Róisín Ingle: Paralysed by census time-capsule writer’s block, I wrote just a single line

I found myself in the grip of a major existential crisis a few years ago when I had to write a message in my mother’s 80th birthday book. The most organised person in our family had been tasked with curating a lifetime of photographs and family well wishes before sending it off to be professionally bound. The organiser was the person with the really difficult job. All I had to do was write a short message to my mother. Me, who writes stuff for a living. There was a deadline but it wasn’t the deadline that was the problem. No. What paralysed me was the unbearable pressure of finding the exact right thing to say that would convey everything I felt about my mother in one perfectly crafted comment. It was too much. I found it impossible.

What would they want to know? Should I keep it light and funny or go dark and deep?

Staring at the blank space under the time capsule section of the census form I was reminded of that time. Here was another impossible task. I got out the good pen, poured myself a glass of very cold white wine and, as is sometimes my way, began to dramatically overthink the task at hand.

What did I have to say to the people 100 years from now? And who was I talking to anyway? Should I focus on the future people who might be related to me or should I address a more general audience of future people? What would they want to know? Should I keep it light and funny or go dark and deep?

I went on Twitter for inspiration but everyone there seemed to be giving out about the Government and the housing crisis and the banjaxed health service and the state of this country in their time capsules, but I wanted a message for the future people and not an angry flea to deposit in the ears of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin.

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Time was ticking on and I had a desperate case of census block – me who writes stuff for a living. In desperation, I decided to do a bit of crowdsourcing from my family and friend contact list. “What are you writing in your time capsule yoke?” I asked.

One friend replied immediately, summing up the difficulty many of us were experiencing all over the country as we faced into our State-mandated but allegedly “optional” Sunday night capsule homework: “The pressure! I need something that reflects my intellect, my sense of humour, my humility and contentment all in one.” One thing is for sure, there is an awful lot of performative time capsule writing going to be revealed in a hundred years’ time.

One of my activist friends said she was writing “something feminist… and also apologising for the mismanagement of the pandemic and saying sorry for all the long-term health problems they’re still dealing with”. Someone else was apologising to the future people for “f**king the climate” and I thought about it but then I realised I didn’t actually feel personally responsible for the climate crisis. My brother took it handily enough. He told the future people “My joy is in my family, my peace is in my gratitude” before asking them a couple of important life questions “Are Monday mornings still a pain? Do you dance enough? Do you rock and roll?”

A few of my friends said they were writing about the importance of their dogs. Another one said they’d probably write some version of “why is everything so shit and why do we put up with it?”. One friend phoned me instead of texting. “I’m not filling mine in because I don’t have one,” he said. “I rang the census people looking for one but the man on the phone said ‘ah, it will probably arrive next week’.

The children left a little space for their parents to fill, but thankfully they had already said it all

“I told them ‘but I have to fill it out on Sunday’. He said ‘Ah, yeah, that’s what we tell people but loads of people will only actually get it next week so they’ll fill it out then, be grand.’” This didn’t really help but it made me laugh and remember that while as a nation we are good at things like poetry and giving out yards, we’re terrible at planning things properly.

In the end I did what I do increasingly in this house when it comes to any tasks I am not keen on: I delegated. That night, a little bit past their bedtime, the children sat down, had a think and within minutes had written the perfect time capsule messages, as breezy as they were profound, going from the joy of soccer to the horror of Ukraine, to their thoughts on pop music and their hopes for humanity’s happiness in a hundred years, all in a few neat pen strokes. They left a little space for their parents to fill, but thankfully they had already said it all.

I did write one line in the end, telling the future people to check The Irish Times archive and search my name if they wanted to know both my deepest and shallowest thoughts. (This is where my mother will find my deepest thoughts on her too. To my shame, I never did get around to writing in her actual birthday book.)

The morning after the censussential crisis the night before, I got a response from one of the wisest people I know.

“I didn’t write anything,” she told me. “I was too tired. And anyway haven’t we enough to be doing?”

She added a crying laughing emoji. And before I put the completed census form back in the envelope, so did I.

[ roisin@irishtimes.com ]