Chapter 12: MOMS’ MORNING

All Fridays drag, but some more than most.

Well, this Friday drug on like the rain of Ireland had gotten into and dampened down the sands of time.

But even in the worst of Fridays there are always high points in every day and the weekly coffee mornings that my school run group hold every Friday is one of them.

Most Fridays during the school year, around 35 weeks out of the 52, the group of Moms that share our particular school run always get together for a coffee morning (even though most of them actually drink tea by preference to my favourite bitter brew) and we take turns to have it in our houses each week so your own turn as host only comes up every couple of months or so.

The group pick Fridays for our little get-togethers as it is the day they collect their messages for the weekend (that means their groceries in local-speak) during late morning before lunch and they tend to do the housework in the afternoon. I try and work my schedule around them, especially when it’s my turn to be host.

Last Friday I had to give the coffee morning a miss because I had a sales appointment in Cork that I couldn’t put off, but this week it is my time to host the event so it is a “must-do”. It is basically a gossip-fest for the Moms and I find the experience both edifying and terrifying.

What is expected? Well, tea and coffee is obviously expected, with milk, sugar, various sweeteners and, absolutely necessary, is some kind of cookie or cake on offer which is expected to be home-made rather than bought.

Generally, we RSVP our likelihood of attendance during the week so that the host knows how many are coming and can cater accordingly. There’s about 10 of us in the group all living south of Thurles and usually three or four of us drive each day and pick up between 2 to 4 kids, so it works out that everyone gets roughly about 2 or 3 mornings a week off to do other things, which gives us work flexibility. I usually pick up Caoimhe every afternoon and occasionally the odd child or two in addition to drop off. We use the MeWe app among the group so we know who’s picking up who and it works brilliantly and no-one gets left behind.

I couldn’t take Caoimhe to school last Friday, or attend the coffee morning at Moira Duggan’s house, because I had to be in Cork early, but this week it is my week to host the Friday coffee morning, so I have to bite the bullet and go through with it.

You’d think my testosterone would drown in a sea of oestrogen at these coffee mornings but, while all the Moms are my age or younger, and most are quite attractive and have become relaxed in my company, they are all happily married. I would say marriages are more stable here than my experience in the Stated. Anyhoo, I have never bothered them with nasty "pick-up" lines and do try my hardest not to ogle them when the weather is warm and they dress, well, minimally shall we say. I’ve never "hit" on them and in response they treat me like an honorary Mom.

No, that’s wrong. To them I am apparently a "poor wee Gosoon’’ they seem to have made it their life’s work to "pair me up". They introduce me to sisters, cousins and neighbors who just "drop in fer a chat" and when they do the only seat available for them is sitting next to me. It’s obvious and I hate it but they mean well, which makes the exercise well, nice.

Normally we get three or four Moms turn up for coffee or tea when I attend, and slightly more turn up when I don’t, probably because I’m the main subject of the gossip. I can tell who attends when I’m absent because they are listed as RSVPs on the cell phone app and it soon becomes obvious.

This week all ten of them are coming, without a single one crying off, no doubt because all during this week Etain has been joining me on my two morning turns on the school run and the four afternoon pick-ups so far, and now they want to know all about her.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Meaning they really want to know about her AND me rather than just about her.

It would blow their minds the things I could tell about HER! But I cannot of course, on the one hand who would believe me?, and if they did and told anyone else, the knowledge of who Etain really was would destroy her life and ours.

So, dear readers, if only for my sake, regard this whole thing as fanciful nonsense for our own amusement, would you not?

Anyhoo, it means holding the event in my sitting room and borrowing Kaetlynn’s kitchen chairs as well as moving my own kitchen chairs into my snug sitting room to ensure we can all sit down with plates on our laps and mugs in our hands and still just about have room to breathe.

Years ago, when Caoimhe started school and I was roped into the school run group and the coffee mornings started, I had to go out and buy a whole load of mugs from a charity shop and, over the years, I have acquired a number of different designs that I felt were appropriate to individual members of the group, much to their amusement, and now most of the group have done the same at their own mornings. I have a number of mugs at other houses that are stars’n’stripes or Uncle Sam and one Captain America.

Yes, I admit, I actually find these coffee mornings and the chat and gossip that goes on a fun hour or two. That makes me feel more human than merely what I really am, which is a geek leaning towards lonely nerd.

I usually make cookies or brownies for my host duties but Etain offers to make a couple of Porter cakes and a Bannock, the first cakes made with beer and the second a sweet soda bread with currants added. I wonder if the beer cake is wise, but Etain assures me that pretty well all the Moms have spoken to her during the week about the upcoming Friday coffee morning at "our" place already and between them discussed and agreed the fare to be served.

I’m easy with Etain’s choice as hostess, as I only have to fill the kettle and the coffee maker. Etain even makes her special blend of tea available. I do wonder about what’s in the tea, as a non-tea drinker normally, I find that Etain’s tea is both refreshing and calming.

So, come 10 o’clock on the dot, the Moms arrive en mass and within ten minutes we’re all crowded into my sitting room with tea and cake and once they settle, Etain simply charms them all as she recounts her version of how we met only the week before.

She tells it a lot funnier than the way I told it to you earlier in Chapter 1 and I hadn’t realised until now how much she had noticed and how serious and expressive my face had been in explaining to her about using the phone to ring the Garda if I tried anything on her, and what my face looked like when I stepped in the puddle up to my mid-calf and when I handed her the towels and tried to avert my eyes from her nipples as she describes the incident to the Moms in excruciating detailed detail.

She actually tells them everything!

Crap! I’m as red as a ripe tomato stuffed with chilli sauce.

They all laugh over how we met, the coincidence of us being next-door-neighbors and Kaetlynn being Etain’s aunt and how well the Moms can see how she and Caoimhe get on and, nudge-nudge, how well me and she appear to be getting along.

Of course, there’s no mention of our current sleeping arrangements, but do admit that we tend to dine the three of us together for convenience. No mention is made of witches or curses, kings, cheating princesses or hulking mythical heroes, but she tells them she was born in one of the small settlements of Cork close to the sea but that she left there when she was a bare wean and has lived in a small woodland cottage near Ballypatrick on the southern slopes of Slievenamon Mountain until moving here to inherit her aunt’s cottage a week ago.

Of course, most of the Moms, being born and raised locally, knew Kaetlynn well, and one or two even remembered Bebhinn and her jars of honey and the beeswax products and potions that she sold in the Thurles market, which sets off a round of discussion that the market is a shadow of what it was pre-Covid.

Etain tells them that she now keeps bees like Bebhinn did and, while it is a little late in the season for much honey this year, she will have plenty to share among friends in a year’s time. Which in itself tells everyone that Etain is a permanent part of our neighborhood and they all give me that look.

Yes, we all know that look, do we not?

The special tea blend goes down just as well as the cake and Etain has to promise to make more cake for their next visit and one lady, Brenda Cullinder, who complains of chilblains, is given an ointment that Etain fetched from the cellar next door plus a jar of Bebhinn’s honey for each and every one of them that might be a dozen years old but honey never goes off, she says, "if it has gone crystalline, just stand the jar in a bowl of hot water why doncha until the honey goes clear again and it’ll be right as rain".

I smile, thinking, ‘I love that girl’ and realise indeed that I love that girl.