Ó hEithir excerpt: An gramafón

I was reading this bit on the train last night coming back from the airport and it made me think of poor alcippe and her woes. The rest of you might enjoy a glimpse at what I've been reading so diligently for the past month.

Tar éis an dinnéir, nuair a bhíodh an bord glanta agus na soithigh nite, thugadh mo mháthair anuas an gramafón agus sheinneadh plátaí ceoil. Ceann é ab éigean a thochras le lámh miotail a sháití isteach ina thaobh. Níor mhór a bheith thar a bheith cúramach gan an iomarca stró a chur ar an dtuailm agus é a briseadh. Tharla sin, Nollaig amháin, de bharr m'easpa taithí féin ar theannas na tuailme a bhrath. Chas mé an lámh babhta rómhinic agus d'airigh mé rud éigin ag tabhairt uaidh. Ansin, b'fhéidir an lámh a chasadh le do laidhricín agus b'in deireadh le ceol na Nollag an bhliain áirithe sin.

After dinner, when the table was cleared and the dishes washed, my mother would take down the gramophone and play records. It was one that had to be wound with a metal arm that would be stuck into its side. It was extremely important to be careful not to put too much tension on the spring and break it. That happened once Christmas due to my own lack of experience sensing the tension of the spring. I turned the arm one time too many and heard something give way. Then it was possible to turn the arm with the little finger and that was the end of Christmas music that particular year.

Cé nach raibh milleán ag éinne orm i dtaobh na timpiste bhí milleán mór agam orm féin. Feicim fós na boscaí plátaí ceoil a bhí tugtha anuas as an gcófra ina gcoinnítí iad, ina luí balbh ar an mbord de bharr mo chiotaíle. Níos measa fós, b'éigean an t-inneall a bhaint amach as an ngramafón, é a chur i mbosca agus é a sheoladh go Gaillimh le tuailm nua a fheistiú ann.

Although no one blamed me for the accident, I blamed myself a lot for it. I still see the boxes of records taken down from the cupboard in which they were kept lying mute on the table due to my cack-handedness. Even worse, it was necessary to take the motor out of the gramaphone, put it in a box, and send it to Galway to have the new spring installed.

Agus ar fhaitíos nach raibh sin sách dona, tháinig litir ar ais as Gaillimh ag rá gurbh éigean an t-inneall a chur go Baile Átha Cliath mar nach raibh aon scil acu féin in inneall den déantús áirithe sin. Nuair a shroich sé ar ais, tar éis a thurais trasna na hÉireann, bhí an tuailm nua chomh righin sin agus go raibh faitíos orm go raibh sé ar tí briseadh arís faoi mo lámh. Thóg sé píosa fada orm an ceann ab fhearr a fháil ar m'fhaitíos roimh an ngramafón. Bhí dúil mhór i gceol ag mo mháthair agus thosaigh sí ag bailiú plátaí ceoil le linn di a bheith ina múinteoir óg i mBéal Feirste, le linn an chéad chogaidh mhóir.

And if that wasn't bad enough, a letter came back from Galway saying it was necessary to send the motor to Dublin as they themselves weren't skilled with motors of that design. When it returned from its journey across Ireland, the new spring was so stiff that I was afraid that it was about to break again under my hand. It took me a long time to overcome my fear of the gramophone. My mother had a great fondness for music and had begun collecting records while she was a young teacher in Belfast, during the First World War. (An Nollaig thiar, pp. 61-2; my [crappy] translation.)

Good luck with your gramophone spring! Here's hoping you don't have to send it clear across the country to get it fixed!

Careful what you wish for: The year of the dress shirt

For us children, communicating what we wanted for Christmas was simple: When the Sears catalogue came, we would take turns leafing through it and writing down the names of all the coolest-looking toys. (The more academically-inclined among us would even include page numbers.) Now the only one of us four siblings who still does something like this is my older brother, who in all too many ways is like my sister's fourth child. Yes, we all keep Amazon wishlists, but those are different. bunj's, like mine, is littered with things that are too expensive, obscure, or both for anyone to really track down and give us; they really are wishes rather than concrete hopes. I have scattered a few cheap, available picks on mine just as a crutch for strangers or anyone else who gets stuck trying to find a gift for me--which includes even monshu on those rare occasions when his knack for finding the amazing thing I didn't know I couldn't live without inexplicably fails him.

Nowadays I don't make lists, only suggestions. I often try to have a few handy before my family starts asking come November or so, but I was still a little unprepared when my sister dropped the question this year. I guess I'd just had a frustrating experience trying to find something I wanted to wear in my closet because I told her "dress shirts". That's how I ended up coming back from St. Louis with four of them (and very possibly one or more others on the way). They are all quite nice (though none as pimpin' as the mafioso pinstripe my Mom gave me--can't wait for the occasion worthy of wearing it!) but at least one is rather inexplicable: My stepmom apparently went into a panic two days before Christmas that she hadn't bought enough and my father woke me up that morning to quiz me on my shirt size. When their gifts were dispersed on Boxing Day, I found that they'd already gotten me a quite nice (if snug) suede jacket, so I don't see why they felt the need to supplement that.

