For the birds

On the birds of Ireland and being an Irish bird — plus a jump scare.

Photo by Proinsias Mac an Bheatha on Unsplash

There are so many magpies in Ireland I’m getting tired of saluting them. I rhyme repeatedly in multiples of seven and try not to land on sorrow. Recently back in Ireland and somewhat underemployed, I’ve been running along the canal as a way to put more shape on my days and, refusing to limit myself to superstitious salutes, I’ve started to greet every bird I meet.

Formal and detached hellos for the swans.

“Arrah howaya?” for the seagulls in salty Dublinese.

Words of encouragement for the focused heron.

Compliments for the moorhens in their designer yellow thigh-highs.

Soothing coos for the startled coots.

And usually a “leave her alone, buddy” directed at a randy duck.

Before I moved back, I only acknowledged the pigeons. No one will dissuade me from the belief that people and pigeons are fellow creatures — always hungry, horny, and absently destructive. Watching a group of pigeons is exactly what it’s like to be in a regional night club at the end of the night when the lights come on.

I get home and stretch and watch a flock of light-bellied brent geese on the football field out my rented bedroom window. Here and there amongst them are what I think are reintroduced curlews. I am both migratory and a reintroduced local.

My mother died a year ago. I know I buried the lede on that one but anyone who knows me will recognise the pattern. I flew home out of season and punch-drunk with all that had happened and was about to, I stared out the window and thought about Mam and her life and whether it was ever possible to know a person or do them justice in description.

I decided that it isn’t and is a kind of violence to try, but a line from a Billie Holiday song kept swirling around in my head which still feels like the best way to explain her:

“The difficult, I’ll do right now.

The impossible will take a little while.”

In the several days that followed, I sat vigil next to a hospital bed, hating the sound of her laboured breathing and yet afraid of the moment it might stop. I have never given birth but I imagine it’s the only human experience potentially on a par with watching someone die. There is a strange vitality in witnessing death, an urgent clarity of action.

Nobody knows how to react when you say your mother has died. I think a lot of people immediately jump to the fear of losing their own mother and suddenly your mother is theirs and their fears are poured into your experience.

Exhausted and irritated by these projections, I found myself seeking out other Irish people who I knew would likely just give me a hug and buy me a pint and understand my need to talk about literally anything else. Irish people are, by and large, not good at discussing difficult subjects but they are excellent at showing up and providing easy company. God between us and all faux-sympathetic head tilts.

She died on the 21st of January, 2025. Her heart was strong and she lived for two days longer than the doctor said she would. When I learned she had begun to die, I had one of what my friend calls my ‘witchy premonitions’ that she would last until the following Tuesday. She did.

To lose your mother is to lose your point of origin. Regardless of the relationship you do or do not have, the fact remains that your mother is the way you came into the world and there is no other connection like it. People ask “Were you close?” as if being borne from a womb were an optional arrangement. You don’t have to be close to your mother to be close to your mother.

The last twelve months have been confronting in ways I couldn’t before have imagined. I moved back to Ireland in search of grounding and out of a potentially-misplaced desire to be supportive, and find myself instead running alone chatting up the local bird population.

There’s an ease to being in Ireland and a profound lack of it. I cannot overstate how grateful I am for the good-natured mildness of the people and the climate, but at the same time I’m reminded why I left, why living here felt hard.

I’ve only been back three months and I know things will settle into feeling like home again, but right now, I have no idea what shape life is beginning to take. In the meantime, I’ll be running along the Royal Canal, feeling unreasonably buoyed by a ‘two for joy’.