I heard the story at a dinner with women friends. The six of us gather over good food, wine and, since I gave up the gargle, posh soft drinks occasionally involving rhubarb, a few times a year. There’s no rhyme or reason to the timing of the gatherings. What is more constant is the sound of laughter, belly-laughs so loud they can disturb any children or partners or pets in the house who have sometimes been known, sensibly, to get out of Dodge in advance.
These are women from the Kingdom and the Rebel County and the Garden of Ireland and Rossie county and the Dirty Old Town, women who can tell a story and lift spirits with killer one-liners. Women who know politics and business and law and media, who know where some of the bodies are buried but also know the healing power of a soundbath and the joy of a Thermomix. It’s been a lucky thing over decades of my life, knowing women such as these. We change jobs and move houses and mourn losses and deal with life’s challenges and then we come together every so often to tell each other stories about the world and Ireland and about each other and to laugh. These are funny women. We laugh a lot.
We talked and laughed that night, over two kinds of filo pastry pie, about the presidential election. Unfortunately, as with one of the pies, there’s no meat in it really yet unless you count the ridiculous chat about Heather Humphreys’ husband’s former Orange connections. Nothing to see here sadly, so we quickly moved on. We talked about a scandalous happening with people we know that nearly made me choke on my apple crumble. (It’s the kind of story friends tell you that you have to swear to take to your cremation service. Apologies.) And then one of the women told a story that made me smile that night and all of the next day and I am still smiling now just thinking about it. So I thought I’d share it with you.
It might have passed you by – it had definitely passed me by – but recently the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) awarded Mary Robinson the prestigious Stearne Medal. She was given the medal, named after the RCPI’s founding president John Stearne, for her contribution to global health and human rights and climate justice. But Mary Robinson getting yet another award recognising her brilliance is not the story.
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The medal-giving ceremony was a meticulously planned event. I mean, it’s not every day a former president comes to your workplace. There were seating arrangements and speeches to be planned, arrival times and catering – the usual choreography when a VIP comes to call.
One of the organisers of the event was a woman called Marissa Maloney. It turned out she had some history with Mary Robinson. It goes back over 30 years, when Robbo was president, and Maloney was a student at St Joseph’s National School in Dromcollogher, Co Limerick. Robinson was visiting the town and out of all the children in the school Marissa was chosen as the child who would present the President with a bunch of flowers. Little Marissa was thrilled, telling her family all about the honour of being chosen. But then something else happened. Marissa probably wouldn’t put it like this – she’s too nice – but the poor girl was shafted and when it came to the presenting moment, someone else ended up giving Robinson the flowers instead.
Can you imagine? I can. Marissa was so disappointed and upset and embarrassed – she’d been telling her family about it for weeks – that she said nothing to nobody, keeping her disappointment to herself. Her family only found out about the flower-giving that never was when they bought the local papers the following week to see their girl presenting the flowers, only to see someone else’s face beaming up at Robinson in the photographs.
I’m not saying Marissa was mentally or emotionally scarred by this missed opportunity or that it represented some sort of fateful sliding doors moment, but I know it never left her. The things that happen (or don’t happen) in childhood can leave an indelible mark. Marissa grew up and got on with her life. She left Limerick for Dublin. She got a job at the RCPI. But every time she saw Mary Robinson on television or in the newspaper, she was reminded of the day she was supposed to give the president flowers but never got the chance.
There was lots to organise at the RCPI before Robinson’s visit. There were meetings and emails and calls. At one of the meetings, as people reflected on what Mary Robinson meant to them, Marissa told colleagues about the time she missed out on giving her flowers. And because in this world and in this country people are mostly good and kind, you can guess what happened next.
When Marissa found out that her colleagues had organised for her to meet Robinson and present her with flowers at the medal-giving ceremony, she was mortified at first. But the mortification passed. The moment she met Robinson, she felt like that little girl again. That’s what she told colleagues in a note explaining what the moment meant to her. “I was full of awe and joy,” she wrote. “You can imagine how it felt to share the photo in the family WhatsApp group afterwards”. We can, Marissa. We really can.
