I know, I know… but in Germany it’s not Mothers’ Day today. There are international days for almost anything and anybody, but Mothers’ Day still seem to be a national thing.

This morning on the Week-end on One, Cathal was playing all sorts of songs for Mothers – some were really good. Like “Mothers’ little helpers (what a drag it is getting old)” or “You fill up my census” (yes: that’s how he announced it:)

So to all of you mothers in Ireland: Happy Mothers’ Day! I hope you were pampered with breakfast in bed and brought out for dinner, with flowers and cards adorning the house!

For Pádraig, today was the last ‘medicine day’. Isn’t it amazing: just over two months ago, he was on a range of meds; you could only see him once you had put on a face mask, hair net, Schutzkittel (some kind of overall) and what not; he was on half a dozen of monitors beeping left, right and centre, with contacts glued to his chest; he had a tracheostomy that his doctor wanted to converted into a surgical, i.e. “permanent”, tracheostomy; we were not allowed to take him out for a walk.

“Lá Fhéile Pádraig” this year will be a great day, very different from that of the past two years. Can’t wait.

Tonight is Saturday, the night of a weekly  programme on Irish radio called Céilí House. For many year, we have been listening to Céilí House when we were in the middle of nowhere (Leitrim:) for the weekend. It’s always been a really great programme with brilliant music and chat.

In 2011, on Saturday the 3rd of December, the programme (I think it was recorded the previous Wednesday night) came from O’Neill’s Pub, on Pearse Street, just across the road from Trinity College Dublin.

This night, the great Kieran Hanrahan, the presenter of the programme, had a problem.

There was a tall fellow there to whom he had to hold the microphone up to so high that he almost got a cramp in his arm. But the two of them had a lovely conversation, full of laughs, so well humoured, with lots of energy and happiness. And it was the only conversation that night in Irish.

They went through the archives, dug down deep, took the dust of the tapes and found that night’s recording. It’s a really really great programme, with lots of Pádraig’s friends (who I wouldn’t have known then) playing and being interviewed. So it’s certainly worthwhile listening to the whole programme.

Pádraig had his slot towards the beginning (10′:40″ – 13′:30″) of the programme.

I am sitting here with him, listening to the programme with Pádraig. We wondered how he would react to it. Turns out, it’s an incredible experience.

There is a constant smile on his face, more even when he hears the names of his friends and their music. But he had never had as big a smile on his face than when he heard his interview with Kieran.

There was a sad moment when Éanna Drury, the son of the brilliant, legendary journalist Paul Drury, who recently passed away, played the Uilleann Pipes (which he also played at his father’s funeral earlier in the week). The Irish Daily Mail, of which Paul had been the editor, has repeatedly reported on the injustice that is the need for Pádraig to ’emigrate’ to Germany to get treatment that he (and other persons in his situation) cannot get in their own country.

Listening to this programme, just about to finish, he has been, most definitely and without a doubt, really happy.

Thank you to all the friends who made the programme happen, and to Kieran and Niamh for getting the recording over to Pádraig!

His first words greeting thousands of people who had waited to see him on this magnificent square, and probably millions watching world-wide on TV, were: buonasera, good evening.

This morning, a German radio broadcast reported on today’s second anniversary of the inauguration of Pope Francis who, as they reported, has continued to annoy loads of people in the Vatican Curia, talking about spiritual Alzheimers, raising important but very controversial issues with the cardinals, focusing on the people who make up the catholic church, living a much simpler life than most Popes before him had, realising that he is a person with personal faults as everybody else (and why not).

Pádraig today did well. One thing we noticed in his overall condition is that he has got so much more relaxed since the same carers, and just two different ones, are coming in, since they have started to come at the same hours during the week, and since we’ve had long, relaxed weekends.

I went to visit my mother again today (an almost seven hours drive in total). She is as helpless as Pádraig nows. She is very, very weak, but comfortable. Leaving her in the evening almost broke my heart.

What if we all concentrated on the essential. Switched off the ads promising us better, cheaper deals for things we don’t need. Focused on people, on friends and families, not on things. What if we started to annoy the establishment, raising, like Francis does with the curia, important and controversial issues. What if we told them that we want a different kind of politics, a different kind of society, one that puts social responsibility, people responsibility, first, no matter what.

If we did we might all sleep better.

