Laura Kennedy: When I return from Australia to visit home, I sit in the consequences of that choice to leave
When I help my niece to the bathroom I realise how alien the trust she places in me suddenly feels . . . because I’m not here. Photograph: iStock
We head to the ladies’ room, which definitely hasn’t been redecorated in recent decades and immediately, there are issues. “There’s no lady on the door,” my niece declares, motioning toward the door in question and looking concerned. “It’s not the toilet without the lady” – here she pauses briefly to inhale from the balls of her feet – “on the door. So we’re not allowed in there.” There is a confidence in her voice that could seize control from a shaky regime in a small country.
Inside what we’ve confirmed to be the bathroom we’re definitely allowed to enter, she selects her preferred cubicle. “Not that one a spider is in” – inhales – “there and spiders have this many legs”, she tells me, splaying out her little caterpillar fingers and staring at them. “It’s a bit dirty,” she says of the second, and I consider that Irish social progress might be represented by the waning familiarity children under 10 have with hygiene standards in the average pub toilet.
You’ve chosen something else – a life and a place in which they don’t feature as often as they once did.
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