Slightly Bemused writes:

“I am heading back upstairs”

“Fine. Love you” to the retreating pounding of footsteps on the stairs

“Love you too” comes back, softened by the pace of upward departure and the closing door keeping the heat in. Through the now secure portal a deeper voiced rumble comes in response, as a certain fiance type person thought the comment directed at him. Who knows, maybe it was.

It got me thinking about the little terms of endearment we use for each other. Some used in my family, and I know regularly across Ireland, occasionally brought an askance eye when I was in the US. My mother always called us ‘sweetheart’, a term seemingly reserved for beaus and belles there. If we were ill, or my Mum just thought we needed a little more love, we would get the appellation of ‘dearheart’. Now that one is definitely one between fasted partners in certain parts of the mid-western states. But I recall several times when I was feeling poorly in my bed, and this angel with a cigarette in one corner of her mouth would bathe my forehead and mutter words like ‘Don’t worry, dearheart. This will help you sleep.’

I am not sure it really did. The cooling cloth felt good on my fiery brow, but the smell of the ciggy was, and still is a trigger for me to come awake. As a child it presaged the maternal alarm clock arriving in the bedroom to roust us out for school. But the words were soothing, and treasured even to this day.

I do not want to make the mistake I made with my parents. I never told them enough that I did love them. I think they knew, I hope they did, but verbalising it would have done no harm, and may even have warmed my heart a little more each time as it did when they said it to me. I cannot recall which of us asked, to some comment about who was the favourite, ‘how can you love us all equally?’ To which the one replied succinctly ‘we don’t’, and as this sunk in the other said ‘you are all too different to love equally. We love you each as you are.’ A subtle difference lost on me at the time.

There are those I know who are in constant touch every day, even when they will see them that night. My boss’ partner calls him several times a day. We were, and still are not that type of family. In one of my many travels I was unable to call home for months. Communication was via the old airmail letter, with coded missives carefully handwritten on both sides of paper lighter than a tissue. Occasionally more important news had Dad steam open the envelope, and the message was continued inside, before being resealed for the journey to whatever part of the world I was in.

A problem with this is that while you can hear the voices of your loved ones in your head, hearing them for real is more important. So I got a break, and set about trying to call home. In those days, where I was still used old mechanical telephone exchanges. Getting an international line could take an age, and halfway through dialing may just drop out. Finally after what seemed like hours there was a click, and the sound of a phone ringing at the other end. An inevitable delay, and an echo which did not help, and my father’s voice answered.

I said hello, this is me, to which I got a glad reply, followed immediately by ‘what’s wrong?’ We only called when we needed help. Thankfully all that was wrong was I needed to hear their voices. Talking in a verbal code not unlike that used on the letters, we caught each other up on the events of the days, a little like what Slightly does waiting up for me each evening to get home from work.

And I learned that I had a niece. Not even a new one – she was a year and a half old. In the interim I had received several letters, and even been home, but somehow this important bit of information eluded me. She still occasionally ribs me about it.

As with many Irish people, the language used between people who are actually fond of each other, while unprintable here, really does say how much they think of each other. I am occasionally reminded of a time I was at my cousins’ place where my brother was staying. Apparently the terms we used to each other caused wincing amongst this group who were not shy of telling their own siblings where to go and where to get off.

One eventually asked my brother, Glitter’s dad, although she and Little Slightly were way in our futures then, and she wondered why we spoke so seemingly unkindly to and of each other. Maybe it is a Cork thing, because I know it comes in part from my Dad and his side of the family. But the response was along the lines of ‘of course I love him. If I did not, I would not even mention him!’ If anyone is familiar with the film Freaky Friday with Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, and Gibbs, there is a point where her little brother admits to the woman he thinks is his mom that the reason he gives his sister such a hard time is that it is so much fun when they fight. I guess our interaction was somewhat like that.

I do recall telling a very lovely lady of my acquaintance, from another land, that there is little to worry about in general when Irish people eff and blind at each other. It is more like punctuation than anything else. It was time to get serious, though, when they called you ‘friend’ with that particular emphasis. Time now to cut and run before it becomes ‘listen, friend!’

But my Mum and Dad gave me advice when I was getting married. Never, they said, go to bed angry with each other. Life is hard, and there will be tough days. But let the last words from your mouth be ‘I love you.’ And if you are together in the same room, always cuddle while standing for long enough for the tension to ease. Not a cure-all, they emphasised, but it was the first step in taking the next day on as a couple, not alone.

As my partnership started coming apart and I did not know what to do, my mother gave me more advice, based on those simple but tough concepts. ‘Love,’ she said, ‘is a decision you make every day.’ And as my beloved daughter went to snuggle under the covers with her loved one I realised something. It is a decision I am still making. Not the same, it never can be, and not just for the sake of this amazing young person that somehow we brought into this world.

Maybe I did not call her sweetheart enough. Maybe neither, dearheart. Maybe we did not cuddle enough before bed, being separated by oceans and skies. And maybe I failed to tell her I loved her enough. But I still do, and in a strange way I blame my father for that. As my mother ailed into her final months and weeks and days and hours he never left her. When asked by the doctors if he was sure he could support her he replied in surprise ‘Of course! I made her that promise 47 years ago.’

He once told me that to be born a gentleman is nothing but blind luck. But to die a gentleman is an achievement. He would then get a wicked glint in his eye, usually as he raised his pint to his lips, and would mutter ‘I am not dead yet!’

For him, it was immutable. A vow is a vow. If I can be a quarter the man he was I will die a reasonable facsimile of a gentleman. And I will remember to tell my daughter I love her. And when she lets me, give her a hug even if it is really me who needs it most.

And I still slip when talking occasionally to her mother, and call her sweetheart.

Slightly Bemused’s column appears here every Wednesday.

Pic by Slightly