Part of the reason I was initially so confused by my father's call was that I'd recently bought a shirt for my BIL, which required memorising his size before I went shopping, and it's close enough to mine that I had to think carefully in order to separate the two. Normally, I'd leave it to my sister to buy him clothes, but I was living up to my responsibilities as The Gay Uncle. See, their oldest has recently gone off pink (formerly his favourite colour) because he's entred that instrument of fascist indoctrination known as "first grade" and now understands that pink is for girls. BIL's response to being told this--and one of the many reasons why he's keeper material--was "Maybe I should get a pink shirt." I figured he hadn't, though, and thought sis might've, but that one pink shirt was a must and two would be no crime. (Not only is it pink, but it's also a Polo™, so the preppiïsation of a working-class South Sider continues apace.)

Oh, and one more thing about those damn Amazon wishlists. Why is there no way to change the default order? Sure, if you know what you're doing, you can sort by other factors, but the initial display is always most-recently-added on top. Why do I bother assigning priorities to every single item if people are simply going to buy me the first thing they see in their price range? The last time I added a bunch of items was at the dawn of my García Márquez craze so I'm now blessed with more Crazy Jungle Spanish than I can eat. (Yet I still don't have the one title in that batch I wanted most. Ah ¡ironía!) Of course, I'd really prefer that they gave me a book that was meaningful to them whether or not it's something I've officially announced my desire to acquire or not, like the guide to prairie wildflowers my father gave me. I'll never forget where that came from whereas I've already lost track of who gave me La hojarasca and who gave me the other one. But God knows I'm lucky enough just to have something--anything--for every name on my list so I'm the last to carp about gifts not being thoughtful enough or whatever.

Christmas in brief

Oh, and since it'll be a while before I pump out more posts about my holidays (if I ever do), I went to go on record now saying that this was one of the mellowest, nicest Christmasses ever. I think I may try to have a cold every year. Seriously, it was just strong enough to take the fight out of me without making me too weak to enjoy myself. When things would go awry in their fully-predictable fashion, I had no choice but to sigh and move ahead.

As if that weren't enough, everyone was on their best behaviour. My older brother in particular was in remarkably good shape even before you took into account that he'd been working long days up until my arrival and pulling a lot of late nights one after the other. He may have been nodding off yesterday, but then so was I, and at least he never got bizarre. My stepmom complained about my father's behaviour behind the scenes, but at least in public there was none of the acrimonious bickering of years past and one-on-one he was excellent. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the whole trip was riding back to Mom's with him and my older brother and having a rewarding three-way conversation (as opposed to the tired pattern of Kramer trying to interrupt with inappropriate attempts to join the discourse and being irritably shouted at by my father).

The nephews are all kind of cuteness, of course, and the turnaround time between wondering who the hell Mommy is hugging and specifically requesting that "Unca Da" join in their games was the shortest ever. We already know that the BIL is the Hero of All Time for his role in the Christmas Wipe-Out on Delmar; he also very graciously included me in his game nights with his good friends. Hopefully Sis felt she got enough quality time; at least I felt like I saw more of her this year than I have during any I haven't stayed at her house.

And Mom. Sis did the right thing by warning me that her house was the worst she's ever seen it, so that by the time I got there and saw it was only slightly more messy than last year, I could sigh with relief. I was too tired to do much cleaning beyond tossing old mail, but my presence alone was enough to motivate her to do a helluva on her own. I even guilted her into wrapping all the presents on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas morning!

There was just one thing missing, however, though it didn't really hit me until Christmas Day. We were having a pleasant time unwrapping gifts (AWI reads well enough to do the distribution, happily amassing a pile of his own to tear through after we're all finished), but I felt oddly uninvolved. I thought it was just lingering illness until bunj called. After relating what I hoped were a few telling anecdotes about the day's events, I passed the phone to someone else. That's when I felt a sudden pang in my chest and realised for the first time how much I missed having him and e. there to share things with. So I played this little video for Kramer and we all felt better:

Twe12e

Oh, and y'all may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the music this year. I guess that's because, frankly, the less said about being forced to listen to Josh Groban's Christmas album because I was fixing dinner at the time and couldn't leave the room, the better. But my sister did make up for it by playing this video for me:

My father, on the other hand, did nothing at all to compensate for compelling me to listen to Beethoven's Wig without the liberty of calling it utter crap. (Small children around, not to mention his wife.) The closest I came was saying "You heard this on NPR?" If you know me at all, you know that that is in no way complimentary.