Margaret had just been taken into the maternity ward and, after a quick examination, straight to the delivery room, I got as far as the sign saying ‘HUSBANDS ONLY PAST THIS POINT’. Being neither husband or sure I wanted to pass, I stayed put.
This was Ireland in 1983. The church were still at the helm, unaware of the iceberg it was about to hit. The Garda were planting bugs which would eventually infect and bring down the government and Gerry Adams rode Shergar all the way to Westminster.
In this Ireland, having a child outside of marriage was still frowned upon.

I first met Margaret on March 4th 1981. We were both in college in Letterkenny. I was studying Construction and she studied Commercial Translation. Qualifications we could both depend on.
It was Rag Week in the college and everyone was studying hard in the various bars around town. One of her friends, Aisling who often blurred the boundary between friendship and flirty, approached me for a cigarette. As a young student, I smoked Duma rollups in an attempt to look cool. I enjoyed the art of rolling the cigarette as much as the smoke itself.
‘Don’t dare give her one’ Margaret interrupted. I had never noticed Margaret around the college before, but now in face to face confrontation in the foyer of the Ballyraine Hotel, it was difficult not too. I rolled a cigarette for her instead and and spent the rest of that night arguing and blowing smoke signals at each other. It was love at first fight.

When Margaret went home that weekend, her mother Frances asked her about her week. This was the usual Irish mammy ‘grilling’.  It turned out that, although Carndonagh and Carrick were one hundred miles apart, her mother already knew of our family. JW, my grandfather, had built the hospital in Carndonagh. They also built Ard Colgan estate where her mother had a house. During that time, some of my uncles and aunts stayed in Collon with Margaret’s Dad’s family who were known as ‘The Coiners’. In Inishowen the names Doherty and McLaughlin are so common that you also require an additional ‘handle’ or nickname to identify your family.

I visited a few weeks later and was made very welcome. Margaret’s Dad, Danny Joe, was a quiet man who drove the mail lorry from Malin Head to Dundalk for Lough Swilly transport. This was no easy task at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland. Danny didn’t say too much, but he made sure his few words all counted. There was a sense of calm around him.
On my first Sunday there, her mother Frances had made a beef casserole which had been cooking in turf-fueled Stanley range during the morning while we were out at mass. Young Michael was sent off to fill the pot with freshly dug spuds. The heavy, yellow formica topped, oak table was pulled to the centre of the room and roughly laid with forks and knives. Frances served portions of the stew directly from the range top. When we were all sitting she carried over the large pot of spuds and unceremoniously dumped them in the centre of the table. They went everywhere. Forks were coming from every angle trying to snare one of the fast rolling potatoes, travelling at speed from the centre toward the edge. I looked over and Danny Joe was smiling.

Danny Joe’s family home in Collon, where my people had stayed many years before, was a beautiful old two storey house where his brothers and sisters still lived. The brothers, Charlie, Vinny and Neil ran a number of farms while Mary Eliza ran the small country shop and Post office. An old wooden counter ran its length. Depending on the day and time, the post office may be closed but the shop was on country time. You waited to be served. Behind the counter, the shelves ran to the ceiling, stocked lightly with the essentials, everything from Lyons tea to green packs of 20 Major. The counter was overladen with collection boxes for the ‘black babies’ in Africa. A large white Berkel scales, used to weigh everything from loose boiled sweets to freshly cut Doherty’s ham, balanced at the far end. Mary Eliza was a small jovial woman who kept herself busy around her home. She made dinner for the men who spent their day busy outside. When the shop bell rang, she sauntered out, enjoying the interruption the banter would bring to her day. On my first visit Margaret had been talking about places we could visit.  ‘Why don’t you take him up to Maling Head’ she said laughing. ‘It’ll blow the bad smell of him’

We spent the summer of 1982 together in Dublin. Margaret worked as a waitress in the Grey Door restaurant on Upper Pembroke Street. We had a bedsit on the South Circular Rd which belonged to a friend of Margaret’s sister Denise. It was bedroom, kitchen and living room all in one. The bathroom was shared, down the hall. I never liked Bagatelle but this was our summer in Dublin. We’d spend the free time she had around Stephen’s Green and back up Grafton street to the city centre. We drank in the Palace Bar on Fleet Street and Sinnotts on South King Street, both old Dublin pubs full of history with snugs fit for old men. I don’t think either bar had a ladies toilet back then. When she worked late, I’d wait outside the restaurant and walk her home. We’d stop at a small takeaway on the South Circular road which served the best smoked fish and chips we’d ever had. They were carefree times.

Shortly before Christmas, I was back in Carrick when I got a letter from Margaret. She was pregnant. We were both still twenty and unsure what to do next. I felt my throat constricting. This was the start of the panic attacks I would suffer from for the next ten years.
We told no one. We agreed to meet up in Letterkenny after Christmas.

It was a bitterly cold winter. We booked into Blake’s pub which had a small B&B above it. We stayed in a few B&Bs before we realised our money wouldn’t last long. The only money we had was a few thousand compensation Margaret got for being involved in a serious accident. A few years earlier Danny Joe, driving his car with Frances and Margaret onboard, pulled into the hard shoulder on the road from Derry. The car was rear ended by a lorry which hadn’t seen them. They were all injured and lucky to be alive. Frances would spend many weeks in hospital. On her first day out, still shaky on her feet, she was run over by a motorbike on the Ballyliffin road, outside her home. She was a strong woman. When I first met her, there was no sign of the battles she’d been through only a few years earlier.

