In our new series Voices of Irish Country Magazine, we’re sharing some of the most popular columns found inside each issue of the magazine – past and present. This piece, by one of our most beloved columnists, Maria Moynihan, was taken from the Jan/Feb 2023 edition. Keep an eye on our website over the coming weeks for more excerpts from our brilliant writers
Despite writing this column for more than a decade, I still dread every deadline. But that pressure is also a privilege
“What should I write my next column about?” I ask my husband, days from deadline, in a potent mix of sheer desperation and lack of inspiration.
“Ham?” he suggests helpfully. “I’m going to really elevate my glaze this Christmas.”
“It won’t be out until January,” I sigh, “nobody will want to read about ham then.”
“Ham isn’t just for Christmas,” he huffs. “You could write about making a roast dinner? I’m sure something will go wrong; for comedic value, I mean?”
“I did that in 2013,” I reply. “A reader wrote to me afterwards chiding me for using Queens for the mash. I’m still not over it.”
“Well, I’d go with ham if I were you,” he says, “it’s a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.”
You know, I have a conversation like this approximately every 7.5 weeks. In the run up to my deadline, my palms start to sweat, and I can’t settle properly until I’ve hit the send button. It’s a privilege to have a column and one that I have never taken for granted. But it’s also pressure when the subject matter is your own life. (Or occasionally, ham.)
It only struck me recently that I’ve been writing this column for more than 10 years. We got married in 2012, so there was no shortage of material back then; such as the frankly bizarre pre-marriage course where we were put in separate rooms and given a questionnaire with 156 multiple choice statements to assess our compatibility.
“I said you watch too much TV and give me the silent treatment when you’re angry,” my husband-to-be confessed sheepishly as we waited for the results.
“But we don’t even have a TV!” I hissed, before reverting to said stone-walling.
Then there was the wedding itself, where it bucketed all day after a two-week heatwave, I spilled champagne down my silk dress and my beloved got my name wrong during the actual ceremony. (I probably should have asked for my money back for the pre-marriage course at that point.)
Early married life continued to conveniently deliver the column inches: from a stand-off over a Star Wars duvet in our first home to a severe test of my inner Florence Nightingale, when my husband shattered his knee playing soccer and amused himself by making Mariah Carey-esque care requests.
(“I prefer my sandwiches quartered rather than halved,” may have been the final straw.)
My muse figured out fairly quickly what I was up to, however, so I had to start seeking ideas elsewhere. Which sometimes took on a life of their own; as in the case of the “Couch to 10km” training programme that lurched into “Couch to Marathon” over 10 months.
“Sure, it will be great for the column,” I reasoned as I signed up, overlooking the fact that it would also mean running 42 kilometres. As it turned out, I’d go on to run three, including World Marathon Majors in Berlin and Chicago. It opened up a whole new world of adventure and self-confidence for me; but without the column, I don’t know if I would have been brave enough to put myself on the starting line.
There were other times that I hoped for something unexpected or exciting to happen so that I might have a topic to write about. What I didn’t have in mind was a crippling panic attack that landed me in A&E one night, or a diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder that left me on the tiles of my hallway floor and drained the joy from my bones for a very long time. But a key to my recovery was realising that so much of what I was experiencing was so very common. And more importantly, that I was not alone. Seamus Heaney wrote that he rhymed to set the darkness echoing. I’m no Heaney; but I wrote to banish the darkness – and pain and shame – for myself and, hopefully, for others.
Of all the unexpected things that have happened in my life, though, learning that my baby boy Danann was not going to survive on the very same day that my column announcing my pregnancy went on shop shelves was a twist I never saw coming. The only reason I dragged my aching limbs back to work after his diagnosis of Edwards’ Syndrome was that I wanted to write my column about him. I needed to write about him. And because so many of you read Danann’s story, and took him into your hearts, a little bit of him continues to live in you. Thank you for loving him. I’ll never forget it.
But as much as I stress myself out, every single time, a column is not just about the person who writes it. It’s about those who read it. Thank you for laughing with me (and at me), for lifting me and for loving me when I’ve needed you most over the last decade.
I love you. I honestly do.