Buonasera.

“Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?”  – is one of the famous quotes from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe.

The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) captured it all in one word today: “unverschämt”. They referred to, of course, the Greek government who had decided to remember the Germans of their debts to the Greek people. Hhhhmmmm, I thought, what a brilliant word to describe the attitude of someone claiming what is really theirs.

I felt an urge to be “unverschämt” myself. Ask for what is really mine, for what is ours. Of course, there is no question that we all need a functioning economy, that people need to work, and that, in many cases, it is companies who create these jobs – but they don’t do this for charity. They do it  for profit. However, people’s welfare, and especially that of those most in need, has to be the priority of any decent society.

So I am asking for a working health system, one that does not force people to move out of the country to get rehab abroad. Several families are already or in the process of brining their children to Germany where they will receive treatment that is not available in Ireland. They are paying for this themselves. Despite legislation that guarantees people living in Ireland treatment abroad if it is not available in their own country.

I am beginning to think that asking for what is ours, the right to a health system worth its name, being “unverschämt”, is what we all should be. Talk ‘Tacheles’. Talk straight. Call Rumpelstilzchen by his name.

The days are getting longer and spring is definitely in the air. Can’t wait for the new wheelchair which we were told will be less bulky and easier to navigate. It would be so nice to go for walks, to a park, listen to the birds, the sound of water in a river or a lake.

Pádraig is getting the hand of the stand-up business. I am still struggling with the controls. It all looks so easy, but it’s not. Far from it. What seems to work really well is Pádraig kind-of half standing. Not completely upright, but half way towards it. He has no problem taking that position for some time and it must do wonders for him.

Just heard a professor from Oxford saying in an interview following his lecture as part of the Environmental Protection Agency lecture series that it was important to realise that “climate change is not just something that affects polar bears or our grandchildren”. He is right but as sad as it is we won’t change until it’ll be too late.

Officially Ireland’s best love poem of the past 100 years:

When all the others were away at Mass 

In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives –
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Today, the day just disappeared. It came and went and I have no idea where it went to. The only thing I remember well and in some detail is how I got up. The rest of the day was just one thing after the other. Yet, I haven’t managed to work through my list, and that is the list with the most important things to do.

Another thing I remember from today is an hour this evening, when we sat together with the lights low, listening to some really good music together. Unreal. Real. Happiness. No threats. No panic. No fear. Doesn’t sound like much. But it was.

Today’s German Music Tip
Mark Forster, Zu Dir (Weit Weg)
What’s hot
Tilt
What’s cold
Beer
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Für lau.

When I didn’t manage to run over the weekend I promised myself I would go for a long run on Tuesday at the latest. Well, I managed a half marathon – but don’t ask me for my time. I was proud that I managed to get back to the apartment.

In the afternoon, I tilted Pádraig’s bed. And then the First happened: I held his hand and he moved his arms, one after the other, up to his chest.

Pádraig very clearly made a connection between what he heard, and his arms!

Pure brilliance!

You could look at it as an experiment. Or a game. Maybe, I should just think about it tomorrow, because if I think about it now, I’ll probably go crazy.

If it wasn’t for the Currywurst (and “Tara”).

Play.

Take a given situation that is more or less balanced and is more or less functioning. Then, you introduce a disaster – something that radically shifts the balance. What is most likely to happen is that – although the balance has radically shifted – initially, the ‘players’ or ‘participants’ in this experiment will most likely try to hang on to what they know has been working for them up to now. The hope is that this is just a brief interruption and that they will be able to return to the previous status quo if they only just managed to get over this ‘hump’ or ‘blip’.

Take the financial crisis: a lot of people believe that if we just managed to tighten the belt for a few years, that this will get us over the crisis, and that then we will be able to continue with the financial, political, and societal system we had prior to the crisis. The new Greek government seem to be the only once to tell call the French and German bankers by their names, thus taking away their magic – just as happened to Rumpelstilzchen.

I have been thinking of my own personal situation and was wondering when and if I will ever manage to find a new balance in my life for myself and for the rest of us. It’s like as if someone kept turning up the heat all the time and I kept opening the windows. Or: as if my boat was leaking not in one but in several places and I was trying to keep the water out by kind-of fixing the leaks, with new leaks appearing constantly left, right and centre. For how long will this work?

