‘WE CAN BE MORE THAN MOTHERS’
Author Caroline Garce-Cassidy on why women need ot look at their lives and find time for themselves
Caroline Grace- Cassidy – author, actress, filmmaker, screenwriter, TV3 panelist, wife, full-time mother- oftwo – has all of the energetic presence you might expect. We meet in a Dublin hotel and her look is biker chic – loose, long blonde hair, leather jacket, skinny jeans. She sits on the edge of her seat and within moments we are talking about a new literary phenomenon she has embraced in her own writing: mummy porn. This is a relatively new genre of fiction where worn- out and frustrated Mammy protagonists somehow get a hall pass from motherhood to belatedly fulfil their own dreams, ambitions – and, of course, romances. Shirley Valentines for the modern era, if you will.
In Caroline’s sixth novel, The Importance of Being Me, 38-year- old divorcée Courtney Downey moves to Cornwall in England when her 15-yearold daughter Susan pushes her away and goes to live with her dad and his new, younger wife. She reinvents herself as a chef, grows in confidence and happiness and falls in love. Why is this genre so popular now?
‘Imagine if you could just escape for a while,’ says Caroline, whispering theatrically, her eyes twinkling. ‘Imagine how lovely it is.’
For most of us busy mammies living part-time under laundry, it is the stuff of pure escapism, only to be found within the pages of a book.
‘ The reality is that while women can’t escape, you can certainly look at your life and find time for yourself somewhere else,’ argues Caroline. ‘ These women are reading this mummy porn and thinking, “When she’s 18 I could go to Trinidad for six months or I could go anywhere.” I think as mothers we think, “We’re tied forever, children are for life.” But I think it’s very important for mothers to be able to let go of their children as well and let them embrace adulthood.’
Caroline is doing her best to raise two independent daughters. ‘ Then have your next change in your life, post-motherhood, while still being a mother,’ she continues. ‘It’s being the person that you were before you had children. That’s why during the process of being a mother of young children it’s just so important to stay true to who you are.
‘You see a lot of these moms who are just lost, I suppose. I’m speaking for friends as well. They can’t even go out – and I get it. But you have to push yourself, get a babysitter,’ she implores. ‘You’ve got to ask for help and just go out. Just keep living your life. Because we only have one life and to just be sort of stuck in no man’s land and being a mother – I just don’t think it’s enough for women.’
Caroline has strong opinions and is not afraid to share them, which is why she has been a regular panelist on TV3 shows Midday and now Elaine for the past five years.
‘Nobody held back in our house growing up,’ she explains, of family life in Knocklyon, Dublin, with her two siblings, roofer and musician father Robert and stay-at-home mum Noeleen. ‘We could say what we wanted and express different views.’
On TV Caroline has extolled the joys of, among many other things, drinking wine, bottle-feeding and having it all – because she has somehow managed to juggle her very busy career with fulltime motherhood. She refuses to see any barriers to being with her kids all day while still meeting her writing deadlines. At least while Grace, 9, and
Maggie, 5, are in school, she has mornings to write. But now they are on summer holidays.
‘People say, how do you do it? Because I work my bloody ass off because I want to work,’ she says. ‘I’m always running, as we all are as working mothers. You have to be prepared to run. If you want to have a career and be around for the kids, it is a running around thing.
‘I’m very lucky that they can be there and I can write. I don’t need peace and quiet, I can do it around them,’ she explains.
‘ They’ll come in and I’ll be...’ she holds up her finger gesturing for them to give her a minute. ‘ They’re self-sufficient. You see kids in junior infants and their mothers are still wiping their bums,’ she adds, rolling her eyes. ‘With my kids I’ll say, “Get yourself some Corn Flakes.” But they know what I do and they know when they need to leave me alone for a minute. I’m lucky that I can multi-task.’
As for what the kids do while she’s working, she laughs: ‘ They do what normal kids do, they fight! They kill each other! They play, they do Lego, they do colouring. We have a really young road so they’ll be in the garden with other kids. And then in the evening I’ll put the telly on for them and they’ll watch the telly after dinner.’
Caroline is married to her college sweetheart Kevin, the pair having met as teenagers while students of broadcast journalism in Senior College Ballyfermot.
‘We’re together since he was 17 and I was 18, so a long time. It is very unusual now. We just sort of grew together and we wanted to do the same thing so we opened Park Pictures,’ she says, of their production company based in Dublin’s Ranelagh. ‘We started off with short films because they’re accessible and we could make them in-house. We did really well. We had a winner at the Galway Film Fleadh with I Am Jesus two years ago and I’ve a new film called Reach at this year’s Galway Fleadh.’
