turns jumping up on to Pride Rock, like they were little kids again.
On the wall by the tearooms, where old-fashioned wallflowers are struggling to find spring, we found a place to eat our picnic of home-made Irish sausages in fresh-baked rolls. My kids produced a frisbee and played a game of Donkey, while nearby small boys with a football entered the game so that we now had frisbee, Donkey and soccer simultaneously. The teenage girls from primary school and my own were enjoying the fresh air and reclaiming childhood memories, instead of being tied to Facebook in the stale air of laptop life. Playing in the park on Sunday was so innocent, so real.
Because now the corners kids disappear around are cyber-spaces where slides and swings have been replaced by potentially sinister games. If I’d stayed at home this Sunday, my 12-year-old may have remained stuck to his Facebooks friends. These are friends he sees every day in school. His social playtime doesn’t happen on the street or the back garden, but on Facebook. So does his window-shopping time and his homework time – since no kid can do a class project these days without referring to the internet. I’m confident that there’s nothing sinister going on, and yet I keep a watch in my annoying way. “Oh, Mum!”
Walking back home from the market with the sated Labrador, we passed a little boy on a residential road, selling pots of dirt at a stand.
“Buy a tomato plant for 50 cents?” he pleaded. We took a closer look and saw an actual green shoot – not the economist’s kind – and so we paid our 50 cents plus a €2 tip for initiative.
Clever boy. He had been to the People’s Park market and discovered that real people selling real things produced real cash.
Most people probably wouldn’t let their kids near a street stand these days, due to the perceived dangers.
But this boy’s parents – who were probably watching from their front room window – had taken a risk to introduce him to real commerce and real people. Growing things, selling things, taking the money and counting it, meeting people in real life and playing a real game with a frisbee instead of an internet game are life lessons that can’t be learned any other way.
The tomato plant is on our window sill. With a few teaspoons of water now and then, it just might help keep us real.