Some of our college friends had a house in Sliabh Sneacht, a small estate beside the hospital. We arrived up on at midnight on a freezing cold January night. We had no key and they were all in the pub. We sat outside shivering in the -4c temperatures for two hours until someone came home and let us in. Not ideal conditions for a six month pregnant woman.
We had the use of a large sofa. This would be our bed for the next few weeks. We didn’t tell anyone that Margaret was expecting.
It seems odd looking back that a young woman would hide her pregnancy at a time when she should be getting all the support possible. In the Ireland we were living in, being single and pregnant was totally unacceptable. Something to be hushed up, out of sight. It was easy to keep it hidden as Margaret was very ‘neat’ and large jumpers, which were the style back then, helped conceal the bump. We went to Carrick for my 21st birthday that February, two weeks before the birth. We spent the evening in Enright’s pub with friends. No one noticed.

Margaret wasn’t due for another six weeks when she went into labour. We walked the five hundred yards from the house in the dark. I would have to sit and wait. I was left alone to ponder the future. The only person that mattered in my life had been taken off to have our first child and all I could do was wait. I looked at the sign. ‘HUSBANDS ONLY….’ I really should have been annoyed and kicked up a fuss, but this was our first birth. I had no idea what was expected beyond the sign. I’d seen enough TV to know it involved a lot of blood and hot towels. Maybe I was just as well off where I was. Possibly ‘husbands’ had been trained for such emergencies. They may have benefitted from complex training in hand holding and brow wiping. We had no preparation for this other than months of worry.

Ciara Yasmin was born just after six in the morning. It was dark outside.The town was still asleep. In the busy ward all seemed still. All that had mattered so much before and had caused so much anxiety faded and mattered no more. This was life, the birth of our family. From this moment on everything would change. She was so tiny. She weighed five pounds thirteen and a quarter ounces. She was truly beautiful.

Back in the house I broke the news to our friend Johnny Harte. Johnny with his quizzical face, took off out the door and down the path. He stopped, looked around, came back up and looked me closely in the eyes. ‘What are you on Ciaran’ he asked, assuming I was stoned and making the story up. The guys in the house were great. They visited Margaret as a group. I’m sure seeing five burly young men visiting her in the public ward cast some doubts on the parentage but as not many knew they were some of her only visitors. ‘Corny’ Carr visited with the gift of a pack of Pampers. That they were for a year old baby mattered little.
I rang my parents who visited while she was still in. Margaret’s parents were told the week after.
It took a long time for them to come to terms with us making them both grandparents for the first time, out of wedlock.

Ciara became my photographic muse. She was born with a little ‘strawberry’ on her forehead. This would later be overgrown with hair but for now added to her cuteness. When she was two months old, I propped her up on the old couch, which had been our bed, and took the first of many beautiful portraits of her. I proudly printed it up and framed them for the two grannies.

The 1980s in Ireland were bleak times. The country was a mess. The church was beginning to lose it’s tight grip. The economy was failing and people were ‘jumping ship’ and emigrating to make a better life. We depended on, and were thankful for, social welfare. I’d queue for hours, between men in overalls, covered in cement dust, each Thursday, with Ciara in the buggy.

We were still sharing the house with the students but now that Ciara was six months, we decided to get married. There was no huge romantic gesture, no expensive engagement ring. It seemed the most natural thing to do. We knew we had a life to live, together.

We ventured to the Bishop’s palace and met with the local parish priest, who although mannerly, made it very clear that he would not marry us as we were living together. He wanted us to live apart for the next three months leading up to the wedding. I quietly questioned his wisdom and left. We were lucky, later, to be introduced to Fr Michael Carney, who was newly ordained but a novice who had only performed one wedding so far. He was happy to marry us and we were delighted to be in the hands of a priest who was not living in the past.

We queued at the yellow and green Telefón box at the end of our lane, excited to break the news to our parents. Margaret went first as she always got her money’s worth. I broke the news to my mother and it brought obvious relief to her. ‘It’s great news Ciaran’ she said. ‘Now I’ll be able to show the lovely picture of Ciara to everyone’
I guess that one comment summed up how different attitudes were back then. It saddened me that she felt unable to ‘show off’ her first grandchild, but it made me aware how difficult it was for her. The conflict this brought to her life, the love for her first grandchild against the shame of her unwed son. I was to go on to be that husband and make her proud. I attended the birth of my next four children. The sign was long gone when our first son Aaron was born. He was born on the 18th Feb 1989, my birthday. The nurse who delivered him also shared our birthday. We lit a candle and placed it on Margaret’s now receding belly and sung Happy Birthday to us.
I wanted to hold Aaron high, Kunte Kinte like, and show the world that we are so proud of all our beautiful children.

After we married, I had to go through an adoption process for Ciara. She was registered as Doherty. Her birth cert did not have my name on it. Another right reserved in Catholic Ireland for ‘husbands only’