Caroline also has an exciting deadline now: adapting her fifth book, The Year I Ruined My Life, for a TV movie to be produced here by Park Films – not to be confused with her own Park Pictures – and Farpoint Films in Canada.
‘ The BAI [Broadcasting Authority of Ireland] gave us €37,000 and Canada gave us €15,000 to adapt it. In Canada the TV movie of the week is huge. Then TV3 came on board here to show it.’
Caroline was initially going to hand over the book for someone else to adapt. ‘I thought, am I too close to the story? Then I talked to Emma Donoghue who adapted her novel Room and ➤
➤ she was very adamant that I didn’t let go.’ Plus, she says, ‘there’s nice money in it compared to the novels’.
Another feted Irish writer and filmmaker, Alan Gilsenan, read Caroline’s first draft and was ‘really helpful’. But the biggest cheerleader in her writing and filmmaking ambitions is her husband. ‘Luckily we’re both involved in it, I think that’s why we have such a good marriage – because Kevin is so into the same things that I am.’
I tell her she is the only interviewee I’ve had who voluntarily and oh-so- casually mentioned having a good marriage.
‘Really?’ she gasps, amazed. ‘I’m lucky really, I suppose, and we work at it. As we were so young, we grew together, it’s a partnership, it’s a tag team. I’ll feed the kids and I read to them every night while they’re having their dinner. I’m going through all the Malory Towers and then he’ll come in and get them ready for bed and then he’ll put his music on and cook, he loves that. And then the two of us eat together at 9pm and talk while we eat. I think that’s kind of important as well.’
Married ten years now, they have lots in common – and differences too.
‘He’s very tidy, I’m very messy. He’s a really good listener and I’m a really good talker. I’ll be constantly firing out ideas and he’ll let them settle and he’s also the one that’s good with money – I’m brutal with money. He’s a really brilliant dad and he really helps me out. It’s a real team and he’s really supportive. I couldn’t do it if he wasn’t.’
It hasn’t all been roses in the garden, either. ‘ The company nearly went when the recession hit,’ she admits. ‘I don’t know how we kept our heads above board. It was really difficult. But we do training as well in the studio and that kept us going because companies weren’t spending money on video which is something we do as well.
‘But nobody was spending. You don’t make money off short films. There’s no money in that. It’s just for the love of doing it. Gradually we kept our heads above water. My parents have always been a brilliant financial help if we ever needed it and we’re quite lucky we bought our house in Knocklyon 15 years ago, so we have a manageable mortgage.’
Not paying the high cost of childcare either – and working every hour of the day – is finally returning rewards. ‘In the past two years the company’s going from strength to strength which is brilliant. We’re getting loads of big clients like Microsoft and Mercer, doing content for them, for their websites. So that’s been really good. We employ two other guys now as well.’
So the corporate work pays for the artistic stuff like their short films? ‘Exactly. I’m only starting to see some money now on book six, you know. The first three there was literally nothing. I remember when I got the first book deal and I went into Poolbeg and Paula [Campbell, publisher] said, “Don’t quit the day job”.
‘I said, “What? But I’ve got a book deal!” That was an eye- opener.
‘ Then I went to Black & White [publishing] in the UK and they’re really good at pushing the e-book, which is where the money more or less is. There’s much more money in Kindle readers than people going into the shop and paying €15 on a book. But it’s slowly starting to trickle in now because there’s six royalties coming in. So it’s good.’
Caroline, who had a role on Fair City in 2006 says actors can be ‘very cagey’ about what they are earning. By contrast her writing friends like Claudia Carroll, Ciara Geraghty and Emma Hannigan are more forthcoming.
‘We’re all very honest that we’re not buying Prada bags. I only buy Penneys bags most of the time unless you get a really good advance and they’re kind of hard to come by so you have to slog it out. But I don’t think I could do anything else,’ she muses. ‘I tried. After I finished acting, I thought maybe I’ll do something normal and I got a job in AA Roadwatch where you read the traffic news. One night I thought, I have to get out of here and I just picked up my bag and walked out.
‘I was watching the cameras in City Hall or something. It was 4am and I thought, I’m watching traffic for a living. This is not good, Caroline. You’re going to lose yourself. So I left. I’m sure other people love it but it wasn’t for me.’
Along with her extraordinary energy Caroline leaves another impression: of a woman who knows exactly what she wants and is not afraid to work hard to get it. ‘Myself and Kevin talk about film all the time and our ambition is for me to write a feature and for us to make it ourselves with Film Board funding.’ We say: watch this space.