Where's Your Mammy Gone?

Published in Issue 3 of Sin Newspaper on 10 Oct 2011
Also published on campus.ie in 20 Oct 2011

We’re into our second month, and the thousands of students who joined us in September are still blocking corridors, getting lost and asking directions. Recently cut free from their mothers’ aprons, they are set loose upon the city of Galway. Independence at last!

But is it really so enjoyable leaving home for the first time? Last week, I caught up with Emma Doyle, a seventeen-year-old Longford girl studying Arts, who has a strong bond with her mother, and found leaving home for the first time a little difficult.

Emma had just finished her first week when I met her for an interview, and though she found the campus very friendly and welcoming, she was “knackered” by the end of a long week of introductory lectures and fresher’s events. “I’m not used to the hours,” said a tired Emma, “or all the walking. I’m really tired but its fun.”

College is a great chance to do new things, meet new people, and enjoy some independence, but it’s quite common to be homesick in the first week or two. Emma misses her family and her friends, and most of all she misses being able to walk into the house and talk to her mother. “There’s no-one there to yell at me when I bring grass in on my shoes, but there’s always something reassuring about having a mammy in the house.”

Trips home at the weekends, long phone calls, and frequent text messages, however, are always a good way to combat the home-sickness. But these are not the only steps Emma takes to help the loneliness. She may have to sweep her own floor, wash her own dishes, and make her own way to classes every day, without the use of the taxi service, conveniently provided by her mother; but Emma enjoys a number of home-cooked meals during the week. She refers to these meals as “Frozen Dinner A’la Mammy.”

So what is “Frozen Dinner A’la Mammy”? Well, put simply, it is a dinner that has been cooked at home, placed in a plastic box, and put in the freezer until it is needed for re-heating. This week, for example, Emma enjoyed two dinners of shepherd’s pie, one dinner of chicken tikka, a large container of soup, and a speciality of Mammy Doyle’s – pasta with chicken, bacon, and vegetables – truly delicious!!

Emma stands beside a sink full of dishes.
Who's gonna clean that up?

This luxury of home-cooked meals is much appreciated by Emma, who states that her “eating habits have gone to hell!” It’s difficult to keep a routine, healthy diet without a mammy there to guide you, but this becomes a lot easier to manage with time, as Emma will surely find out in the near future. “One day I ate a snack bar for breakfast,” Emma said, “and ate nothing else at all until I got home from college!”

So what happens when the supply of Frozen Dinner A’la Mammy runs out? Emma survives on toasted potato waffles when the good food is gone. Delicious as these are, they simply aren’t the same as a wholesome, delicious, home-cooked meal, made with the love and care of a mammy.

There’s no shame in asking one’s mammy for a few frozen dinners. Home is where the heart is, and wherever you live throughout the academic year, home is still home, and you are always welcome there. We could all take a leaf out of Emma’s book and grab ourselves some Frozen Dinner A’la Mammy this weekend. I plan on coming back to Galway with a box full of Beef Casserole!

12 Oct 2011

by Jessica Thompson