Martin Egan

Spoken in English. Their words, as they said them.

As a gay father of three children, and as a husband, I, may still have shadows that allow myself to be hidden. So maybe I don't always correct when someone infers that I have a wife, because sometimes it's easier just to not bother. It also at one level doesn't matter, and at another level it matters hugely.

And to be seen as a father is one thing, to be seen as a gay father is another, to be seen as an adopted father is yet another. There are probably layers and layers and layers that I'm not fully there with in terms of allowing myself to naturally be seen. That's not to say that I hide it far from it. I I don't consciously in any way cover up, camouflage or hide anything of of my circumstances or life in that way. But I I'm just saying it out loud to say that I think there could be something that I'm reticent around having seen.

In a an age of inclusivity and diversity being top of mind and and very much the discourse of the day, have I become too silent?

And if I think of an activist gay community conversation of, say, twenty years ago, they would accuse me of heteronormative lifestyle, you know, in the suburbs, in the countryside, at the school gate with the other parents. And and, you know, what's gay about that? Well, maybe they have a point. There's nothing very gay about it at all. But what does it mean to be and then that's all, of course, thrown up in the air. But I think there's an important invitation in your question to to say there is something to be held lightly, but at the same time to be visible and open.

So the extent to which that I would feel disowned sounds harsh, but maybe it's the word I mean. Disowned by the gay community.

I have also disowned the gay community. So so it's it's, it's tricky.

I I think the bigger stretch in finding a place to locate the heteronormative gay family in the gay community is a huge challenge to the gay community. And in fact, talking about being seen in the world or not being seen in the world, I have consciously shied away from that interaction.

I had this sense that it's probably the longest time I have been witnessed continuously, probably in unless a doting mother or parent. And even then, I think it's probably the longest time continuously without veering off to anywhere else. And I got the imagining that, the ancestors or the spirits are the ones who hold us in their protection perhaps, or in their in their guard, are witnessing in the same way. Are are are watching or keeping a lookout. And I got a sense during this time here that they too could have a rest because there was no need, because I was being fully seen, fully observed for now in this moment and in this space. And with that came some kind of lightning and easing of the anxieties and worries and fears of not being seen or of how I could look or appear or be experienced, none of the worries. But there were if there were three phases for me in the open eye stage, they probably moved through a lessing a lessening of self consciousness in each one and, a more relaxing into being allowed to be seen, being seen, being okay to be seen, be seen. And a lessening of pressure to have to see or to have to, frame what is seen.

And I think all of that is after the crazy busy internal churn and mental craziness and monkey mind or whatever, has already eased, has already passed. And then, and I don't think before then, can there be another layer of lifting. And in my own case, I think it's only the beginning of entering as I become 49 or thereabouts this year. An invitation to something else to to to to peel off like I'm on the end of another layer and and some other core to to come forward, something to happen. I don't know what that's like, but I hear I sense a an a need, and a and a an invitation to step into something.

And the Irish ancestors, and the Irish history, and the Irish legacy, I think, has another layer of hiddenness. And, I don't hide my Irishness, but maybe I hide some of the story of the ancestors suffering or impoverishment or victimhood. I I don't mean victimhood isn't done to themselves, but How can these aspects of my history be seen in a modern, cosmopolitan urban world? And and I remember a very old man when I was young. Turns out, I thought he was very old. Then I discovered he died at 62, you know. And I was eight or something. And he represented for me because of the archetype of simple simplicity in the world with a donkey and a cart and and no electricity, no running water and and a simple basic life. In fact, it's one of the things I struggle with.

I believe a lot of this stuff, that's early biographical community based heritage, collective stuff, will be lost and gone forever in another decade, or certainly in another two decades. And, part of me would have to do a bit of work to be okay with that, because who preserves it for what? My children, my daughters aren't going to be interested in who that man was, where his house was in the forest now knocked down. What about his donkey? Who cares? Nobody cares anymore. And it doesn't matter. And yet it does at some level. And it's making me think right now I had a dream of a dead donkey two nights ago and I couldn't make any sense of it. I don't know why there was a dead donkey in the dream. And here I am telling you about somebody's donkey way back. It's a bit crazy. But maybe it's not about being seen, but where are the spaces where these things can still be allowed to exist in memories or in stories or in connections.

It it kind of emerged recently around a layer of wondering about grief and intergenerational grief, and and colors of grief, and tones of grief, and unconscious grief, and collective grief, and all kinds of things, and something of that came in then, is there were a number of deceased priests who have been hugely significant in my life and whose death, in the past two years, my two school principals for example, had a disproportional, sense of loss, relative to my well, maybe I shouldn't even judge that, how disproportional it was, but that's a huge, huge sense of of loss with the passing of of these two former parish priest, former school principal. And, yeah, both was both my principal and my parish priest.

I don't know what I'm trying to say about these people, other than I think there's a part of me in a secular society where if I take think of Irish society in particular now, where there's a a baby in bath water flushing out of all clerical, monastic, rituals, spiritual, the whole shebang just wiped and and replaced with a modern kind of positive psychology, well-being and and yoga. And I I say that scornfully. I don't mean it to be I respect all of those things. But the the, and I understand why. I understand that the tainted, muddied, very, very sullied reputation and character of of institutional church and states warrants a purging. I don't, for one second, want to deny that. But it saddens me that the well meant, well meant, well intended, totally of service and of devotion, community, stewardship, care, husbandry, whatever the right word is. That's not the right word. Of these people, is is banished and wiped out along with it. Yeah. There's a line from Thomas O'Cronhan, one of the last islanders on the Blasket Islands and off the coast of Kerry in Ireland, written I think in the fifties maybe. And he I don't know if he ends his book or closes his book, with their likes will never be seen again. And, it's quite loaded. It was actually quite true for islanders and Blasket Island life of the time the island was evacuated in the sixties, I think, for for good. But it's the same line that comes to me for these priests that I think of, you know. Even today's modern priests are a different variety, a different vocation for better or worse. So so these particular characters I have in mind who who are on the one hand old school, on the other hand very Irish to and through sort of steeped in a kind of national identity of of of Catholicism and and devotion and community. Yeah. Their likes will will never be seen again, I think.