Cathy Kelly
Author, 48, married
My father worked in insurance but his real love was for model trains. He was very precise and spent hours in his attic train room with his beloved trains, making tiny and beautiful models of houses to go alongside his trains. One of the hardest things about his descent into dementia in his 50s was that he couldn't do any of this any more, nor could he read. He used to say his glasses weren't working. It was so painful to watch.
My brother, Francis, is two years older than I am and I adore him. He's a scientific doctor, is incredibly clever and is wonderfully funny and kind. His greatest joy when he was at college was to get me on his motorbike, promise to drive me to work slowly, then roar down the road in a haze of squealing rubber. He's father to three wonderful teenage daughters and I think he's just an amazing dad.
Going to a convent might have affected my vision of men in that they weren't allowed anywhere near it or the nuns had a fit and rang the police. But I was part of a gang of kids from our road and we all played sports together. I was a total tomboy and occasionally took boys on in fights. I guess I came of age in a time when feminism was in full flood and I was and am a feminist. I never expected a guy to marry me and keep me in the style to which I wanted to become accustomed.
My first kiss was over-rated. It was my first boyfriend when I was 15. I was short and he was six foot four. Go figure. We must have looked hilarious together. He liked Deep Purple, so I pretended to like them too. I really liked the 70s band Bread better. I was at that stage when I thought I had to be different from who I really was to keep a guy. Mistake.
Working in tabloid journalism was very male-oriented and I was one of only two female reporters and the only female news reporter. Let me just say that I had to fight my own corner. Writing ability was not as prized in the same way as getting the front page news splash.
For a long time, I thought I had to be tough to fit in but eventually, when I found myself in writing fiction, I realised that being yourself is true power. In my job as a writer, my skills as a woman are what makes it work. Plus, many people in publishing are women. That said, I have almost never met a chauvinistic publishing male.
I like writing male characters but mainly write female ones. I like to impart that men are not from Mars after all. They are as nuanced and often as unsure as women. I love that younger men have far fewer hang-ups about showing emotion and aren't afraid to cry.
When I worked as an agony aunt in the mid-1990s I learned that men have as much anxiety and pain as women and are, sometimes, unable to explain this to the women in their lives. They wrote to me because the therapy culture was unheard of in Ireland at this time and they needed someone to hear their pain: it was that simple, really.
I met my husband, John Sheehan, through mutual friends 16 years ago and was attracted to him immediately. He was funny, clever and charming, a killer combination. I still love those things about him. I love how much he loves me and our kids, how he's so loyal, and how he brings me coffee in bed if he's up first. It's the little things, right?
John has taught me how to stop and think – like one of those crossing-the-road songs for kids. I am impulsive and rush in. He has taught me not to. He's also taught me a lot about business and how to use the practical side of my brain – I do have one, but it often gets left behind.
My sons Murray and Dylan, who are non-identical twins, are 11 and they have taught me how thoughtful, kind and gentle boys are and how important it is to teach our kids to be able to say how they feel. I try to translate the world for them and they try to stop me dancing in the car at traffic lights because people might see.
My sons go to a school with girls and boys, which I think is brilliant. Going to a girls-only school makes you feel that boys are genuinely from another planet. How the heck can you start into dating when you feel that way? It took me years to stop trying too hard and to just be me.
I met John when I wasn't thinking about meeting a man or expecting to meet a man – it just happened. I guess that proves that being yourself and relaxing is when it happens.
Cathy Kelly's latest book It Started with Paris is on sale now (Hachette, $29.99).
