IN HER FOOTSTEPS
Erin McCafferty on following in a parent’s career path
You think you’re prepared, but you’re not. When it happens, it’s like being hit over the head with something solid. You find yourself reeling. I’d heard people talk about the death of a parent, but it’s really only when you experience it that you appreciate its gravity. My mother – Tanis O’Callaghan – died last March, after a long illness. Her passing brought up many, long-buried memories. Moreover, I found myself evaluating my own life. That’s the thing about a parent dying: it’s not just the overwhelming feelings of loss and the sadness that you have to deal with, but the sudden and immediate awareness of your own immortality.
Between a mother and a daughter, it’s particularly poignant, perhaps because of the complicated nature of the relationship. And ours had been far from easy. While we shared many of the same interests – a love of art, fashion and writing – we clashed in many respects. Many mother/daughter relationships are rife with complicated and entangled feelings of deep love, rivalry, atonement, resentment, pride, shame and more, according to psychotherapist Breda Farrell of Remedy Clinic (remedyclinic.ie). A mother, she says, can be a huge influence, but not always one that is consciously recognised. “If a mother was successful in areas such as a relationship, motherhood and academic or career choices, it offers these as possibilities to her daughter.” My mother was a huge influence on me. One of my earliest memories is of attending a fashion show with her. I was about three years old, and the only child there. At that age, everything is seen from below. I recall the ridiculously long legs of the models as they paraded up and down the catwalk, the smell of musky perfume that hung in the air, and the glamorous fashion writers, sporting matte lipstick. They patted me on the head and ooh-ed and ahh-ed at my halo of blonde curls. As a young girl, it meant little to me. It was only later that I appreciated my mother’s status as one of the most wellknown fashion and feature editors in the
country. Journalism was a different world at the time. Interviews were arranged on a landline, copy was typed on a typewriter and filed by hand, and there was a lot of waiting around hotels to see people. It was not an easy job. On the upside, Tanis was about as close to a social media influencer as you could get, and being a women’s journalist was, in a sense, tantamount to being famous.
While she’d also worked for national newspapers, she was very proud of her time with IMAGE, the most high-profile glossy magazine in Ireland. During the late 1970s, she was the lead fashion and features writer, and later editor.
Well-known journalist Mary Kenny was a former colleague of my mother’s at The Irish Press, and also contributed to IMAGE. “Tanis was so ladylike,” she recalls. “She always looked mint-box fresh. She led a very glamorous life. We’d sometimes go for coffee. I think she thought I was terribly outrageous with my radical Marxist and ultra-feminist views,” laughs Mary.
After she left IMAGE in 1979, Tanis mostly devoted herself to being a fulltime mother to five young children, of which I was the eldest. However, she never lost her love of current affairs
and continued to pen freelance articles. When I, years later, announced my intention to try my hand at journalism, it didn’t go down well. While it appeared glamorous from the outside, Tanis knew all too well the insecurity that accompanied the profession, the poor pay, the fickle nature of editors, and the stressful reality of deadlines. I was determined to try nonetheless. We had different surnames, so I told no one that she was my mother. Fast forward 15 years, and I’m still making a living from it, having been the editor of two magazines and ghostwritten two books, while writing for numerous national newspapers. I’m not the only one, of course, who has followed in a successful mother’s footsteps. Artist Poppy Melia, the daughter of Pauline Bewick, acknowledges that although her mother never encouraged her to become an artist, she was raised in an artistic environment, which influenced her. In fact, it was a family friend, an artist called Patricia Bianca, who first suggested that Poppy had a flair for textile design. This led to her studying fashion and textile design at NCAD. While Poppy, now a 53-year-old mother of two from Killorglin, Co Kerry, admits that her mother’s name helped her career in the initial stages, she believes her work now speaks for itself. She has both exhibited and sold artworks all over the world. It does bother her, however, that she’s still often known as “Pauline Bewick’s daughter”. “People still come up to me and say, ‘I love your mom.’ It’s great, of course, but it’s nice to be known in your own right too.” Singer Chloë Agnew, daughter of Adele King, aka Twink, is another. Now 30 years old, Chloë has lived away from home since the age of 15 and is currently based between Nashville and LA. Despite having made a success of her career, she’s still often referred to as “Twink’s daughter”. “It doesn’t usually happen when I’m abroad,
“When I announced my intention to try my hand at journalism, it didn’t go down well. While it appeared glamorous from the outside, Tanis knew all too well the insecurity that accompanied the profession.”
and there’s freedom in that,” she says. “In Ireland, I find it works to my advantage because I’m part of a great community of entertainers and musicians, many of whom watched me grow up.” Begrudgery from other people is one of the disadvantages. “There are people out there who believe I’ve only succeeded because of my parents, and that’s something I’ve had to deal with. But at the end of the day, I wouldn’t have it any other way,” says Chloë.
My first byline was in a tabloid newspaper – and my mother refused to read it. But little by little, as I branched out to broadsheets and moved between news, features and interviews, she began not only to approve, but to get a real kick out of our similar career paths. I realised that, without ever consciously meaning to, I’d gained her respect. What’s more, our shared experience of journalism had brought us closer. Looking back, I learned all I knew from her. She taught me how to write from listening to her critique other people’s articles. I’d seen how she gained people’s trust and they opened up to her. I’d watched her ask for interviews that no one else would – and get them. But more than that: she taught me to be brave.
As a journalist, you do a lot of things on your own and constantly have to put on a brave face. I learned how to dress up, do my make-up and smile so that I looked the part even if I was quaking in my boots. I miss her still, and more than I ever thought I would. When this article was commissioned, I rang my sister to tell her. Then I rang my best friend. But there was someone else I needed to tell who would appreciate it, and I couldn’t think who it was. Then it dawned on me. I needed to tell my mother.