The mother is 46 and her daughter is 15; the gulf has never been wider.
"You gave up things every year? Everyone did? Things you needed, like milk in your tea?"
"Well, yes, some people gave up that, but I usually gave up sugar and sweets."
"And what did Dad give up?"
"He used to try to give up cigarettes but it was very hard."
"Why?"
"Because they're very addictive - you know that."
"No, I mean why did you all go round giving things up suddenly?"
"For Lent, dear. I told you."
"No, you told me what it was called. You didn't tell me why." The daughter was definite over this.
"To show we could, that we cared enough to do something unselfish, I suppose." "Like all go on diets and try and quit smoking? All at once? Was it some kind of health thing?"
"Not so much that: it was denying yourself something."
"And how long did it last?"
"It was meant to last 40 days but of course in Ireland we got St Patrick's Day off."
"You are joking me, this is some kind of game?"
"No, you asked: I told you . . . That's what we all did."
"But you won't give me money for tarot reading. I can't go to a fortune-teller and if I even go to read my stars in a paper you say it's superstitious and now it turns out you used to do this 40 days thing years ago." The daughter was outraged.
"It's quite different and you know this very well. It was a religious exercise."
"And how did you all hit on 40 days?"
"Our Lord went into the desert for 40 days. From Pancake Tuesday to Easter, those were the dates."
"He went into the desert, was that it?" The daughter was still interested but bewildered. The mother feared there was nothing satisfactory to be gained from the conversation so, while they were still speaking amicably and the thing had not turned into hostility, she made her excuses and went to telephone a friend.
THE friend is a teacher. She is almost 50. She said the mother shouldn't worry at all about the daughter. It's the same all over.
"They haven't a clue. But some of them have these Trocaire boxes and they're meant to deny themselves something and put what they would have spent on it into the box."
Some of them do this. They're very generous in their hearts and much more concerned about famine and poverty than when the mother and the friend were at school.
They hear talk of Lent at home but it's all mysterious, people going off the jar or losing two kilos: they just regard it as the usual madness of adult life.
"I'll give you some advice," the friend told the mother.
"I'll take any advice" - the mother was very concerned. She was not a religious fanatic, she believed, but she couldn't understand that the next generation had suddenly lost its Faith without anyone else in the country noticing it. "Any advice at all," she said sadly.
"Whatever you do, don't even bring up the subject of the Seven Churches on Holy Thursday," the friend said. "That's something that drives them all completely over the top. If you tell them about how we used to do that they all want to be let loose on psychics and palmists."
"But it has nothing to do with that."
"And worse, they'll say if we did all that church visiting to get a wish then they should be allowed to do things to get a wish"
"But it wasn't just a wish, it was to get a soul out of Purgatory," said the mother, very upset.
"Don't try it. Believe me, she'll want to join one of these groups that chant out numbers for each other about Lotto tickets."
"What are they?" asked the mother, fearfully.
"You don't want to know," said the friend.
The mother called to visit the grandmother. "Do you remember, years ago - did you ever get upset about the way we talked about Heaven and God and Lent and everything?"
"I don't remember you ever talking about them at all," said the grandmother, thinking hard and honestly.
The grandmother is a young seventy something and has no difficulty in remembering things.
"But I must have talked about what I'd give up for Lent - we all did." The mother was desperate to reclaim her past.
"Oh, you and your friends were always talking about whether Sundays counted or St Patrick's Day counted and whether Kit Kat was a biscuit or a sweet." The grandmother sounded very dismissive.
"But at least we gave things up, didn't we?" the mother pleaded.
"Yes," said the grandmother.
"But that was good," cried the mother. "Yes. It might have been better if you had all done something positive rather than concentrating on the negative, though," said the grandmother, who had surely never before delivered herself of such an opinion in her whole life.
The daughter said to her pal: "Do they talk much about Lent in your house?"
"It was something in the olden days." The Pal was authoritative. "It all had to do with not eating meat, there was some kind of a beef scare then too."
"I don't think that was it: I think it was religious," said the daughter, frowning.
"How could it have been religious?" the pal's eyes were open wide in disbelief. "I mean, if God wanted something out of us, it would be a real thing, wouldn't it? It wouldn't just be going on a diet or giving up calcium, would it?"