Idlebones

Head wash to Heaven

This week I am mostly recovering from a healthy overdose of nieces and
nephews, church and big dinners.

My little niece, Lauren, was baptised last Sunday, much to her
consternation and to everyone Else’s amusement. We dutifully arrived at
Laytown church, all Sunday clad and weighed down with cameras and
handbags, video phones and wallets at the ready. We take our places in
the pews, Marc, Helen, the ever boyishly playful Cian on one side, Mum, Dad,
Adam jean and the electric little girl that is Sophie in the other, Adam clutching the
cute little lady of the moment in his arms like a lighthouse for her beams as she scans the congregation.

Helen turns to me as we take our seats and wonders “why the others
had sat on the “wrong side” of the church?”.

Even now, in these later years, we still cling to the side of the
church we had always been familiar with, for no reason other then that
was the side we always took. I’m left handed, and so is Marc, so it
seems natural for us to take the left hand pews, but it had always
been normal for us all to take the left had pews as children for some
reason. I can only surmise it is because Dad is also naturally left
handed that we automatically took our seats to this side. For some
reason it seems incongruous that they have taken the right side. It
seems silly to even ponder it now, considering none of us are
particularly church going these days.

The service begins, and I am quickly distracted by the large case my
brother has entrusted me with containing his enormously expensive,
forbidding looking camera. Its got buttons everywhere. On the top, on
the sides, on the front and on the back and I gaze at it wishing It
was clever enough to tell me what on earth they all did. In the front
pouch of it’s containing bag I have hidden my own little digital
camera as a sort of backup, come comfort device. If in doubt, whip out
the cheap silver thing and press the one button I know takes pictures
without me getting in the way. Adam’s camera does things like take
pictures in threes, choose focus for you, highlight light flares, and
generally make you feel like your holding a belligerent older relation
that keeps telling you what your doing wrong in your life and
generally upsetting me. I take it out and admire it during the
priest’s soliloquy. After 3 minutes examination, I am still none the
wiser, and feeling slightly oppressed and put it back in the case,
much to Cians disappointment, as he has decided It would look great as
a bashing point for the little red car he is brumming up and down the
handrail of the seat in front of him. I catch Adams eye from across
the aisle as I place the camera back in its cocoon and give him a
playful wink as if to say “It will do my bidding now, aha!!”
He’s not terribly amused. He’s fully aware of the fact that I’m more
likely to do some impressive damage to it that take any picture worth
framing with it. It’s fun to watch him suffer though.

The priest drones on, and I become more and more reacquainted with the
ceiling as I fidget in my seat and bemoan the fact that I left my
bottle of water in the car. They have Bose speakers in the roof, I
observe, and certain patterns of the ceiling decoration resemble the
porridge I left out on my sink last week, only less grey. Cian has now
discovered the underside of the seat and is burrowing happily beneath
his mothers legs, following his little red car through the tight
furrows of the industrial carpet bellow. My legs don’t know where to
put themselves. They cross uncomfortably, uncross, then knit,
untangle, then straighten. The priest says something about Jesus
working in a calendar shop in Navan which I dismiss as being fanciful
and return to my examination of the ceiling. I’ve decided it looks a
little more like Alpen then porridge now. Suddenly everyone is moving.
I follow suit as everyone stands en masse, as is natural in mass. I’m
wondering if that’s were the word ‘mass’ comes from, just as a little
voice pipes up loudly from below the pews:

“Sit down Mummy!”

Cian is unhappy with the arrangement, and mummy soon has to sit down
to placate him. The refrain over, everyone sits. Cian decides this is
not good.

“Stand up mummy!” he instructs. Mummy shakes her head and tries to
explain that now they have to sit. Cian nods and seems to understand.

“Stand up mummy!”

The people in the seats behind are giggling. What is a mummy to do?
The last time I tried to help keep a child amused in a church was
actually at Cians christening, where Sophie was getting bored with the
proceedings. I lined up a video on my iPod and handed it to her to
watch. Sophie looked at it, and just had to know whether it would
bounce or not. It did, strangely enough. I wasn’t the first person to
utter the name of the lord in church that day, but probably the only
one to do it with such passion. Thankfully, Cian has yet to spot his
granddad, or “bop bomb” as he calls him, is sitting across from him on
the other side of the aisle. The last time he spotted his Grandad from
across a church aisle he started calling out to him across the coffin.

“Bop Bomb!!!” Little fist round red toy car, waving above the pew.
God, if he ever shouts that on an airplane we’ll all be in trouble.

What did Jesus know about Calenders anyway?

The service over, we gather at the front of the church for the
christening itself. There are something like 11 other families having
there children doused today, with varying ages between 6 months and
five years old. It seems it suddenly dawned on them, after years
guffawing at the catholic church, that the buggers run the place, and
junior is not getting into school without a good head wash. A good
scrub and hey presto, your bleedin’ cured of you’re your sins, mate.
Don’t forget your free pass into any church in the world, now, Will
you?