Doireann Ní Ghríofa: ‘I treasure any visits from our friends’ babies’

Someone’s dinner: 15%
Last week I strayed from a narrow road into the forest, where I soon realised that I was standing in the overgrown ruins of a castle. Most of the walls had collapsed, although their echo seemed to linger here and there – I saw a long curve that might have been a souterrain, and possibly the base of a lost stairwell. From what I’ve been able to glean from the city library, this castle held a thriving community in the 12th century. Yesterday I found myself back there, ankle-deep in bluebells, peering at some freshly scuffed dirt, from which badgers had kicked up a couple of oyster shells. They shimmered their old opalescence in my palm, the remains of someone’s dinner, held briefly in their hand, now briefly held in mine. Who were they?

To do or not to do list: 0.25%… 0.25%… 0.25%… 0.25%
Like finches, the day’s tasks flit through my thoughts, chirping as they go: must hang laundry, must send permission slip, must prep swim bag for youngest’s lesson, must start dinner, must answer that email, must cancel subscription… I always forget something. (Must write a list.)

My husband’s body: 55%
We’ll never know how long the tumour had been thriving, unseen, in his kidney, but by the time it revealed itself, the surgeon judged it too large to extract, so the whole organ had to be removed. To tell our children that their father had cancer is something I hope we’ll never have to do again. He’s been recovering really well through the months since the surgery, and if you were to meet him, I’m sure he’d reassure you that he’s back to his old self now. If you were to meet me, you might think that I seem fine, too, but in truth, I am secretly obsessing about his insides. Might some stray cancerous cells be prowling in there, right now? Might an unseen tumour be plotting to take him from us? Will I have to learn how to raise our children as a widow? Will such fears ever lessen? Oh God, I love him so much.

The mystery of travelling pebbles: 2%
A mystery – how do so many pebbles find their way into the footwells of my car? Today I count 18 – how could my shoes have gathered so many stowaways? Where did they come from, and where will they travel to next?

Fact versus fiction versus me: 8%
Every time I’m asked whether my writing should be considered fiction/nonfiction/narrative nonfiction, I blush and fumble and shrug. I wish I could give an easy reply, I really do, but all my pages seem to hold both history and ghost story. I begin with fact, spending hundreds of hours in archives, and then I take those armfuls of notes and set to imagining it all to life on the page. Hardly unusual! Throughout the years of writing that follow, however, fiction and fact become so closely interwoven that it feels impossible to label the writing as one or the other. When I’m asked on which bookshop shelf my writing belongs, I daydream of replying: “I don’t know, let’s just call it a book!” and then running away into the forest, where such questions will never find me.

The astonishing beauty of babies: 15%
Now that our four children are getting taller, I treasure any visits from our friends’ babies, doting over the preciousness of their curls and plump fingers. To hold a baby in my arms is a treat – but it is also to hold the terrible echo of all the children who have been torn from this world in recent years, by warmongery in Palestine, in Iran, in Lebanon, in Ukraine, in Sudan and elsewhere. Such horror. It has marked us all.

The criminal: 4%
In the weeks after my husband’s surgery, a stranger came to the door asking if we’d lost a kitten, and I joked, “No, but I’ll take one if you’re offering.” Oh dear. Soon he was strolling into the chaos of our home, a dark scrap of mischief with the most flamboyant white whiskers I have ever seen. We call him Baby the Baby, and loudly narrate his shenanigans as he goes about his day. He speaks with the accent of a bandit from some old-timey cartoon, and he has a personality to match: stealing water from our glasses when we aren’t looking, slapping our sheepdog in the face as he ambles blamelessly by, snoozing in the bathroom sink, pilfering our older cat’s food. He has started a war with a gang of tough cats; he digs up our flowerbeds; he is a nuisance and a disgrace. But right now, he is purring himself to sleep on my knee, and his fur is so, so soft. Oh, Baby the Baby, you little criminal, it is impossible not to love you. (My husband hates cats, and wishes that he had been the one to answer the door that day.)