Róisín Ingle on . . . death, babies and other back to school conundrums

We have, in our house, entered the Era of the Impossible to Answer Question. They are relentless. There is no let-up. We are under a constant siege of inquiry with questions that are highly disturbing for no other reason than the fact that they all begin with the word “like”. (As with most of the ills in Irish society, I blame Ross O’Carroll Kelly.)

“Like, Mummy, why is Amelie and Lucie’s house way, way bigger than ours?”

“Like, Mummy, how come we aren’t going on holidays in an airplane like everyone else?”

“Like, why are the red and white towers red and white, Mum. Like, why are they not pink and white?”

Thank goodness the Spanish Inquisition (aged 5¼) are going back to school this week because I don’t feel up to the job of teaching them all the things they seem to need to know right now, this minute, like, immediately.

You can Google the answer to “like, why is the sky blue?” and the answers, 113 million of them, come back pretty consistently. (A clear cloudless daytime sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. Allegedly.)

But even though I have several of my own theories on the subject, I find myself ill-equipped for the likes of the Death-Related Interrogation.

“Like, why do we die, Mummy?” Google returns 663 million answers to this, as it very well might.

“Like, do we die forever?” (240 million.)

“Like, forever, forever?” (276 million).

Like, to be fair, kids, I am a very busy person and I don’t have time to be trawling through millions of theories from Richard Dawkins to reincarnation. And anyway, I’m pretty sure they cover existentialism as part of the senior infants curriculum. And if they don’t, why not? I pay my taxes, etc.

If Enda Walsh's Ballyturk wasn't finishing its run tonight in Dublin's Olympia Theatre I'd send them there for an explanation on death and the afterlife. And by explanation I mean a head-meltingly brilliant, 1980s pop-fuelled, rollercoaster ride for the soul.

I approach these pesky death questions the way I approach a lot of the difficulties I face in life. I ignore them. Or I use crisps as a weapon of mass distraction.

“Like, is dying when we go to sleep for 100 years and then wake up and everything is exactly the same as it was?”

“Here, have some crisps.”

I find this tactic surprisingly effective and while, yes, of course I worry that they will come to associate death and dying with the aroma of Keogh’s salt and vinegar snacks, there are worse associations death could have.

The Era of the Impossible to Answer Question ramped up a gear last when they started focusing their efforts on babies.

My sister Katie is pregnant. All going to plan, she’ll have her second home birth in November. It has turned the collective mind of the Spanish Inquisition (Dublin 3 Branch) to how babies get out of people’s “like, tummies”.

They just wouldn’t let it lie. Also, I ran out of crisps. So I was forced to tell them that Dr Stephen Carroll of Holles Street – he’s a key figure in the story I tell entitled How We Were Born – made an incision, a cut in my lower belly and lifted the two of them out of me.

Yes, yes, I hadn’t really thought this one through.

“He, like, he cut us out of you? With a knife?!”

There is crying. Wailing. Gnashing of baby teeth. Since then the questions have grown, if that were possible, even trickier culminating in this conversation stopper:

“I don’t want to have a baby when I grow up if they cut you open. Is there, like, anything you can do so you don’t have to have a baby when you grow up?”.

Like, seriously?

It was the 5¼-year-old version of what a young visitor to this country has reportedly been saying since last April when she learned she was pregnant.

“I do not want this. I am too young to be a mother. I am not ready.”

I tell her yes, there are ways to not have a baby. I tell her that not every woman has to have a baby if they don’t want to. I tell her that women are entitled to make that choice for themselves in most civilised countries in the world.

I just hope we have stopped denying the human rights of women in this country by the time my daughters are old enough for the full explanation.

Some questions are, like, total no-brainers.

roisin@irishtimes.com