We had a wonderful evening with Pádraig. Talking, chatting away, doing a few exercises, eating a little. And there was another first: Currywurst. He loved it. Almost as much as the strawberries earlier on. Of course, the food is all minced, liquidised. But other than that, this is ordinary food, with ordinary taste. Everything, however, else was extra-ordinary, still is extra-ordinary. So extra-ordinary, in fact, that it was, is hard to take. I am sure that when we look back at these days in years to come, in “Tara”, we’ll see the time as so intense that we will wonder how we survived it.

It made me think of Scarlet in Gone with the Wind: “Oh, I can’t think about this now! I’ll go crazy if I do! I’ll think about it tomorrow. But I must think about it. I must think about it. What is there to do? What is there that matters? Tara! Home. I’ll go home. And I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all… tomorrow is another day!

Never will there be a war starting again from German soil.

I grew up with this baggage of the first world war. My grandfather fought in this ‘great’ war. He got a “Lungensteckschuss”, a bullet in his lung they never managed to take out, and suffered all his life from the consequences. I grew up with the baggage of the second world war which my parent lived through.

Since last week I know that Germans have more important things to sort than wars. Aldi is selling the “Rasenkantenstecher” – a gadget that every household should have to get the borders of their lawn straight. No self-respecting family should be without one. Imagine – a crooked lawn border! What would the neighbours say!!!???

Those who don’t like the outdoors might go for this amazing 75c worth indoor gadget: a “Rührholz”, the perfect piece of wood to mix your paints. Gone are the days when you would get an old brush stick, or, indeed, just a piece from a tree and mix up the wall colours!

– Just in case you think it: I am not making this up, it’s all for real.

I had a day on my own with Pádraig today. Pat went, together with our daughters, to see my mother. Any other year we would have all been there together. This time, I did the exercises with Pádraig, took it really slowly with him, cleaned the apartment, did the washing, and put on the Amhra do Phádraig CD – really loud. I had doubts and he believed.

Not sure whether you heard this, but the winner of the “German Song for Austria”, Germany’s contribution to the European Song Contest, in his acceptance test, did what no-one had ever done before: he declined the nomination…. Where will it all end.

As promised yesterday, here is – at last – and as a gesture to our friends in Greece, tonight’s German song tip:

Nana Mouskouri, Weiße Rosen aus Athen – with more than 1.2 million clicks!!!

One reaction of some people to Pádraig’s accident has been to feel lucky. That it wasn’t their son. Some have told us that they have sons and daughters of Pádraig’s age. Sons and daughters who have been traveling. Sons and daughters to whom accidents like this could have happened but haven’t. Thanks be to God. 

 I had to think of this when I heard the news today that the boy of Pádraig’s age who had gone missing in Cavan/Leitrim over the past week or so was found. They discovered his body in the lake belonging to his family. Someone who was there with the family when they were told said to us that the moans, shouting and crying was unbearable. I don’t think life could be more cruel that this.

Tonight our daughters arrived to the village where my sister lives. Pat will be getting the train very early in the morning and they will all meet up to visit my mother. I’ll have a quiet day with Pádraig. 

I feel so lucky that he is with us, making our lives unbearable, difficult, complicated, fun in a strange way, full of humour, full of love, never giving up, determined to make this life work. 

 Today, he went on his longest ‘walk’ ever. It was sunny, it was warm-ish, there was life all around. 

 Just thinking – I am so tired and have so little time these evenings that I don’t manage to look up (good) German songs and things. But I’m determined to start doing it again:)

This morning marked the end of the beginning of our stay in Hamburg. Having removed all our stuff, and having cleaned the place, we had to hand over the keys and shand over our old apartment in Forbacherstraße to the “Genossen”. How reluctant we were to rent a place thinking that we might not stay in Hamburg very long. How full of energy and hope we were, thinking that with the right treatment, Pádraig would surely get back to gaining control over his body and his life.

At around noon, I drove down to Nordkirchen to see my mother. She is getting weaker every day. Each time I’m leaving her I think it might be the last time. It was a long drive back to Hamburg.

Pádraig was out of bed again today, trying to do his best to collaborate with the physio and his speech therapist. He is fine as if nothing had happened last night. I’m looking forward to the weekend with him and Pat, a lazy afternoon).

Have to go, my head is trying to hit the keyboard…