On the train home from a job in Belfast, I feel bad about my ear lobes the way the late, much-missed Nora Ephron felt bad about her neck. As the Enterprise eases out of Grand Central Station I wonder if it is normal, after decades of earring-wearing, that the hole in my ear has stretched so much that it now looks less like a hole and more like a slit. The slit/hole is now so long that surely it can’t be much longer before the slit becomes a split.
A tooth fell out of my head recently, a possible side effect of medication. I have an ingrown toenail that looks like a crime scene. And don’t talk to me about my fingernails, which are frail and paper thin. I blame the Shellac. I blame the chemotherapy. I blame being in my 50s. This is what I am thinking about on the train home.
The late, much-missed Maeve Binchy used to call this the Organ Recital. Where people of a certain age, before moving on to more juicy topics, take turns cataloguing their ailments. I do this with my 86-year-old mother. She’ll see my dodgy toe and raise me her macular degeneration, surgically removed breast and arthritic knee.
I have her beaten though. In addition to the toe, the ear and the tooth there are cancer cells on my bones, on my spine, my pelvis. They spread there from my left breast. The immunotherapy treatment every few weeks is keeping everything stable. I don’t think about the cells all that much. I don’t hate them either. It would be like hating myself and I gave that up a few years ago.
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I should be reading my book on the train. A limited edition hardback of a fantastic new memoir – Among Communists, signed by the author Sinéad Morrissey – but I left it behind at the station when I was distracted by a chocolate eclair. I get out my laptop and send an email to the lost property section. “I left a book behind ...” I tell them hopefully. I touch my ear lobe. My toe throbs.
To distract myself, I eavesdrop on a group of middle-aged Americans, women from a town called Bath in Maine, who have made the mistake of sitting beside a man who won’t take no for an answer. I noticed him earlier. I knew he was trouble when he walked into the carriage, it was something in the tilt of his head. He’s asking the Maine women, who are in high holiday spirits, about their political leanings. They don’t want to talk about that. One of the women politely explains that they’ve come to Ireland to get away from politics, but he won’t listen. He wants to know where they stand on everything.
The women, who before this were laughing loudly and sharing photos of their Airbnb in Dublin as they chatted about their grand day out at the Giant’s Causeway, are anxious. They are not sure how to deal with the man. They are relieved when he gets off at Drogheda.
I turn around to talk to them. The organiser of the group, Kathy, who has been to Ireland 14 times and is in charge of their carefully curated itinerary, explains that some of the women have different political affiliations. They have not let this ruin their friendship. I explain that we’re all, understandably, a bit obsessed by the owner of Doonbeg Golf Club but that they don’t owe anybody an explanation. The woman who was most rattled by the man’s inquisition is grateful for my intervention. She has tears in her eyes. She says, “Can I give you a hug?” and we embrace, strangers on a train.
As we walk down the platform, Kathy and I swap numbers. She’s going to Inistioge in Co Kilkenny to trace her great great grandfather, James George Grace, who was baptised in the church there before leaving for America as a boy. I become a tour guide. Fáilte Ró. I tell the women about the Little Museum of Dublin and Davy Byrne’s and Nancy Hands. They head off smiling into the dark Dublin night.
[ Róisín Ingle: The day before the scan results, I remember I have cancerOpens in new window ]
I’m at home when I notice my ear lobe. The slit has become a split. I waggle the two pieces of ear, a new party trick.
A couple of days later Kathy texts to tell me she went to the church in Inistioge where her great great grandfather was baptised and did a short hike to Mount Sandford Castle and went for a beer in the Woodstock Arms. The manager, Willie Grace, a distant cousin they decide, took all the women back to their hotel in Kilkenny with a tour along the way, because there were no cabs running that day. “God,” Kathy texts. “I love Ireland.”
The lost property person emails to say there is no sign of the book. Kathy, back in Dublin, texts from the Phoenix Park to say she is photographing deer on her last morning in Ireland.
The internet tells me that “unfortunately” a split ear lobe will not heal of its own accord. The tissue lacks the ability to regenerate and rejoin by itself. Surgical intervention will be required. Lobuloplasty, they call it. I think I will leave my ear alone. Some things stay lost. Some things won’t regenerate. I waggle my ear and call my mother with the latest symphonic movement in the ongoing Organ Recital.
