The Paint Pot’s been a lifesaver so many times, this week was no exception
So my mother got vaccinated at The Paint Pot. In a way, it feels like everything that’s happened so far has been leading up to this inevitable point. I’ve mentioned The Paint Pot before, but for those with short memories or who aren’t lucky enough to live in the catchment area of the iconic hardware store, The Paint Pot is a sort of magical shop in Templeogue that sells everything. It’s worth recapping my two favourite Paint Pot stories: the first, I witnessed myself, when a woman asked Norman — the ageless magician who runs the show — if he had such a thing as a dog kennel. “What size?” came the immediate reply. The second happened to my friend Máire at a time of the year when the nights were drawing in and small people needed to be illuminated. “Have you any Sam Browns?’ she enquired of one of the lovely assistants who, in turn, shouted over at Norman, “have we any sombreros?” To which Norman replied, “yes, they’re over there”. It is worth mentioning that The Paint Pot is about the size of your living room and, while I think of it, that the same lovely assistant once lost her voice and when she was asked why it had happened, she whispered “stress.” I can’t really explain why, but we in the ’Logue thought that was the funniest thing we’d ever heard.
And alright, technically my mother wasn’t vaccinated in The Paint Pot. That momentous event actually happened in the back yard directly adjacent to The Paint Pot’s, but within the general environs of Norman’s domain, so that it felt like we were in The Paint Pot. A couple of people in the vaccine queue even commented as much: they stock everything else, was the consensus, so why not Pfizer BioNTech?
The others did actually go into the GP’s surgery, next door to The Paint Pot, but the wheelchair we use to ferry my mother around outside wouldn’t fit through the door, so she was “done” in the yard. It was all very efficient and commendably quick, the only slight hiccup coming when the administering nurse needed to check the surgery record and had to leave us alone with the syringe. “Mind that,” she warned me, as though it were liquid gold, which, in a way, it was. Then it was sleeve up and needle in, and I’m sure I’m not the only adult child who, in that moment, experienced an unexpected wave of emotion and relief. Everything about the last 14 months had been about keeping this woman safe and here she was, in my care, safely delivered to the harbour of her second vaccine.
As soon as the needle came out, the nurse slapped a huge sticker on my mother’s coat.
“9.45,” it said, in large numerals. That was 15 minutes away and the time we needed to stay put to make sure she didn’t turn into a werewolf or worse. They all had different times on their big stickers, this semi-circle of pensioners sitting on chairs at the back of The Paint Pot, like a superannuated class of junior infants. I noticed one man, 9.38, leaning in to speak to a woman, 9.37, and it occurred to me that in doing so, he had breached the two metre exclusion zone. Then I thought, f*** it.
We celebrated with a spin around the front of The Paint Pot, to look at all the toys, floor coverings and garden ornaments outside, and then into SuperValu, the first time my mother has been in any supermarket since this all started. She was nervous about going in, but she wanted to do it and it was my privilege to accompany her, and to carry the shopping basket that quickly filled up with new foods she didn’t know she needed. On the way in, I pointed out the white lines on the pavement outside, meticulously measured two metres apart and now faded almost away, and I told her how, when they were first painted in, I remember queuing up and thinking, in the future, we will see the shadows of those lines and wonder what they were for. None of us thinks that now.
Next weekend, when she is two weeks done and such things are permitted, we will have some sort of a garden party at my house and my mother will breathe the same fresh air as her three daughters and five grandchildren, all together for the first time in 14 months. We will miss my brother, as we do every waking moment, but we will be grateful for small mercies. And little miracles that come in syringes, administered round the back of The Paint Pot.