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She remained the classy party girl, and I became the backpacker hippy. I failed miserably in anything with a heel and was more at home in patchwork dungarees than a pencil skirt. When we went to choose a dog from the rescue center to join our family, Eileen wanted the shiny new fluffy puppy while I picked Patch, the old mutt with an established personality and one eye. Patch was the best, most loyal dog ever.

As kids, when we drew our dream houses, she would draw a castle or mansion on a hill with millions of windows overlooking the sea, while I'd draw a "more modest" mansion or thatched cottage, hidden by trees, with a pond that had swans, a garden with a peacock, and windows with shutters. My houses always had shutters even though shutters didn't exist in Ireland. Shutters were the hallmark of the perfect house in my mind. I also needed a courtyard with a long table for family dinners.

This idea was inspired by watching TV with my family when I was nine. There was a movie with a huge family dinner under the sun, with profusions of food being passed around and wine being poured. It was a celebration: everyone was laughing; kids were playing around grape vines or olive trees. I can't remember who said it, but I remember the words "Mamma mia." As I stared at the TV, it was my idea of heaven.

I went to Mass on Sunday, and as I knelt in my rain-soaked trousers, I prayed that someday I would live in Mama-mia Land with my family, happy and in the sun. The following Monday, my teacher handed us out pen-pal forms with all the countries in the world listed on them. We were to tick the box of the country that we wanted to have a pen pal in.

"Which country do they say Mamma mia in?" I asked my teacher. 

After some thought, my teacher answered "Greece." So I ticked Greece.

My Greek pen pal, Nectaria, and I wrote to each other religiously every second week for ten years without her ever mentioning her long, candle-lit, olive-strewn family dinners, even though I often asked how dinner was with her family that week. One evening I happened to see the scene on TV again, the one I had watched all those years ago, and I realized my teacher was wrong; Mama-mia Land was not in Greece but Italy.

As a child, there were a few things I wanted in life that I felt would make it all perfect as an adult: the dollhouse, a rocking horse, a house with blue-shuttered windows, and, at one point, a treasure chest, an eye patch, and an antique globe to fulfill my inner pirate. As a teenager, an old-fashioned writing bureau became my ultimate desire. If I had that, I would be able to write all the words that would magically combine to make me a best-selling author. The angst, the frustration, and all the things a struggling writer should feel would be worked out at a multi-mini-drawer, roll-top, wizardy piece of furniture.

As one of the oldest grandkids, Eileen set the achievement bar high with a high-level job at Bank of America, and by the age of twenty-two she had her own house and was a fabulous cook with a perm and panache for interior design. Declan was her boyfriend of four years—a guy in sales who cheated on her while on holiday in the Canaries. He apologized profusely, but his giant valentine cards, stuffed toys, and silk-flower bouquets were all thrown back at him.

Eileen went on the rebound, and within a year she'd married Assface Alan. He had no family, no friends, no personality. I still have no idea why she married him—pity perhaps? A project to fix? To be the poor sod's knight in shining armor? God only knows.

Eileen wanted me to like Assface. Assface wanted to be liked. So they'd take me places. When they bought the ultimate house, with a balcony overlooking the sea, just like Eileen dreamed of, they took me furniture shopping with them as a neutral force to prevent arguments, a halfway point between their opposite tastes. While shopping for their dining table, we walked into a showroom of fake antique pine, but a corner of the warehouse had a section of customer trade-ins. And there it stood. I ran my hand over the ridges before slowly easing up the roll top with ease, revealing the studded-leather writing surface, backed by mini drawers and shelves for velum paper and writing ink.

"You like it, haw?" Assface said, seeing my desire for the writing desk. 

"I've always wanted one of these. With this I could write the best novels. Imagine its history just leaking on to the pages. I can just picture it in&"

"We'll take the eight-seater dining table over there," Assface called out at the store assistant passing, "and this as well."

My heart skipped a beat: Wow! He was buying me the writing bureau; maybe he wasn't so bad after all. But he was that bad. He bought it for himself and plonked it against the wall at the end of their bed, without velum paper or an ink pen. Just a big, expensive ornament to fill a space. It stood empty, never opened. The only thing on it was the prized fine-china statue of the Madonna and child that belonged to our great-grandmother.

That was how it stayed, until one evening they had one of their many arguments, and to prove to Eileen how much he hated her, he picked up the precious statue and threw it at the wall, where it smashed into a thousand pieces along with Eileen's heart. After that, the bureau stood empty and bare and void of the words of an angst-ridden novel.