What I love about June is the promise.
Our blackbird sings his heart out in the garden.
Once, we played birdsong on a phone and stood, entranced, in our back yard, as our birds sang back to us.
June is the first blossom on our yellow rose and my mother’s long-ago gift of a Bowl of Beauty peony, opening deep pink petals to reveal a yellow heart.
Long, long ago, when the television was black and white; when small birds pecked the silver cap to sip the cream off milk in bottles on our doorstep, when my mother wore a housecoat and lipstick to the washing line, June meant the school trip.
We must have been forward thinking in the late 1970s as our Primary 7 treat was a day out in Dublin.
The biggest excitement was going on a double decker bus.
Back then, only the birds and the rich flew.
I first came up close to an emerald green Aer Lingus uniform and dinner in a hot metal box when I was 16 years old.
At 10 years old, a bus with an upstairs was the height of sophistication.
My father woke me at 6am – I had been awake since 4am.
He stood in his old tartan dressing gown, poured out cornflakes, set them down in front of me. But who could eat when they were going on an adventure?
We went to see the Book of Kells in the morning.
Years later, as a student, I’d nip in to the Long Room for a free look – a hand in a glove turned the pages often – and I’d smile at American tourists in the front square as they asked for directions to “Kelly’s Book”.
The school trip also entailed a visit to Kilmainham Gaol – it was a dark, dank place.
We stood solemnly, a class of primary school kids staring at the spot in the Stonebreaker’s Yard where the leaders of the 1916 Rising were executed.
Lunch was a canteen-type do – a scoop of mashed potato that was a distant cousin to the Maris Piper; spam; jelly and a swizzle of fake cream.
The afternoon was for the zoo… a flock of pink flamingos; a bored elephant; the gift shop where stuffed giraffes were the rage. The monkey keyring must have made my mother’s year.
We must have had to write an essay about it on our return to the classroom.
For it was ever so.
In my mother’s childhood days in Derry, the teachers forbade anyone to write that the Foyle curled “like a silver snake”; in my childhood days, the teachers endured that ending: “We arrived home, tired but happy.”
After all, it was true.
Roll on the years and other school trips involved truncated spurs, Carrickfergus Castle and praying at a retreat with boys from another school (much more exotic than your everyday classroom variety).
On down the years, our boy went on various adventures to water parks and Scotland and the Italian Alps – acquiring skiing know-how and poker skills along the way.
Like my father, I got up at 6am, stood in my knotted dressing gown, stirred porridge that would never be eaten, waved him off at the boat or the plane and wanted to hug him tight as we said goodbye… but knew way better.
I saw the school trip experience from the teacher’s perspective too.
A close friend who worked in a girls’ school always returned on a high.
“It must have been fun,” I’d say.
“Don’t kid yourself, that’s relief,” came the reply. “We haven’t lost one of them and please, please God, we haven’t gained one either.”
The school trip is a rite of passage.
It’s that first fledging solo trip out of the nest.
I see myself at 10 years old, solemn-eyed at the spot of an execution… where history happened.
I see myself at 16, clutching the plastic arm rest on the plane as it gathers speed on the runway and rises up into the air.
My heart soared … love at first flight.
Adventure lingered in the narrow, cobbled lanes of Montmartre; in the crystal blue waters of Paros; on an overnight train speeding through France where we dangled our arms out half-open windows, puffed on Gauloise because it was sexy, lulled our hearts to the soft chug chug chug of the engine.
What I love about June is the promise.
