Christmas magic on poignant visit home

In the week that thousands of Galwegians flood home for a family Christmas, SANDRA KAVANAGH wanders down memory lane on a journey she makes to her native city from Belfast, where she has made her home.

‘Discover the magic of Christmas,’ urges the bus stop billboard. The holidays are coming. I have made the five-hour trip down from Belfast to Galway to see the remaining ‘Aged P’, my nonagenarian father, in what has become a traditional pre-festive gig.

The plan today is to drive by my sister’s place for a quick catch-up and then to follow the coast road into the Claddagh and around the docks out to east Galway to see my father and whisk him into town for the day.

Yesterday’s apricot skies are now a silvery grey that matches the sea and the Burren across the Bay. The drizzle is here to stay. The early start and slow weekend traffic means I can steal the odd glance at the water. I am home. Dad will be waiting with matching anticipatory delight. He will have been up even earlier than me, ablutions performed, tone-deaf singing of Dean Martin’s ‘King of the Road’ whilst shaving, porridge savoured, radio tuned from Lyric FM to RTE Radio 1 for the Brendan O’Connor Show, papers scanned.

A hug in the hall and we are off. I am now chauffeur and chaperone and we smile at the natural symmetry of that manoeuvre.  Afterwards I regret that I didn’t have the soundtrack to my schooldays playing (Toto, Marvin Gaye, Donna Summer, Eurythmics, Christopher Cross . . .) as we drove away from the suburbs, past the vet’s house, the babysitter’s house and along Lough Atalia. We have one day, so chat is where it’s at. Besides, that playlist is always in our heads when we are together on these roads.

The conversation is easy, roving, silly and serious. Bittersweet. We have been doing this father-daughter dance for decades. Time is short and we both know it. The last waltz may not be today but it is on the dance card. We are co-conspirators: complicit, mischievous and out in the world. The weather and a shared love of the silver screen decide our fate. There’s a 12.15pm showing of Living in Galway’s concrete grey arthouse Pálás cinema.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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