Man of the House

This is waiting at the window; this is the empty dirt road that weaves like a serpent through the verdant earth; this is the aroma of soda bread baking and the sound of the wireless blaring; this is realizing the window is a mirror which reluctantly offers the reflection, favouring the other side of the glass; this is seeing my face in the road and the road on my face; this is seeing him on the road; Where’s that boy of yours?; this is the whitewashed wall adorned with a single palm cross (as if bent straw has the power to absolve); this is a raindrop falling through the thatch, this is another; this is a bucket to catch them—it can still perform its function though it’s rusting on the side; this is seeing us on the road; this is the window alternating between a window and a mirror; this is an oil lamp flickering and the smell of peat in the iron range and the suffocating scent of tobacco—the price of which is going up; this is my son playing ball in his Sunday shoes and there’s nothing I can do about it; this is foreseeing the dirt under his fingernails which hours of scrubbing won’t remedy; Well, you had better call him inside before he gets washed away; this is that song I never liked and the way my skin tightens at the sound of a fiddle—how the tiny hairs stand on the back of my neck and I can feel each one individually springing as the horsehairs touch the metal of the strings one by one— and the wireless makes it sound scratchier still; this is the radio that breaks down much too often for something that was so dear; this is the steady dripping of raindrops echoing in the bucket; those are his father’s eyes—the eyes of a “drifter”—the eyes your mother warned you about; they are grey-blue like a storm—a storm that is beautiful and exciting and leaves ruins in its wake; this is watching the soiled hem of his trousers pass his ankles—someday he will be too tall for them and me and this place; this is wondering if, in those grey-blue eyes, I will see a tinge of guilt when his hair is neatly combed and his suitcase is in hand; this is seeing him on the road; this is my patched skirt; these are my shoes beneath it and even though I’ve never played in the mud, they are dirty anyway; this is the Hail Mary being muttered in the corner and the wooden beads rattling between trembling fingers; this is muddy shoes crossing the threshold and standing before us; this is the sweet, toothless grin and the face speckled with dirt and freckles (it’s difficult to discern which is which); this is his red, rain-soaked hair and his torn Aran sweater; this is the man of the house; this is the uproar of voices and vexation; You let your son play in the dirt in his best shoes?; this is the insistent presence of the road and the radio and the rosary and the rust on the bucket; this is dying to try and trying to die; this is realizing no one ever asked me if I wanted to be a “drifter” too.