Julie Helen: Things I'd love to tell my six year old self...

MUM landed a passport photo on the kitchen table in front of me. The little girl staring back at me made me catch my breath. Her toothy smile matched her gleeful eyes. It was me, still with all my baby teeth.

My hair was in ringlets and my son’s eyes looked into mine. We share those eyes. In the photo I was wearing a turquoise jumper with white bears and pink hearts. I remember the jumper well. I think it came from America as much of my clothing did having an aunt and uncle living there at the time.

Both mum and dad agree that I am six years old in the picture. When I was six my brothers were three, two and one. They were innocent yet busy days.

I loved having my hair in ringlets. I thought I was absolutely gorgeous and, funnily, when I get my hair curled today, my husband loves it the most that way and compliments will fly where they would be few and far between ordinarily. Also sentimentally, David remembers me at six, so I send him the picture. His response of “pretty girl” makes me smile because that’s his go to compliment, even though at the ripe old age of 38, he can hardly call me a girl.

I think about being six. At seven I went through a real stage of being afraid mum and dad wouldn’t come back if they went out or went away. That hadn’t hit yet. I remember being really happy except for when Diarmuid was in hospital, which was probably the root of my fear, I just couldn’t explain it. That makes me think of my own little boy and how now I feel like, no matter what picture I look at, I will know what age and stage he is at, that it is engrained in me.

Both mum and dad laugh as nobody can quite remember why I would need a passport photo at the age of six when I only went on a plane to America to the aforementioned uncle when I was 11. Maybe it was for some school form, we decide.

I want to tell the little girl that life is good and mum and dad go nowhere, and that we only gather more people as we go. 

That feels all the more important as mum is going through cancer treatment right now. Life as we know it feels threatened. The passport photo of herself at 40 that she keeps tucked in her phone wallet doesn’t currently depict her now with hats wrapping her head and the spark in her eyes is quietened but never gone. The truth is, every photo is just a snapshot in time, a reminder that no matter what we do, everything will change.

That little girl of six grows up, gets bold and brave.

The dad in baseball caps and wellies changes to a man with a wide rimmed hat protecting his ears from the skin cancer that his own dad experienced and the wellies are replaced with sturdy steal capped boots protecting his feet and knees. Every time I see dad in his hat in the field I think of how life’s hard times teaches us things. Now as I watch mum be tired and and apologise for an imaginary crankiness she feels she is inflicting on us, I wonder what cancer is teaching us this time, is it to never give up? Is it to remember we are lucky to have each other? Because I knew that at a smiley six and I know it today!