Homecomings or why we feel glad

Homecomings or why we feel glad ©

By Michael Casey

I’m so glad, I’m glad I’m glad I’m glad sings Cream on one of their tracks, they are just so glad. Things can make us us glad, silly little things. A couple of hours ago my brother turned up on our doorstep, it was unexpected and unannounced, he doesn’t live in Birmingham he lives near London, so its always nice to see him on one of his flying visits. We were very close as kids and it was on one of his flying visits that her was there when mum was dead in his arms as he tried CPR, and then 8 weeks later on another flying visit he was there and he saved dad’s life with CPR on the bedroom floor, its all in Padre Pio and Me which is on the Internet.

So you can see I’m always happy to see my brother, without him I would not have been invaded by the Shanghai girls. Things in all our lives are signposts to the future and are lanterns from the past that guide us back to happy memories. Me and my brother used to be altar boys together, as Fr Brain used to say I was Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, Fr Brain is now Bishop Brain. We all feel glad because of shared memories, whether it was stealing the lead off the church roof, or serving Mass in the church below. Though some might say the thieves on the roof were closer to God, technically if not spiritually, though if they fall off the roof then they would have definitely been with God.

So memories bring us home to our past, to lives lost, and wives won, a memory is a hope that changed or morphed into something else. I can look at the sloped wall of the old Lloyds bank and remember pushing DMC off the wall and making him cry, though he insisted he only cried 25%, the memory makes me smile after 50years. Though a certain person did persuade me to hold a banger in my hand while he lit it, if I did that today I’m be armless, it was not a harmless activity. Now I can look back and smile at my only stupidity. A memory is a homecoming to our own past self, to our own naive younger self, but its always god to feel young and innocent before growing up gets in the way.

She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes, singing ai ai yipee ai eh , is a song we sang in primary school at the Christmas party, you’ll have to grab a primary school teacher to see if I got the words right. I’m sure if you ask parents they’ll all smile because it reminds them when they were young and innocent with no mortgages nor bills, just a pocket full of sweets with a snotty handkerchief on top.

Going back to Ireland has the same effect on me, as I recognise the landscape, the “Pops” , its 2 mountains together which look like giant breasts on the landscape, that’s what my old Aunty Delia from Killarney used to call them. There’s the beach at Cromane, the old coast guards station and the strand, there are the Lakes of Killarney too, as well as the1000s of acres of forest. These are the things that make me smile and all the memories tumble out. A visual stimulus evokes smiles and laughter and tears. Yes I’m from Birmingham but the Love in me was made in Kerry.

A time and a place is in the stones, in the mountains and in the sand and in the sea, and it is is you and in me. People, all of us have a love for our patch, or spot on this earth, for that corner chair in the bar or at the back of the church. That physical connection is in all of us. That’s what lifts us from the dust from whence we came, maybe that’s why we all buy tacky souvenirs with our favourite place, our home printed on them. But they say that Home is Where the Heart is, and so long as its in our Heart it does not matter where we are on the map, for all roads lead Home.